ABDF

Bennett was born on a hot September day in Los Angeles, California in 1966. He was lovingly raised by his parents, Ray and Edna, in the suburb of Tarzana.  From them he received many gifts, but the three most important were a superb education, a love of reading, and an intellectual curiosity that has yet to be satisfied.

Bennett attended Stanford University for his undergraduate studies, and the University of Texas, Austin, for his Master’s degree, both in History. During his Stanford days, Bennett spent a long summer in rural Kenya as part of a team of Americans studying a minority tribe called the Kuria.  It was this experience that first gave him the “third world” bug.

However, it was a long time before the bug spread large enough for him to succumb to it.  In the meanwhile the more mundane issues of career, paying rent, and buying food interfered.  As a result, Bennett turned to accounting, including a long stint at San Francisco General Hospital, where he helped write and administer a series of multi-million dollar government research grants.  This gave him practical expertise in the flow of money, especially in the not-for-profit world, that would prove invaluable later on.

In December 2004 an earthquake off Indonesia triggered a series of tsunamis that rippled throughout the Indian Ocean, killing a quarter million people and causing an enormous amount of physical damage.  This event finally caused the “third world” bug to reach a critical point, and by June of 2005, Bennett found himself, through contacts and coincidence, in Batticaloa Sri Lanka, a town of moderate size on the eastern coast, and one of the worst hit parts of the country.

While there, Bennett soon came to realize that while the tsunami was terrible, it was nothing in comparison to the damage, both in terms of people and property, caused by a generation of brutal civil war.  He also saw, first hand, the accomplishments and failures of international disaster relief and development efforts.  But more importantly, he fell in love with Sri Lanka, and in particular with the people of Batticaloa. By this time he was helpless to resist the “third world” bug.

Until 2007, Bennett relied on the kindness of friends and family to fund the various projects he initiated in Batticaloa and its’ environs.  However he realized that while compassion and caring are great, appealing to the pocket book can also be a powerful motivating force.  So in 2007 he founded the ABDF, the American-Batticaloa Development Fund, as an IRS-approved 501(c)3 tax-exempt entity. In 2009, the name was changed to American Beneficial Development Fund, in order to de-politicize the name in the view of the Sri Lankan government.

ABDF consists of a small group of volunteers who work to support Bennett in his efforts to carry out small-scale micro-development projects in eastern Sri Lanka. Aside from paying the cost of his living expenses (he himself receives no salary), all funds go directly towards projects, which address local issues and range from school infrastructure, to water tanks in rural villages, to electricity, to the support of an impoverished local medical student. By concentrating on these small issues, which are largely ignored by international agencies due to their size (but are no less important), ABDF seeks to provide immediate, tangible and sustainable results for the people of Batticaloa.

And, concurrently, Bennett finds he is the luckiest, happiest person on earth, and is now at peace with the “third world” bug.