Former FCA Lacrosse Leadership Board member Stephen Paletta recently won Oprah Winfrey’s reality TV show, The Biggest Giver.

Paletta, a 43-year-old father of three who still plays on the FCA Lacrosse masters team in Lake Placid, New York every summer, was given a million dollars by Winfrey for winning the show. The Biggest Giver was modeled after Donald Trump’s The Apprentice but with a philanthropic twist: contestants had to try to give away the most money. Paletta succeeded and was given $500,000 to keep; the other $500,000 is to be given away.

He won’t have any trouble doing that.

Paletta became a full-time giver about three years ago. Hurricane Katrina had wiped out a construction job he had going in New Orleans, and he took the opportunity to sell his businesses and take a new direction.

"God works in weird ways," he said. "For some reason, around the mid-90s, I started to want to go to Africa. I grew up more of a racist than a nonracist. I had pretty bad thoughts about Africa in general, and God really convicted me. I confessed that, and ever since then I have had this desire to go to Africa. It took 10 years of wanting to go before I finally got there. I’ve been about eight times now."

Paletta first traveled to Rwanda in 2004 and started a ministry called The International Education Exchange, which partners schools in Africa with schools in the United States. It serves as a cultural exchange, he said. Children in the U.S. become aware of how children are living in third world countries while the children in Rwanda receive schools, athletic fields and other educational facilities. Paletta and his wife also sponsor 10 children in Rwanda through World Vision.

Paletta is still a relatively young Christian. He grew up Catholic and "hated every minute of it," he says. Through the influence of FCA’s Frank Kelly and Kevin Frank, he gave his life to Christ in 1985. But he didn’t really make Christ the center of his life until 1992 when he played on an FCA Lacrosse team in the Vail tournament. "We ended up in the national championship game on national television and we didn’t have any business being there," he said. "We were playing a team that was being touted as the best lacrosse team ever assembled and we were not a great team. We beat them in sudden death overtime. I told God, ok, I get it. There is a lot more going on here."

The closer Paletta grew to Christ, the more his heart was broken for the people of Africa. The Lord has used his ministry to touch the lives of many. He said being on Oprah’s show was fun, hard and very rewarding.

"I think it reinforced my calling to full-time philanthropy and serving those in needs, the widows and the orphans, more and more," he said. "I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to do that and I think that this reinforced to me that this is what my life should be about - full-time philanthropy and service. It has given me a new platform to do that, and hopefully I will continue for the rest of my life."