Human Interest Archive: Jun 2009
Ex-homeless girl meets ministers
(BBC News) A girl who was left homeless at the age of 15 after her mother died is to tell ministers about her scheme aimed at helping vulnerable youngsters. Debbie Wilkie, 17, who lived on the streets of Blackpool two years ago, is to meet Justice Minister Jack Straw and Schools Minister Vernon Coaker. She got off the streets with the help of the YMCA and is now the managing director of her own company, Earth. She will give the ministers advice based on her own experiences.
Volunteer Nurses Give Gift Of Hearing To Young Boy
(Cynthia Demos, CBS4) A mission of mercy to help a young boy hear the world around him ended up changing the lives of all of those involved. It all began when several South Florida nurses, who volunteer on medical missions to third world countries, discovered the boy, who had been deaf from birth in Honduras. The nurses learned that the only way they would be able to help him is if they could bring him to the U.S. After convincing the boy's mother to let him go, they set wheels in motion that would have a dramatic change on his life.
Mystery donor helps ill girl see Jonas Brothers
(Tonya Mosley, KING5) A critically ill 12-year-old Seattle girl was able to forget her worries at a Jonas Brothers concert, thanks to a mystery donor. For the last five months, Jessica Walker has been at Seattle Children's Hospital, battling a brain tumor. She's had 20 operations, and with each procedure, she loses of bit of herself. She can no longer walk, speak or move. And those around her watch helplessly. But thanks to that donor, Jessica and her family watched the Jonas Brothers perform Sunday night at the Tacoma Dome.
Off to private Brentwood School, thanks to the kindness of strangers
(Carla Rivera, Los Angeles Times) When David and Jacki Horwitz read an article in The Times about Lorelei Oliver's struggle to find a good school for her son Kamal Key, their response was immediate: Perhaps, they inquired, there was a fund to which they could contribute to help the 12-year-old, who had been admitted to a prestigious but costly private campus? Three weeks and several phone calls and e-mails later, Kamal and his family sat in the backyard of the Horwitzes' spacious Pacific Palisades home, laughing as if they had known each other for years.
12-year-old Boy Makes A Difference
(Jorge Estevez, CBS4) Selfless acts should never go unnoticed, and when those acts come from a 12-year-old child, they should be applauded and rewarded. A South Florida boy is dedicating an entire year to changing the life of a boy who needs all the help he can get.
Blind karate student earns black belt
(Richie Rathsack, Record-Journal) Some call it a big obstacle to overcome; he just calls it a nuisance. All agree it took a lot of hard work to accomplish what he has. George Sanchez is blind, and after passing his test this month, he is also something that defines his character much more: a karate black belt.
Gil the Barber turns the page
(Cliff Radel, Cincinnati Enquirer) They still ask for Gil the Barber. And, he's been retired for three months. Hasn't cut a head of hair since St. Patrick's Day. That happens when you are institution, when you have had your own barbershop in this storied Cincinnati neighborhood for 59 years and people have placed their heads in your hands at six different Pleasant Ridge locations for the past 62 years. That happens when you are an 84-year-old barber named Gil Stehlin.
Pizza party a big hit with homeless men
(Tom Clark, Philadelphia Daily News) "She's earning her sainthood one slice at a time." That's what Anthony Willoughby said yesterday about LeeAnn Camut after she organized a pizza party at St. John's Hospice for nearly 350 homeless men. Willoughby, the food services manager at St. John's, remarked at how much the now-annual pizza affair has grown in just its second year - and praised Camut, 39, as the reason.
Student hopes to go from homeless to Harvard
(Thelma Gutierrez, CNN) Kenneth Chancey, 17, walks down the littered streets of Skid Row, one of the roughest areas of Los Angeles. Drug deals are made around him. A man screams at his girlfriend. The stench of the place is overwhelming. Chancey keeps his head down and tries to tune it out. "It's kind of horrible," he says, as he escorts his 14-year-old sister, Stephanie, through it all. But Chancey is on another journey too, one that not many of his friends know about. An honors student and star football player, he hopes to go from being homeless to becoming a Harvard grad.
Kissing a cleft lip goodbye: Adnan heals
(Nicole Lapin, CNN) "Quick, I-V." "Is he breathing?" "Flip him over." "Heart rate? Pulse?" The nurses' commands and questions filled the recovery room at an Egyptian hospital. Seven-month-old Adnan Saleh had just come out of surgery to fix a cleft lip. But suddenly his newly repaired mouth was filling with blood. The post-op nurses rushed to make sure he didn't choke. "Mother! We need a mama," one of the male nurses shouted in his South African accent, once Adnan was stabilized. "Speak to him!"
