From the Gym to Chiang Rai: The Fitness Model Activists

Envision the founder of a nonprofit organization, and you might conjure up an image of a scrawny nonconformist with unkempt hair and a flannel shirt, crunching on granola while simultaneously listening to NPR’s newest segment. But Michael Dean Johnson, founder and CEO of the nonprofit charity Building for Better, and Sean Alexander, one of the organization’s board members, do not fit that portrait. As fitness models and personal trainers with considerable social media presences, they are about as far from being disheveled hippies as possible. Yet despite not fitting the typical do-gooder silhouette, they have spearheaded projects both locally and abroad to further the lives of those in need.

Alexander, 23, moved to Chelsea from rural western Texas just over two and a half years ago in order to further his career. Johnson, also 23, who is originally from Knoxville, Tennessee and moved to Chelsea just two days after Alexander did, met in New York, and the two have been friends every since. Along with their roommate Nick Sandell, they started the company Model Trainers, a personal training business, one year after arriving in Chelsea.

“I think New York is a place where a lot of people come to do more,” said Johnson on his decision to move, “but day in and day out everyone pretty much does the same thing. They go out, get drinks, get dinner, get more drinks, over and over and over again. I wanted to do more than that.” In order to fulfill his goal of “doing more” than the average twenty-year-old in NYC, Johnson, along with Alexander and Kevin Sowyrda, who serves as the organization’s Executive Director, founded Building for Better.

According to their website, buildingforbetter.com, the organization is “committed to the belief that the world’s young people merit our protection from justice and harm.” Their mission of helping young people break out of the cycle of poverty has extended past the local NYC community and across the world to the mountainous province of Chiang Rai, Thailand.

In March, 2018, Building for Better partnered with the group Friends of Thai Daughters, an orphanage for young girls in Chiang Rai that strives to prevent those staying there from being sold into sex slavery. Additionally, Building for Better collected over 500 pairs of prescription eyeglasses, which were donated by Chelsea residents and Davis Optical, and delivered them to the residents of Chiang Rai.

Apart from their international work, Building for Better has executed projects throughout NYC, using Chelsea as their home base, given that it’s the neighborhood where the founders live and work. In March 2018, the organization partnered with Covenant House, a shelter for homeless youth located in Midtown. They raised $10,000 for Covenant House by sleeping on the streets of NYC, and also held their first of two clothing drives, donating all that they collected to the shelter.

Building for Better’s second clothing drive followed in July, when the organization collected upwards of 350 pounds of clothing. The project began after one of Alexander’s Instagram followers sent him a prepaid debit card to help fund the organization’s future endeavors, along with a box of brand new clothing. After posting about the event on their social media accounts, Johnson, Alexander, Sandell, and Sowyrda rented two U-Haul vans in order to pick up clothing from the 35 residents of NYC and the surrounding area who offered to donate.

“We drove from 9 AM to 5 PM,” Johnson recalled. “We went everywhere from Yonkers, to Jersey City, to Hoboken, to Brooklyn, to Queens, and all through Manhattan.” At the end of one day, four determined people, with the help of their community, were able to donate 40 garbage bags full of clothing to the Lower Manhattan organization New York City Rescue Mission.

Social media has proved to be the most effective and efficient way for Johnson (@michaeldean2.0), Alexander (@seanalexanderr), and Sandell (@nick_sandell), who have 329,000, 75,800 and 396,000 Instagram followers respectively, to publicize information regarding Building for Better. The group is dependent on the NYC community in order to further their humanitarian work, and hope that social media will become an increasingly powerful tool in their mission.

“We’re hoping that the more we do, the more people who follow us will want to do,” said Johnson.

“It really has the potential to snowball,” Alexander added. “We want to lead by example.”

Building for Better is planning on hosting another clothing drive in mid-October, and is hoping to go back to Thailand in 2019, though that plan is still in the early stages, as they determine what realistic goals are.

Building for Better serves as a reminder that one doesn’t necessarily need to be an avid philanthropist or full-time volunteer in order to have a significant impact. Though it can be tempting to convince ourselves that the world’s problems are too big for one person, or a small group of people, to solve, Johnson and Alexander prove that notion wrong. The founders of Building for Better are, as Alexander puts it, “normal people;” they are simply taking the initiative to fix what they see is broken, and encourage others to turn their ambition into action in a similar way.