Doctor Inspires Service To Ethiopia
The average life expectancy in Ethiopia is forty years; yet, the ratio of physicians to population remains 1:100,000. As a child growing up in a rural village in Ethiopia, Ingida Asfaw dreamed of becoming a doctor. Carrying his family's hopes and dreams, he traveled to the United States aboard a cargo ship in 1958, arriving at age 16 with little money and only a small suitcase. He attended college... posted on Apr 01 2007, 2,415 reads

The Swimmer And The Lost Whale
Lynne Cox is a famed open water swimmer and author of the best-selling book "Swimming to Antarctica" -- a chronicle of her swims across the Bering Strait, the English Channel and one mile to the shores of Antarctica. Her new book, "Grayson", is the remarkable story of her experience, at age 17, swimming with a lost baby gray whale off the coast of California. "I think it made me realize the things... posted on Mar 30 2007, 2,857 reads

Billionaire Opens Home To Homeless
Dorie-Ann Kahale and her five daughters moved from a homeless shelter to a mansion last Thursday, courtesy of a Japanese real estate mogul who is handing over eight of his multimillion-dollar homes to low-income Native Hawaiian families. Tears spilled down Kahale's cheeks, as she accepted from billionaire Genshiro Kawamoto, the key to a white, columned house. Kawamoto, whose own eyes started welli... posted on Mar 25 2007, 1,810 reads

The Blind Mechanic & His Apprentice
Larry Woody shares his automotive know-how twice a week with his apprentice, though he's never seen the young man nor spoken directly to him. Woody is blind. His apprentice is deaf. Woody lost his sight five years ago in a near-fatal accident. With more than 30 years of fixing, racing and restoring cars, Woody vowed to return to work. With help from his wife, Della, and the Oregon Commission for t... posted on Mar 23 2007, 2,407 reads

Running A Marathon On Crutches
For most of his career, cameraman Angus Macfadyen enjoyed a fast-paced lifestyle, dashing off to exotic countries or war-torn locations to film. His life changed abruptly when a severe accident forced him into a plaster cast for four months. During that period Angus made an unusual decision: he decided to run a marathon -– on crutches. Marathon officials gave him the green signal, and his grueli... posted on Mar 22 2007, 3,363 reads

A 9-Year-Old Scholar's Determination
Brenda Tejeda Baez has endured a lot of chaos in her short life. By the time she was in third grade, she had lived in five different friends' apartments and two homeless shelters. Yet, the 9-year-old girl has refused to budge on the one constant in her life: attending Louis Agassiz Elementary School. Even when her family had to live for three months in a homeless shelter, Brenda, her mother, and h... posted on Mar 20 2007, 4,394 reads

The Baby Academy
When Dina Abdel Wahab's son Ali was born with Down syndrome, she was unable to find a preschool to meet his needs. Children with Down syndrome do not benefit from environments where they are kept apart from mainstream society. And in Cairo, at the time, Dina had no other options for her son; if a better place was going to exist, she would have to create it herself. Determined to help Ali lead a no... posted on Mar 17 2007, 2,008 reads

19-year-old Tackles Global Blindness
Six years ago, 19-year-old college sophomore Jennifer Staple started "Unite for Sight", a nonprofit with a staff of one: herself. It began with the recruitment of a few fellow Yale University students to join her mission against blindness among the homeless of New Haven, Conn., and has since burgeoned into the recruitment of thousands worldwide. From her dorm room on the Stanford campus where sheâ... posted on Mar 13 2007, 2,248 reads

Freedom Writers
Nothing could have prepared Erin Gruwell for her first day of teaching at Wilson High School in Long Beach, Calif. A recent college graduate, Erin landed her first job only to discover many of her students had been deemed "unteachable". As teenagers living in a racially divided urban community, they were already hardened by first-hand exposure to gang violence, juvenile detention, and drugs. Gruwe... posted on Mar 11 2007, 2,398 reads

Turning A City Into A Social Experiment
Antanas Mockus had just resigned from the top job of Colombian National University. A mathematician and philosopher, Mockus looked around for another big challenge and found it as the new mayor of Bogota, Colombia. With an educator's inventiveness, Mockus turned Bogota into a social experiment. At the time, the city was choked with violence, lawless traffic, corruption, and gangs of street childre... posted on Mar 07 2007, 2,890 reads