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'Why I gave away my kidney'
(BBC News) Paul van den Bosch is a 54-year-old GP based in Surrey. He became a "living donor" in April 2008, giving one of his kidneys to someone he had never met. Here he describes how he made the decision, and shares his thoughts a year on. "For a long time I'd thought about donation as something I would be prepared to do - but in a totally theoretical way. Being a doctor myself meant I was perhaps able to see this issue from a rather different perspective to others."
WWII pilot, farmer become friends after emergency landing
(Melissa St. Aude, Casa Grande Dispatch) Pat Robertson was cleaning her pool June 10 when she heard the distinct sputtering sounds of an airplane in trouble. She looked up to see a 1940s-era biplane, flown by a former World War II fighter pilot, make an emergency landing on a pipeline easement near the back of her Casa Grande cotton farm. Robertson and her daughter called 911, grabbed an emergency first-aid kit and, along with the farm foreman, hurried to the spot where the plane landed.
Driven to heal, and beat a deadline
(Michael Vitez, Philadelphia Inquirer) Four days after losing control of his bicycle and slamming - face-first - into an oncoming car, Matt Miller lay in the ICU at the University of Virginia Medical Center. Nerves controlling the left side of his face didn't work, and he couldn't close his left eye. His mouth zigzagged like a plunging stock-market table. Every one of his 32 teeth was lost, broken, or compromised.
Loving memories of Hopptoad spur his good works
(Ruth Sheehan, News & Observer) Anabel Nunez has a weenie roast and a man named Butch Miller to thank for her last two radiation treatments. Nunez, 33, had gone through a double mastectomy and been through four weeks of five-day-a-week radiation. But the drive back and forth from Raleigh to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill was breaking the bank. "I had nothing at that time," said Nunez, who lost her job at a nursing home following the surgery. Then one of the oncology social workers at UNC showed her the pink sign-up sheet for a quiet organization with an unusual name: Help from Hopp, founded by Miller in 2005 in honor of his late wife, Sue.
Angela gets a shot at college, thanks to NASCAR pioneer
(Franco Ordoñez, The Charlotte Observer) The only thing Angela Padilla-Ramírez knew of Humpy Wheeler a week ago was that he had something to do with the race track near Concord Mills. So when the North Mecklenburg High graduate heard that he wanted to talk to her about college, she looked up the NASCAR pioneer online. "He's such a big person," the 18-year-old said. "I didn't think he'd call."
A son's gift to his Father: Adoption process leads man to life-saving heart surgery
(Scott Sexton, Winston-Salem Journal) It's dinnertime. Thomas Eckart is fidgeting in his chair. The 22-month-old is wearing an Elmo bib and having more fun smearing his carrots around his tray than he would if he was actually eating them. His parents, George and Kristin Eckart, wouldn't have it any other way. Thomas is full of energetic joy and that special inquisitiveness that comes with the territory of 2-year-olds. Like many adopted children whose parents went to great lengths to include them in their lives, Thomas filled a gap in a family circle. He was an answer to a couple's prayers, a bundle of joy in the best sense of that phrase. Thomas is also a lifesaver.
Dad 'adopts' family from projects
(Michael Rosen, New York Daily News) Eleven years ago, my son Ripton was sitting on a jungle gym in Tompkins Square Park, transfixed by a baseball game happening a few feet away. All the players were black and Latino, about 11 or 12 years old, scraping and sliding across the concrete field. They were shouting over calls, using words we never would: "N - - - a safe!" Suddenly, without a word, Ripton walked into the mix. He was the only white kid, but the boys didn't care. They played all afternoon. When dusk fell, Ripton returned the favor. "Who wants to come to play Nintendo?" he asked.
Blind father, son find their way
(Kevin Vaughan, Denver Post) The bedroom at the back of the little house is nearly dark, the veil of twilight floating in through the windows, as the father reaches down, smoothing the sheets over his young son. "There we go, there we go," Jason Fayre says to his boy, who just turned 6 and is adjusting to his new life — a new country, a new home, a new family. "What are we going to read you tonight, Pandu?" Jason asks his son, feeling along the books lining a shelf above the bed. The scene is so utterly ordinary in every respect — a father tucking in his son, preparing to read a bedtime story — except that Jason does not reach for the light switch.
She finally has a home: Harvard
(Esmeralda Bermudez, Los Angeles Times) Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze. Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework. "No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her.
Times Reporter Escapes Taliban After 7 Months
(New York Times) David Rohde, a New York Times reporter who was kidnapped by the Taliban, escaped Friday night and made his way to freedom after more than seven months of captivity in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mr. Rohde, along with a local reporter, Tahir Ludin, and their driver, Asadullah Mangal, was abducted outside Kabul, Afghanistan, on Nov. 10 while he was researching a book. Mr. Rohde was part of The Times’s reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize this spring for coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan last year.
