Founder of Partners, Relief and Development
Steve Gumaer
Steve grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska in an unorthodox, if not dysfunctional, home. He moved out of his parents’ blue trailer just after his 15th birthday to live in a cabin. It was that summer, alone with his books in the wilderness, that Steve began an adventure of the soul to identify meaning and how to live peacefully, instead of in a state of continual chaos.
This led to his eventual decision to move to Thailand when he was 18, where he studied Thai for a year and passed the 6th grade equivalency exam. With his young wife, he then moved to a refugee camp along the Thai -Burma border. There Steve met a refugee named Rose Mu, a widow living in a refugee camp. She asked Steve and his wife, Oddny, to “Please, tell your friends in the West what is happening to Myanmar’s children.”
Learn more about steve at partners.ngo
Organization
Personal
Each quarter, The Goble Family Foundation honors a FreestarterTM with a financial donation of $2,500
— plus a whole lot of love. If you see a FreestarterTM here, it’s because we deeply believe in what they are doing. We hope you, too, will be inspired by their bravery, out of the box thinking, trail blazing, perhaps sometimes wacky, work and ideas. And, perhaps, even choose to join them.
To nominate a FreestarterTM in your life, please fill out the nomination form below. Please note the restrictions of the Goble Family Foundation’s mission to provide educational opportunities, ethical storytelling and human rights through our grants.