BOOK COVER
BOOK DETAILS
Pub Date: May 29, 2025
Genre: Immigration/Social Justice/Spirituality/Self-improvement
Publisher: Guardian Warrior Foundation, LLC, DBA University of Pemakö Press
Page Count: 244
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9798899014376
Price: $28.00
Awards:
- Literary Titan Book Award: Nonfiction
- 2026 American Writing Awards, Winner, Social Justice
- 2026 American Writing Awards, Finalist, Nonfiction Book of the Year
- American Book Fest 2025 Best Book Award Finalist, Social Change
- 2025 Literary Global Book Award Winner for Non-Fiction: Inspirational
- 2026 Independent Press Award – Book Interior Design, Nonfiction
ABOUT THE BOOK
Hope on the Border is a powerful, visually stunning first-hand account of one of the world’s most complex and misunderstood places—the 2,000-mile border that separates the United States from México.
With nearly four decades of on-the-ground experience, author and adventurer Gil Gillenwater presents an unflinching portrait of life along the U.S.–México border, widely considered the most dangerous migrant corridor in the world. Through gripping stories and dramatic photography, he lays bare the systemic inequities and shared culpability of both nations.
But this isn’t a chronicle of despair—it’s a blueprint for hope. This beautifully designed hardcover volume weaves together vivid stories, bold design and emotional depth to reveal both the heartache and the humanity that define the region.
“Life on the border is raw,” Gillenwater writes. “It is constantly on the edge. It bleeds.”
More than a memoir, more than a call to action, Hope on the Border explores the intersection of social justice, Eastern philosophy, shared humanity, and insistent self-interest. It challenges readers to reflect on their own roles in perpetuating the border’s enduring inequities—and offers a hopeful path forward based on reciprocal giving powered by enlightened self-interest and a deeper understanding of the human cost behind this overly politicized issue.
Raw. Honest. Unforgettable. Hope on the Border is essential reading for anyone willing to look closely at what divides us—and discover what has the power to unite us.
$5 of each book’s proceeds will support Rancho Feliz’s life-changing work on the U.S.-México border.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gil Gillenwater, a lifelong resident of Arizona, is the founder and president of the award-winning Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation, which has reimagined border philanthropy since 1987. For nearly four decades, he has worked hands-on along the U.S.–México border, building programs that empower communities through reciprocal giving and shared dignity.
He is a recipient of the Hon Kachina Award, Arizona’s highest honor for volunteerism, as well as the National Association of Realtors annual “Good Neighbor Award,” likewise honoring volunteerism. In 2021, he became the first non-Mexican to receive Sonora’s Premio a la Filantropía, as the individual philanthropic person of the year, recognizing his cross-border philanthropic work.
In 2009, Gillenwater partnered with the nonprofit Free the Slaves to launch the Free a Village program—an ambitious initiative that helps entire villages in India, often up to 20 families, transition from slavery to freedom within three years. The program’s community-wide approach to liberation and empowerment caught global attention and was selected by former President Bill Clinton as a featured initiative at his Clinton Global Initiative, a gathering of the world’s leading thinkers, philanthropists, and changemakers.
A lifelong student of Eastern philosophy and meditation, Gillenwater is a black belt in Kenpo Karate and a certified hot yoga instructor. An outdoorsman at heart, he has had countless wilderness adventures around the world and has visited over 75 countries.
In 1994, he and his brother Troy were among the first Westerners granted access by the Communist Chinese into Tibet’s forbidden “Himalayan Hidden Lands.” His six expeditions and time spent studying with remote Tibetan lamas and mystics inspired a philosophy of enlightened self-interest that now guides his approach to social change with Rancho Feliz.
TALKING POINTS
- Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation is a grass roots, volunteer-based, multi-national, secular, non-profit 501(c)3 organization, serving in the border community of Agua Prieta, Sonora, México, a mere four-hour drive from Phoenix, Arizona.
- Over the past four decades, Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation has evolved from a borderland charity handing out food and supplies into something more revolutionary — one that replaces pity with purpose and handouts with human connection.
- In a pragmatic way, Rancho Feliz aims to make a dent in the border crisis. Providing people with opportunities, not welfare, allows them to live with dignity in their own country, eliminating the need to migrate illegally into the United States.
