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The Trip That Started It All

Candice McCone was the one who drove it. She had been volunteering with Thrift for Good in Dubai when she first heard about The Sparkle Foundation's work in Malawi. She turned to Sam and said, simply: "I'm going to Malawi. Do you want to come?"

Sam, by his own admission, was not a natural traveller at the time. He almost did not go. He is very glad he did.

"You always get this stigma attached to charities that you don't make an impact and you don't know where the money goes," Candice reflects. "But with The Sparkle Foundation, you really do. You see what it actually does on the ground, and how it benefits not just the individual child, but the spread of Sparkle throughout the villages."

What struck them both was the ecosystem The Sparkle Foundation had built. It was not a single school, or a single borehole. It was education, nutrition, healthcare, and community — all working together, all visibly making a difference.

"We measured the children's arms," Candice recalls, "and I was crying my eyes out. They'd put on weight. And I was like — this is a thing..."

For Sam, the moment of clarity was mathematical. "You start doing the maths and realise 150 dirhams a month can go so far." That was the moment the question shifted from how much should we give? to what else could we do?

Bringing a Company Along for the Ride

When Sam and Candice returned from Malawi, they did not issue a company-wide mandate. They did not make The Sparkle Foundation a condition of employment. They simply led by example — and let other people choose to follow.

"I try and open the door for them," Sam explains, "give them reasons why I think it's important, and lead by example doing my bit. With some people it does land, and with others it falls flat. And that's okay."

McCone Properties has over 200 staff. Not all of them show up to Sparkle events. But the ones who do, genuinely want to be there.

"I could tell, unless you tell me otherwise, that they're not there begrudgingly," Sarah says. "They actually want to be part of it. They feel a real sense of belonging."

Sam believes the key is not to aim for everyone. "If you try and get everyone, I think it then just dilutes the impact it could have on those few that do actually care."

And for the business itself, the benefit has been something more valuable than a PR win. "Working with a charity like The Sparkle Foundation has been a great way of putting that soul back into McCone Properties," Sam reflects. "Real estate can sometimes be an industry that lacks soul. This changed that for us."

"It's Much Easier to Make Money Than to Raise It"

When Sam set out to raise one million dirhams by running a major endurance challenge, he was confident. He had built a successful business. He knew how to ask for things. He thought fundraising would feel familiar.

It did not.

"It was a horrendous sales job," he says, with a laugh. "Much, much easier to just make money than it is to raise money."

What surprised him most was the psychology of it. People who would invest half a million dirhams into a property without blinking became evasive when asked to donate a fraction of that to children in Malawi. The dynamic, he realised, was that asking for donations felt as though they were doing him a favour — rather than the children.

"I know some of their wealth," he says. "And it was just staggering."

He did not raise one million dirhams. But he came close to half of it. And he refuses to frame that as a failure: "I'd rather fail aiming high and get halfway there than set my sights too low.

Sarah, who has spent over a decade fundraising for The Sparkle Foundation, found it quietly validating to hear. "I'm grateful you found it so difficult. Because it's very, very difficult to find people who will ever understand that."

Giving as the Antidote to Unfulfillment

One of the most unexpected ideas in this episode comes from Sam, who reflects on the particular psychology of high achievers: "A lot of people who run successful businesses are driven by the goal," he says. "They enjoy the competition. The result is money, but the money is not really the goal. And what happens when they reach the top is — they don't feel fulfilled. So they chase the next goal. And the next."

His theory: giving is one of the few things that can break that cycle.

"If you can say to yourself, 'I want to be the best real estate company in Dubai, and when I get there, I'm going to give a quarter of my profits to this charity' — I believe you can solve that fulfillment issue. Because you'll realise you haven't just done it for yourself. There have been all these other people that benefited off the back of it."

Candice puts it more simply. "One person can't change the world. But you can change the world for one person. If you can just lead yourself by that, then you don't feel hopeless."

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The Sparkle Foundation delivers education, nutrition, healthcare, and community empowerment programmes to women and children in Malawi. With 30,000+ lives impacted and four sites and growing, every contribution makes a direct, lasting impact.

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