Busking The World For Charity

Musician Tours The World With An Open Violin Case And Takes CBS News Along

(CBS)  You wouldn't know it by looking at the man in the t-shirt standing on the street corner, but if you listen, it's easy to tell that David Juritz is a world class musician. He's just traded in concert halls for street corners.

"It's a sort of rather pathetic attempt to recapture my youth," Juritz said.

When CBS News correspondent Kelly Cobiella asks how it's working out, he says, "Well, the youth isn't coming back, sadly but I have found that I really enjoy it."

It's more than just a midlife crisis. In June, Juritz left his wife and two children in London for a solo tour around the world. He went to six continents and dozens of countries to raise money for a project he calls Musequality. He wants to bring music to children in developing countries - all the while keeping a video diary for CBS News.

It hasn't been easy. At times he was ignored, and he was upstaged by everyone from mimes to little girls.

And he couldn't even set foot in India; he didn't know he needed a visa. The one thing saved him every time, in every country, was his sense of humor.

"I spent all morning wrestling with that old conundrum: do your laundry or go to the Forbidden City," he said in a video diary entry from China.

On this trip, clean clothes always came in second.

In four and a half months, David's collected $65,000, and he's even done a little teaching along the way, though his students didn't always play in tune.

"It has to be said that of all the inefficient ways of raising money for charity, going around the world with an open violin case has to be pretty high on the list," Juritz said in Miami.

Still, his mission may be more about the message than the money: children in the developing world need more than just clean water.

"They need a future, and if they are going to have a future, they've got to have kids who believe they can be part of that," he says. "To want to create or help build the generation of kids who want to go on to become the scientists, the doctors, the business leaders, the teachers, the nurses. I think it's been shown that music is probably one of the best ways you can help kids realize their potential."

North America is the last leg of David's tour. He hopes to raise half a million dollars.

Even when this adventure ends, the bigger dream of a man and his fiddle will live on.