- Through Rancho Feliz, Gil seeks to address two prongs of poverty at once — the material poverty many Mexicans feel and the spiritual poverty that plagues the affluent on this side of the border.
- Through its Vecinos Dignos (Worthy Neighbors) subdivision, families apply to earn their homes, quite literally. Under a rent-to-own agreement, the tenants make no-interest payments and donate volunteer hours, and their children are offered scholarships to attend bilingual schools. Gil calls this “reciprocal giving” — a loop in which both giver and receiver are empowered. No handouts or hierarchy, just a system that nurtures self-reliance and change.
- Rancho Feliz advocates the paradoxical concept of “Enlightened Self-Interest.” Lasting changes in how we treat each other as a species will only occur when people truly believe that they can best serve themselves by serving others. It is “transactional.” It is “conditional.” We must appeal to the evolutionary greed and base self-interest of our current human condition.
- Charity is easy to understand at Rancho Feliz. We call it “enlightened self-interest.” It means looking out for yourself by looking out for others.
- “Spirit” or “higher power” shares its secrets and its magic with those who have a higher purpose.
- At Rancho Feliz we are not seeking the meaning of life – we are seeking how to best enjoy the journey.
- With our help – their lives are being changed forever. By allowing us to help – our lives are being changed forever.
- Meaninglessness in life does not come from pain – meaninglessness in life comes from too much.
- Gifts make slaves. There is such a thing as Misguided Compassion.
- Education is the only thing we can give these children that someone can’t take away. Education is the key that will unlock their inherited prisons of ignorance. Education provides windows through which these children will see a much larger world – a world full of opportunity, possibilities and imagination.
- What is the endgame of technology? Comfort & convenience. Have you ever considered that the comforts and conveniences provided by technology satisfy only those wants and desires that they themselves create.
- Charity is a tricky business. That is why all Rancho Feliz “Guardian Warrior” programs are meticulously designed to nurture and liberate human potential – not stifle it through well-intentioned, though misguided, charitable handouts.
- There is no higher religion than human service. It releases us from the bondage of “self.”
- At Rancho Feliz we do not serve the less fortunate out of guilt or obligation – nor do we feel superior or separate. Rather we understand that our own liberation is inextricably bound with those we serve.
- We feed their stomachs and they feed our souls. Since inception in 1987, the Rancho Feliz Charitable Foundation has hosted over 28,000 American volunteers at its facility in the border town of Agua Prieta, México, as well as investing over $20 million in the local economy and infrastructure.
- Service to others is how I recognize myself. It’s how I choose to feel that I matter in this world. In that respect it’s quite selfish. I believe that if we peeled away the layers off of most of our actions this underlying “selfish” truth would appear.
TIMELY TIE-INS
January
- Poverty Awareness Month
- Civil Rights Day – 9
February
- Ethnic Equality Month
- World Day of Social Justice – 20
PRAISE
“Hope on the Border is a stunning blueprint for lasting, meaningful change. To reinforce the poignancy of this transformative account, nearly every page explodes in color, bursting with photos that illustrate how improving living standards even in one small village can have far-reaching effects…Ultimately, Gillenwater suggests that service to others is ‘the one form of social capital that never loses value in the marketplace of human happiness.’”
–PW Booklife
“Intense and compelling…Hope on the Border celebrates the empowering successes of Rancho Feliz and calls for pragmatic empathy and strategic alliances in reevaluating immigration policies.”
—Foreword Reviews
“Hope on the Border delivers an instructive, visually engaging account of an American philanthropist’s decades of charitable work on behalf of Mexicans….Readers will find inspiration in the charity’s many programs and accomplishments. The book is an excellent source of first-hand information about the border and a rousing call for hope.”
–BlueInk Review
“Hope on the Border is a call to conscience. Gillenwater offers readers a rare gift: the opportunity to see the border not as a place of division, but as a landscape of shared humanity….A masterpiece of empathy and vision. Part photojournalism, part personal odyssey, and entirely transformative, Hope on the Border reminds us that the most powerful walls we can dismantle are the ones within ourselves.”
–Literary Titan
BOOK DETAILS
Pub Date: May 17, 2022
Genre: Memoir / Christian Inspirational
Publisher: She Writes Press
Page Count: 304
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1647429003
Price: $15.99
