Monroeville resident helps others through philanthropy, publishing company

In Kenya’s capital city is a school named after Monroeville resident John Stanko.

“The African way is they do that to honor you,” he explained. “I don’t own it. I don’t have any say in it. But I’ve said, ‘If my name can help you, use it.’”

Over the past couple of decades, he has built a stellar reputation in that part of the world for helping people through his ministry, PurposeQuest International. Today, the Dr. Stanko Academy and Orphanage in Nairobi has 250 students and is “growing all the time,” he reported.

Folks beyond childhood benefit from PurposeQuest, too.

“I have established Stanko libraries, because there were no public libraries,” he said. “Some of the books I’ve given to Kenyan pastors are the only books they have.”

Speaking of books, Stanko is an author for which the description of prolific would be an understatement. After his 1995 debut, called “Life is a Gold Mine: Can You Dig It?” and based on seminars he was conducting at the time, he set the goal of writing another one each year.

He’s well ahead of that pace: “I’m about to put out Book No. 81.”

Many of the works by Stanko, who holds two doctor of ministry degrees, are faith-based, including the book for which he named his ministry: “I Wrote This Book on Purpose (So You Can Know Yours).”

‘Help people overcome fear’

In 2014, he established his own publishing company, Urban Press.

“By then, I probably had about 30 books, and I felt like I wanted to write more. And I wanted to help other people write more,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of work in the urban community, and I knew a lot of folks had stories that they wanted to tell, but didn’t always know how. So I felt like I should come alongside and help them.”

While teaching at Geneva College, for example, he had a student who was a retired Pittsburgh police officer with a recognizable talent.

“I told her in class what a good writer she was. She rhymed a lot. So now, she’s an accomplished poet,” Stanko said. “My main job is to help people overcome the fear: fear that it’s too much. It’s too little. I’m sharing too much. What’s my father going to think? And what’s God going to think?”

He is Urban Press’ editor-in-chief, with son John Stanko III as creative director.

“Sometimes people submit manuscripts, and sometimes I help them develop one. And that includes interviewing at times,” the elder Stanko said. “I guide the process. I know what we need. And after five or six hours, the people are surprised that we transcribe, and voilà! They have 20,000 words that we can work with for a book.”

To go along with Stanko’s 80-plus titles, Urban Press has published more than 100 books by others, including writers from Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa and Haiti.

A particularly absorbing American memoir is “I Woke Up With My Mind on Freedom” by Janice Wesley, who at age 16 participated in the May 1963 “Children’s Crusade” to protest racial segregation in her hometown of Birmingham, Ala., and throughout the South.

“She was arrested when the students marched, and then she became among the first Black teachers in the white schools of Birmingham,” Stanko said.

Locally, Urban Press published Forest Hills environmentalist Patricia M. DeMarco’s “In the Footsteps of Rachel Carson: Harnessing Earth’s Healing Power” in 2022.

‘They’ve seen the accountability’

Stanko’s own interest in writing dates back to his childhood and his manual typewriter.

“I would retype magazine articles or pages out of books and collect the papers next to me to make it seem like I had done something significant,” he recalled.

He also had a popular avocation among youngsters of yesteryear: philately.

“My family, we didn’t go to a lot of places,” he said. “But I collected stamps and would just say, ‘one day. One day, I’m going to go to those places.’ And I have.”

In his travels on behalf of PurposeQuest International, Stanko often invites others to accompany him for firsthand looks at what his ministry does.

“A good percentage of them become supporters of the work, because they’ve faced the people. The people have told them what it means,” he said. “They’ve seen the accountability that we have established.”

And of course, they’ve seen hundreds of children receiving a premium education and hope for the future at the Dr. Stanko Academy and Orphanage.

For more information, visit www.purposequest.com and www.urbanpress.us.