Spotlight On Jaimie Sheth Of The JD Sheth Foundation

By Michael L. Smith, Jr.

Heroism is defined in the Oxford dictionary as “great bravery”, and this weekly series of interviews aims to find Evansville locals making a positive impact on the community through that bravery, to showcase their amazing contributions.

This week I had the opportunity to speak with Jaimie Sheth, the founder, and CEO of the non-profit organization JD Sheth Foundation.

QUESTION: Tell Us About Yourself and Your Organization

My name is Jaimie Sheth, I’m the founder, CEO, and President of the Board of Directors of the non-profit organization known as the JD Sheth Foundation. To touch a little bit on my background, I was originally born in Chicago, but I lived my formative years here in Evansville. After university I moved out to California, where I lived for 19 years, 16 in Los Angeles and 3 in San Francisco. My career was in physical therapy, so I did that for 19 years. I recently retired about two and half years ago in order to work at my Foundation full-time. That’s also around the time I moved back to Evansville since the JD Sheth Foundation is incorporated here in Indiana. Our domestic focus is here in Evansville, but we are a global non-profit. We’ve worked in twelve different countries. Our mission is education, health, and well-being, as well as sustainability in all of those areas.

We have Five Pillars that we focus on: Affordable and Secure Housing, School Construction, Clean Water & Sanitation Initiatives, Energy Efficiency, and Food Security. I started the Foundation in 2010 while I was still working in physical therapy, and at that time I was working on the Foundation part-time by myself. What sparked the idea and concept for the JD Sheth Foundation was all my travels to various parts of the world. I’ve been to over 50 countries and most of them have been in the developing world. Seeing the need that people have, it’s so much, and I said if I can do something I should, even if it’s just helping one person. So, from 2010 to 2015, I did one solo project each year in a different country. I fostered my relationships with various donors, they became repeat donors and I realized I could do a lot more. In 2015, the JD Sheth Foundation became an official 501c3, and we continued our global work with our domestic focus staying here in Evansville. Our philosophy is every life matters, and we are all one.

QUESTION: Could you elaborate on those Five Pillars a bit more for me?

So, our first pillar is Affordable Housing. JD Sheth has built 23 homes in two different countries. So far, we have built one house in the Dominican Republic and twenty-two houses in Guatemala. Next year we are actually doing our first builds in the United States. We will be building three houses in the Jacobsville area of Evansville, with all three homes going to veterans with a priority going to female veterans. Affordable housing is an issue all over the world, and all over this nation. After coming back to Evansville in 2020, I realized affordable housing is a really big issue here as well. So, we will be building those houses next year in order to try to help meet that need. What’s happening in the Summer of 2022.

The second pillar is School Construction. JD Sheth has built a school in Cambodia, a school in Guatemala, and a boarding house in Thailand. Here in Evansville what we want to do is not necessarily build new schools, but to help revitalize classrooms within our schools. I’ve been approaching people within the EVSC to modernize some of the classrooms and figuring out what that might look like. So, building schools globally and revitalizing schools locally.

The third pillar is Clean Water and Sanitation Initiatives. We provide water harvesting tanks, water wells, water filtration systems for any houses we do, and water hauling trucks.  Sanitation-wise, we construct bathrooms for schools with westernized toilets and showers globally. The fourth pillar is Energy Efficiency, and we work on that primarily providing solar panels to schools that we help build or revitalize. The fifth and final pillar is Food Security. We did a feeding shelter in the Philippines. We built a pig farm for an orphanage in Myanmar which provides more sustainable ways of getting food and income for that orphanage. We have a focus on more sustainable-type projects and the like.

QUESTION: What inspired you to create the JD Sheth Foundation?

My biggest inspiration was really in 2006 when I went back and visited where my parents are from in India. My mom was actually born in Burma, which is currently Myanmar, and she was a Burmese refugee. During World War II, the Burmese government made all the men fight and sent many of the women and children to India. My mom was seven years old when she had to walk to India with her mother and siblings. I wanted to go see what that looked like. She would always tell me about the school that she went to, and the Catholic school that she went to, and I wanted to see that. What I saw was a lack of infrastructure, a lack of clean water, no government assistance, the fact that these children didn’t have access to any food with nutritional value. It was really disheartening, and it hit home even more to me because I could see my mom in those children. I took it very personally, and a couple of years later I traveled to Southeast Asia and saw the same thing. That’s when I built the school in Cambodia and began the work to start my Foundation.

QUESTION: What kind of projects are currently underway at the JD Sheth Foundation?

We just broke ground this week on our pocket park. It’s a veterans pocket park that we are partnering with Echo Housing for. The JD Sheth Foundation is a granter and a grantee, so we sometimes grant money out to other organizations to provide work. It’s either donating the money for a specific project, or it’s us agreeing to do a project with them or for them. The pocket park is right across from Lucas Place II, which is permanent supportive housing for previously homeless veterans. They have no place to go outside, there’s no place to sit, there are no porches, so we are providing the first-ever pocket park in Evansville, Indiana. We’re very excited about that.

