Singer’s Circle

Things are going well for Pete Singer - he’s happily married with two healthy sons and a job that more than pays the bills - until he receives the first email. It is a list of 247 names. Just the list - no salutation, no signature, no explanation. When Singer receives the second email, he cannot resist tapping the link at the top of the page. It shows a young girl unconscious, malnourished and laying on a rough dirt floor. It ends with a disembodied voice - ＂ Peter, twenty-five dollars will save her life.＂ At first, he follows the advice of friends and family and resists the plea. However, he soon receives a second video of the same young girl struggling to take a breath - her last. He begins to donate. But he can’t stop - even when it means lying to his wife and putting his family’s financial future in jeopardy. Eventually, the financial sacrifices that Singer is willing to make on behalf of strangers strays so far from social acceptability that he loses his friends, his job, his marriage, and his family. On a day that feels as if it may be among his last, he meets the architect of the mission that he has been supporting. She shows him the way to a life he had never imagined.

Jeff Houlahan is an ecologist and conservation biologist with a 20-year active research program focused on animal and plant biology. His journey to this field has been unconventional. As a child of an Air Force member, he grew up in various military towns across Canada, including Calgary, North Bay, Kapuskasing, Ottawa, and two Canadian Air Force bases in Germany, Lahr and Baden-Sollingen.