AARP 2009 Inspire Award winners

Music impresario Quincy Jones still vividly recalls the moment, 56 years ago, when a 5-year-old girl approached him after he had performed in a Tunisian nightclub. She had a flowered dress on, and one hand behind her back. The other hand was held out in supplication.

“I’m from the ghetto,” says Jones, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago. “But I’d never seen that before. We gave her everything we had.”

The next day he learned that the girl’s uncle had cut off her left hand so she’d be a more sympathetic beggar. “That got me for life,” he says.

Today the legendary entertainer spends his free time directing the Quincy Jones Foundation, a nonprofit aimed at helping poor children worldwide. Among his group’s more ambitious projects: assisting with programs to eradicate malaria in Africa, developing housing in post-apartheid South Africa, and establishing youth centers in conflict-ridden locales. Says Jones: “I really think we are in a position to make a difference.”

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