Next year we are going to be helping and supporting Evansville Christian Life Center, who’s a community non-profit partner of ours, by financially assisting in the build of a handicap accessibility ramp for their facility. We are also going to be doing our Veterans Housing Project in Jacobsville. We will be building three homes, they’re 780 square foot shotgun homes, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms. They will be for homeownership, very affordable, and going to veterans with a priority going to women.

QUESTION: How has the pandemic impacted you and your organization?

Thankfully it did not affect us too badly, because all of our projects are planned a year or so in advance. We are project-based, so we don’t have any programming. Everybody is a volunteer, including myself, so no one in the Foundation pulls a salary. That means our overhead costs are extremely low. If there is an issue like the pandemic, we might have to push a project, but we will still do it, it just might be at a later date. One thing I did see come out of the pandemic was having to think outside the box when trying to fundraise, making those connections with the community. I feel like we did a better job with that because we absolutely had to. We had to figure out different ways to communicate and reach out to the community. I found that there was actually an increase in donors, perhaps not donating as much as they usually do, but we had so many more people that donated to us. It just reinforced the amount of love I have for this community because they really care, and people really want to see a change in our community in a positive way. So, the pandemic was bad, but there was a silver lining in there as well.

QUESTION: What motivates you to continue your good work in the community?

I’m very action-oriented, so trying to identify what the issue is and then create a plan. We’ve had a great support system, including people like City Council President Ron Beane, and people taking the time to come down and become involved. I’m inspired by people not just talking about things, but actually doing things. Evansville is small enough that you can make real, sustainable change and see the population that you are serving. So, when you look at those people who your actions are affecting it really just motivates you and you see the difference in their lives. That really motivates me, collaboration really motivates me, working with other non-profits to make even bigger changes motivates me. JD Sheth is 100% collaborative, and we believe that organizations need to work together. There are quite a bit of repeat services here in Evansville, so we at JD Sheth are trying to fill the gaps that we see in the community. Working together and working as efficiently as possible, that really drives me to continue the work.

QUESTION: You won an award for all your contributions to the community not too long ago, can you tell me a little about that?

Sure, it was a little over a year ago actually, in October of 2020. The award is called the Sagamore of the Wabash, and it was presented to me by Lt. Governor Suzanne Crouch on behalf of Governor Eric Holcomb. It’s the second-highest honor that a person can receive in the state of Indiana, and you have to be nominated for it. Echo Housing nominated me for the award. Lt. Governor Crouch actually came down to present the award to me. I was given the award for my work with veterans in Evansville, and honestly, it was such an honor to receive. It was one of the highest honors of my career, actually, and I was totally shocked when they presented it to me.

QUESTION: Why should the community care about the issues you’re addressing?

The community should care because we don’t live in silos, we aren’t unconnected. We are a community, and a community is made up of individuals. If the individuals in the community don’t care about the community, don’t care about the other people within it, or what the community looks like and the future of it, it isn’t going to work. We need to have visions of what we want to see in our community, and the changes we want to make. That’s why they should care. So, why they should care specifically about our foundation is because JD Sheth has a focus on infrastructure, and we want to do revitalizations of neighborhoods. Especially in the 3rd and 4th Wards, which are somewhat neglected.  I think we can make a real change there with affordable housing and green spaces. Anything that the community sees as a need or a want, we are open to listening to those ideas, from anyone. One of my specialties is figuring out if we can get something done, and how we can make it happen. We love to hear what the people want to see done in their areas and within the community.

QUESTION: What can our community do to support the JD Sheth Foundation?

Like any non-profit, monetary donations are vital and always welcome. It allows us to continue our work. Volunteerism, though we don’t have a whole lot of volunteer opportunities because we work with licensed contractors to complete all of our projects. Every once in a while, though, we do have opportunities for volunteerism so that is always an option when it arises. Advocacy, for sure. Having a sense of what is going on in the community and who is helping out. Promoting what we do for the community, and letting others know about what we do and why they should support us. Even if you choose not to support JD Sheth, that’s totally fine, but I encourage others to figure out what their passionate about, something you can get behind, that you want to do and want to assist in. Spending time with yourself and finding out what your passions are is really important, because wherever you decide to help, if you’re passionate about it, then you will be a better advocate for that organization.

Finally, we are still looking for veterans who can qualify for our Jacobsville project. We already have two veterans who have qualified, but we still need to find a third, so if anyone knows any veterans who are looking for affordable housing with a pathway to ownership, please send them our way so we can interview them. Also, our website is extremely informative. You can find it at www.jdshethfoundation.org. It is a really good way to find out exactly what we do, all of our projects are on there, and it is very informative.

Footnotes:  Jaimie Sheth is the Founder, CEO, and President of the Board of Directors for the non-profit organization JD Sheth Foundation. She graduated from both the University of Southern Indiana and the University of Evansville and had an almost 20-year career in physical therapy before retiring to run the JD Sheth Foundation full-time.

Michael L. Smith, Jr is a profile writer for The City-County Observer and is currently completing classes at Ivy Tech Community College in pursuit of a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism.

If you know someone who deserves to have a spotlight shined on their contributions to the community, please email the author at msmith1221@ivytech.edu