Giving back is as natural as breathing for Jonathan Lewis, who doesn’t believe that charity begins when the office closes for the day. For Lewis, president and owner of Eastport Financial Group Inc. in Halifax, commitment to his community is a foundational part of his life and his business.
A few years ago, a colleague of Lewis’s who also is an ordained minister, decided to move to Peru to volunteer his time with Morningstar Orphanage, which is based in Chicago. Lewis helped with expenses to expand the Peruvian facility, which houses upward of 130 children ranging in age from a few months to 13 years.
But, as Lewis acknowledges, writing a cheque is the easy part. So, he took the tougher route and volunteered his time. As a result, Lewis spent 10 days in Peru in 2010 helping to construct another building on the site, which includes a school as well as the orphanage.
In addition, Lewis asked his staff and clients to lend a helping financial hand: they raised $38,000 in less than three weeks for the project. “It was remarkable,” Lewis says. “People have a lot of heart.”
The need for assistance in Peru for children who live in poverty is dire, Lewis says. He tells the story of a 12-year-old girl who was put in jail to keep her safe from her father, who was prostituting her to feed his alcohol addiction.
Another child, found in a garbage heap, needed life-saving surgery. Lewis decided to make sure that he got it. The alternative was unacceptable. “The child,” he says simply, “was going to die.”
The work in Peru was eye-opening and life-changing for Lewis, who had never been exposed to that level of need before. This work also gave him the energy and the commitment to make helping others a much bigger part of his life.
But it was not the lack of resources Lewis saw that made the biggest impact; it was the reaction of those who must deal with that lack every day that was most profound. “When I was there,” Lewis recalls, “I saw people who were very happy with very little. In North America, we are very unhappy with a lot. This gave me perspective.”
After Lewis’s experience in Peru, he volunteered in Kenya, working long hours in Kibera, the world’s largest slum. All the children he volunteered to help there were HIV-positive; no one, it seemed, wanted them.
The experience was intense, says Lewis: “There is no shortage of work to be done; there is a shortage of people to do [the work]. You work until you drop.”
Today, Lewis, who has a degree in commerce from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, is focusing his volunteer efforts closer to home. After his father’s tragic death in a scuba-diving accident when Lewis was a teenager, the younger Lewis had been active in two youth organizations: Street Connection and Teen Challenge Atlantic. The Street Connection is a mobile soup kitchen that serves low-income families in the Halifax region; most of those assisted are children. Teen Challenge works with youths struggling with addiction.
In the wake of Lewis’s work overseas, his passion to help young people in his own backyard was rekindled.
He started with steaks. Hand in hand with a friend, Lewis attended a Teen Challenge event in Moncton, N.B. En route, they loaded up the car with T-bones and sirloins from Costco. Since then, turkeys have come into play. A few years ago, Lewis and his friends held a turkey drive in Bridgewater, N.S.
“We had such fun,” says Lewis, noting that they cleaned out the town’s supply of turkeys, purchasing every single bird available. They were all distributed in six hours. This past year, the annual drive fed more than 2,000 people in three communities and was supported by more than 30 local businesses that pledged time, money and/or pyjamas – a new element that has become part of the annual event.
It’s karma, says Lewis: “When I was 15 and my dad died, a lot of people helped me out. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be where I am.”
His dad’s death also made Lewis, who began his career in 1999 with Freedom 55 Financial, acutely aware of what can happen to vulnerable people when financial plans aren’t in place. “I saw the impact of that on my family,” Lewis says. “It made for tough years as a teenager. What I took away as an adult was to be empowered. [I] realize how fragile life is.”
That philosophy infuses his company, Eastport Financial, which was named after a business his dad once owned. Lewis believes giving back is central to creating a positive workplace. “Staff get involved – it’s part of our work; it’s part of our weekly agenda,” he says, adding that Eastport Financial matches employees’ donations to charities up to $500 a year.
Clients also are encouraged to help out. Events that Eastport Financial organizes are free to clients, who are asked to make a donation to charity. Lewis believes his company’s commitment to helping out is appreciated by his clients. “There are a lot of people who know numbers,” he says, “but people don’t care how solid your knowledge is. They want to know you care.”
Indeed, Lewis believes that his financial advisory business is a means to an end. The goal, he says, is “to impact people’s lives positively, whether that is employees, clients or the community. It’s not about making money.”
Lewis has established his own charitable enterprise, the Jonathan David Wayne Lewis Foundation, which recently received the green light from the Canada Revenue Agency regarding its charitable status.
“People are willing to follow,” Lewis says, “if someone is willing to lead.”
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