Power of Action
Three years after finishing the Boston Marathon in three hours and 19 minutes, Brian Fugere completed another 26-mile race Thursday, but this time, it took seven hours and 48 minutes. That's because the 47-year-old Danville man was pushing an IV pole dripping chemotherapy drugs into his body as he walked around and around the halls of Kaiser Walnut Creek's third-floor cancer ward this week, 144 l... posted on Aug 05 2005, 1,145 reads

Soldier Boy
Emmanuel Jal was only eight when he learnt to fire a gun. By the age of 12 he was fighting on the front line of Sudan's 21-year civil war. He once contemplated cannibalism to survive starvation and drought. Today, Jal is one of Kenya's best-known musicians, singing songs of inspiration and hope in ending Africa’s poverty and war; illnesses Jal knows all to well. ... posted on Jul 29 2005, 1,189 reads

Sompop
Sompop Jantraka's life is threatened everyday by the power, big money and corruption that rules Thailand's sex industry. Despite the risks, he works tirelessly to save young women from being sold by their families to the violence of the prostitution by providing these girls an education, job training & employment assistance. One of his organization, Daughters Education Program has given over 1,000... posted on Jul 09 2005, 1,025 reads

The Garbage Lady
Where others see garbage, Albina Ruiz sees opportunity. Twenty years ago, in a poor Peruvian neighborhood only half of the trash produced by its 1.6 million residents was processed by the municipality, causing serious health problems and a littered landscape. Ruiz developed a new model of waste management by helping small business people in the community to take charge of collecting and processing... posted on Jul 05 2005, 1,337 reads

Empty Pockets, Full Heart
Richard Semmler, a 59-year-old math professor, lives simply so that he may give generously. Over the last 35 years, by working part-time jobs and forgoing such everyday comforts as a home telephone and vacations, by living in an efficiency apartment and driving an old car, Semmler has donated as much as half of his annual income. Over his life he has given away $700,000 and plans to give $1 milli... posted on Jul 01 2005, 1,372 reads

Art Therapy
Jillian Hernandez's idea for Woman on the Rise! was to use contemporary female artists as therapeutic examples for teenage girls coping with juvenile detention, drug abuse, sexual and physical violence or emotional disorders. The workshop program, now sponsored by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami-Dade County, challenges these troubled girls to understand and practice art to grapple with ide... posted on Jun 03 2005, 1,216 reads

Harvard Quadriplegic
Ellison was hit by a car and paralyzed from the neck down. Never letting the disability stop her from living out her dreams, and with the love and support of her family, Brooke went on to earn her Master’s degree in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. ... posted on May 18 2005, 2,847 reads

Hole In the Wall
Looking beyond the perimeter fence from inside his IT compound in New Delhi India, Sugata Mitra could literally see the digital divide; young techno-savvy professionals inside, dispossessed children outside. Taking it upon himself to bridge this divide, he cut a hole in the fence and hooked up a computer to give the children a chance to see what one was. What happened next amazed him. They taught... posted on May 07 2005, 2,645 reads

The Refugee
After Saigon fell 30 years ago, a 6-year-old Tran Nguyen Toan became a refugee as he left Vietnam in his pajamas aboard an overcrowded flotilla of 10 boats, 9 of which sank in the storms they encountered over the two week journey. With the help of strangers and the United Nations, Toan went on to became a doctor that never forgot his refugee roots, devoting himself to improving childbirth practic... posted on Apr 30 2005, 1,198 reads

This I Believe
In 1951, out of concern that America was being driven by fear, journalist Edward R. Murrow began a series called "This I Believe". For five minutes each day, radio listeners heard essays from famous and everyday Americans as they shared their personal philosophy on what gave them inspiration and hope. In 2005, in an America gripped by the fear of terrorism and the wasteland of rampant materialism,... posted on Apr 06 2005, 1,277 reads