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For Father's Day, his gift was life
(Brenna R. Kelley, Kentucky Enquirer) Adam Drahman had already chipped in to buy a Father's Day present, but then he gave his dad something better. Upon learning that his father needed a kidney transplant, the 25-year-old stepped up and offered one of his. "It wasn't a big decision for me," said Adam, of Elsmere. But for his dad, deciding whether to take an organ from his son wasn't easy.
Dads are unemployed but get more time with the kids
(Barbara Brotman, Chicago Tribune) Within moments of picking his daughters up from camp the other day, Joseph Mockus began trying to wheedle out of them what they had made him for Father's Day. "Give me a little hint," he said as he drove Jane and Grace, 7-year-old identical twins, back to their Lake Forest home. "No," the girls chorused from the back seat.
"Is it a replica of the Sears Tower?"
"No!"
"Is it -- a decorated potato?"
"No!" Grace said, rolling her eyes. "Why would I give you a decorated potato?"
Adopted by a man who used to date my mom
(Kate Simonson with Meghan Daum, Real Simple) The summers of my youth were filled with the kinds of activities that were common to every kid in the 80s but are considered almost death-defying these days: tree climbing, bike riding without a helmet, and daylong road trips spent in the backseat of the family car, where we bounced around like Super Balls, nary a seat belt in sight.
Pixar grants girl's dying wish to see 'Up'
(Annie Burris, Orange County Register) Colby Curtin, a 10-year-old with a rare form of cancer, was staying alive for one thing – a movie. From the minute Colby saw the previews to the Disney-Pixar movie Up, she was desperate to see it. Colby had been diagnosed with vascular cancer about three years ago, said her mother, Lisa Curtin, and at the beginning of this month it became apparent that she would die soon and was too ill to be moved to a theater to see the film. After a family friend made frantic calls to Pixar to help grant Colby her dying wish, Pixar came to the rescue.
Exonerated man chooses forgiveness over bitterness
(Bo Emerson, Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Leaning into a curve on a Georgia mountain highway, tearing through the wind like a bullet, Calvin Johnson can forget about the shackles that he wore. He and his friends ride their motorcycles for fun, for fellowship and because they just love the machines. But Johnson also gets something more out of it. Freedom. Limitless space. Payback for the 16 years he served in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
An Immigrant’s Journey to a Top Post at Columbia
(Lisa W. Foderaro, New York Times) Feniosky Peña-Mora came to Washington Heights in the 1980s from the Dominican Republic to join his mother, who had moved years earlier. He was 21, with a degree in engineering and a vision of himself as a successful engineer in the United States. There was just one problem: He spoke almost no English. So for months he set out from his mother’s apartment and pursued a daily regimen of English classes, hopscotching from a class at Columbia University’s Teachers College to a Y.M.C.A. program on 14th Street to another in Greenwich Village that used singing as a tool to teach pronunciation. He ended his days at Bronx Community College.
From a mother's pain, a healing place is born
(Christie Coombs, Boston Globe) When Denise and Ken Brack lost their teenage son seven years ago in a drunken driving accident, Denise Brack was frustrated that she couldn’t find a peaceful place to go for counseling. The uncomfortable thought of having to go to a stark hospital or office setting for grief counseling never left her. Two years later, the Plympton resident began thinking of ways to change that. The Bracks turned an idea of opening a wellness center into reality this past January with Hope Floats Healing & Wellness Center in Kingston.
Brooklyn special ed student's essay about his vision-impaired teacher lands them in 'Superman'
(Sarah Armaghan, New York Daily News) It's a bird, it's a plane - no, it's a student who defied the odds. A Brooklyn special education student who won a national essay contest and was made the title character of a Superman comic got his first peek at the book Tuesday. "Is this for real?" asked Hakeem Bennett, 13, as he held a copy of &The Kid Who Saved Superman."
Animal lover inspires daughter to volunteer
(Brian Rosenthal, Reno Gazette-Journal) For 80-year-old Corky Anderson and her daughter, animal care is "a family affair." The duo has been working together at Animal Ark, a wildlife sanctuary northwest of Reno, for the past three years. Anderson volunteered at the center for a decade before her daughter joined her. "It's amazing," said the 49-year-old daughter, Sarah Beth Goodman. "I always wondered why she loved it so much, and now, I understand."
