Getting All She Wanted -- And ALS
Darcy Wakefield, a runner, teacher, and writer, was always on the go, so when she was diagnosed with ALS, a terminal neurological disease, at age 33, she did what came naturally. She lived what she referred to as a ''fast-forward life," buying a home, comiting to a partner, becoming a mother, and writing about it all in a book published two years later. ''She redefined what it means to be a person... posted on Jan 27 2007, 3,986 reads

100 Years of Montessori
One hundred years ago in January of 1907, Dr. Maria Montessori opened the first Montessori children’s house for fifty illiterate children from the slums of Rome. This was the beginning of the Montessori movement -- what is today the single largest educational pedagogy in the world, with over 8,000 schools on 6 continents. The Montessori philosophy maintains that children are not merely "adults i... posted on Jan 24 2007, 4,323 reads

Peru's Home of Miracles
When Alan and Marie Patton lost their son, Chandler, they decided to do something special in his memory: the couple moved from Colorado to an old hacienda in the Sacred Valley of Peru where they adopted 29 kids! Casa de Milagros (House of Miracles), as they named their house, is an extraordinary children's home near historic Machu Piccu, Peru. The home seeks to heal the mind, body and spirit of ma... posted on Jan 22 2007, 3,334 reads

The Bridge-Builder of Hope
He is a man on a mission, building bridges that link places, people and hearts. 62 bridges later, he defines his wealth as the abundant joy and gratitude on the faces of villagers. Girish Bharadwaj and his organization 'Ayasshilpa' construct suspension footbridges over rivers and streams, enabling thousands in remote villages in India to experience a new way of life. Bharadwaj built his first brid... posted on Jan 20 2007, 1,002 reads

Turning Everest's Trash Into Treasure
Thousands of adventurers have been drawn to Mount Everest by the challenge of climbing to the top of the world. Jeff Clapp was drawn by the trash they leave behind. Inspired by a documentary about Everest's rubbish, Clapp traveled to Nepal and brought a load of discarded oxygen bottles back in 2004. He has created a business of transforming those banged-up, aluminum containers into gleaming bells,... posted on Jan 18 2007, 2,394 reads

Transforming an Ailing School
Betsy Rogers is no ordinary teacher. After being named National Teacher of the Year in 2003, she switched to Brighton School –- one of Alabama’s poorest schools, with the longest run on the county's school-improvement list. Most Brighton teachers have fewer than five years of experience, and at the end of the 2004-05 school year, the school had failed to meet the state's testing goals for seve... posted on Jan 07 2007, 2,368 reads

Risking Life to Save a Life
Would you risk your life to save a stranger? Most of us have reflected on the question theoretically; Wesley Autrey faced it in real life. Autrey, a 50-year-old construction worker and Navy veteran, was waiting with his two young daughters at a New York subway station when, nearby, 20 year-old Cameron Hollopeter had a seizure, stumbled to the platform edge and fell directly into the path of an on... posted on Jan 04 2007, 1,765 reads

A Graduate at Age 100
In 1925, Marvin L. "Hub" Northen, with $100 in his pocket, hopped on a train that brought him from his hometown of Holland, Texas, to Baylor University. Eighty-one years later, at age 100, Northen officially became a Baylor graduate, the oldest in the school’s history. When the Great Depression hit in the late 1920s, Northen was forced to leave school because he had to work to help his family ge... posted on Jan 03 2007, 2,238 reads

Gourmet Chef Serves the Needy
Chef Michael Ennes cooks about 500 meals a week for people who come to Broadway Community Inc., a soup kitchen in New York that serves the homeless. Ennes made good on his intentions to do more volunteer work when his high-end restaurant consultancy job vanished on 9/11. On joining the soup kitchen, he transformed it into a gourmet haven for the needy, using some of the finest ingredients availabl... posted on Dec 26 2006, 2,185 reads

Dancing Classrooms
It seeks to use the power of dance to do more than just bring elementary school students together. Dancing Classrooms was started in New York City in 1984 under the direction of ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine. In Dulaine's words, "The children learn ballroom dancing, yes; but the real thing they are learning are the transferable skills of decorum, etiquette, being polite with each other, respect, ... posted on Dec 24 2006, 2,379 reads