Samuel Quarcoo is a waiter at Woodmont Country Club in Rockville, Maryland, where he has worked since 1975. He is also a part-time teacher in the area. A native of Ghana, where he walked barefoot to school, he immigrated to the U.S. through the generosity of an aunt and earned a master’s degree in teaching.
In 1999, after telling some of his students about the plight of students in Ghana, they decided to donate money to buy school supplies for them. Quarcoo then chose to continue sending supplies to three schools in his native land. For years, as the
Washington Post reports, “he quietly bought backpacks, paper, and crayons on his own and shipped them to school administrators.”