Big family getting big boost
(John Johnston, Cincinnati Enquirer) It might not have all the glitz and glamour of ABC's "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition," but a groundbreaking ceremony tonight in Montgomery will bring a family of 14 a big step closer to a renovated, expanded home. "We are being blessed in an incredible way," Heather Ingle says. She and her husband, Rick, are parents of 12 children ages 2 to 16. Nine are adopted, and most of them have medical or special needs, including bipolar disorder, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, anxiety disorder, ADHD and dyslexia.
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Donor travels cross-county to see girl he saved graduate
(Eric Carpenter, Orange County Register) Seventeen years ago, Bill Atkinson was lying in a hospital bed hoping – affirming actually – that the needles going into his hip would help save a baby thousands of miles away. A baby he'd never met. He kept saying to himself, "This is going to work. My bone marrow is going to help save a life. I know it is." He endured those moments of pain, confident he would help that baby live, grow and someday achieve dreams.
Once he was lost, but now is found
(Martha Irvine, AP) His hair had grayed and he'd lost several teeth. But there was something about the small, wiry man who walked into the shelter at the Woodhaven Bible Church in suburban Detroit in search of a bed for the night. With boyish enthusiasm, he told church volunteer Pat Fite about his "good day," how pleased he was to have found some discarded returnable cans and a grungy baseball. Pat helped him clean up the ball. She continued to study his face. It was a good day for Monte, indeed—and it was about to get a whole lot better.
Real estate company gives back
(Andrea Ball, Austin American-Statesman) What do you do with 25 percent of your paycheck? Pay bills? Fund vacations? Save it for a rainy day? Give Realty owner Laurie Loew does something different. For every house she sells, the Austin woman donates a quarter of her commission to the charity of her client's choice. So do the two agents who work with her. "It's not about me getting rich," said Loew, 44. "It's about doing good, creating something."
Surf therapy
(Kaylee Noborikawa, Honolulu Star-Bulletin) When Sheila Gibbs learned that her son was paralyzed in a motocross accident, she never imagined that she'd be watching her 12-year-old Joey surf in Hawaii. "God has created an amazing young man," she said after seeing him surf in Waikiki yesterday. "His attitude is unbelievable and that's half the battle." Joey Gibbs, paralyzed from the waist down, surfed for the first time yesterday with the help of AccesSurf Hawaii. The Gibbs family, of Ocala, Fla., joined him in the water, surfing and snorkeling at Publics surf spot in Waikiki.
Briton, paralyzed in Iraq war, pulls himself up El Capitan for charity
(Brandon Bowers, Merced Sun-Star) El Capitan, on the north side of Yosemite Valley, is a 3,593-foot wall of granite, challenging for even the world's best able-bodied climbers. Try scaling it without the use of your legs. That's what Maj. Phil Packer of the British Royal Military Police accomplished early Thursday morning. "Keep thinking every pull up is a message of support to anyone with disability to try a sport and big wall climbing as one of them," Packer wrote on Twitter, midway through the climb.
Web site connects Brooklyn man with desperately needed kidney
(Christina Boyle, New York Daily News) He's never even seen her face, but a complete stranger is about to give Anthony Cottman his life back. Cottman will soon be able to return to work, go on vacation and walk up subway steps thanks to a woman who agreed to give the Brooklyn man her kidney. "She is giving it to me for no other reason than I need it," Cottman said.
Elder Bush completes birthday parachute jump
(AP) Former President George H.W. Bush marked his 85th birthday on Friday the same way he did his 75th and 80th birthdays: He leaped from a plane and zoomed downward at more than 100 mph in freefall before parachuting safely to a spot near his oceanfront home. Bush made the tandem jump from 10,500 feet with Sgt. 1st Class Mike Elliott of the Army's Golden Knights, who guided them to a gentle landing on the lawn of St. Ann's Church.
Manicurist sells house, car to build school
(CNN) When Washington manicurist Lidia Schaefer returned to her native village in Ethiopia, she was troubled by what she saw: children walking three hours each way to attend classes held not in a school, but under a tree. When she learned in 1998 that one of the girls she'd met -- Medhine -- had been attacked and killed by a hyena after falling behind other children during the long trek home from school, Schaefer knew she had to act. She began setting aside a third of her salary and all of her tips, and later sold her house and car, to raise enough money to build a school for the village.
Meet Britain's brainiest toddler: Two-year-old Karina has the same IQ as Stephen Hawking
(Beth Hale and Claire Ellicott, Daily Mail) Most little girls of Karina Oakley's age are chatterboxes, just like her. But few can talk as much sense. The toddler has just been found to have an IQ of 160 - the same as Stephen Hawking and six points higher than Carol Vorderman - which makes her eligible to join Mensa. Experts say that she is particularly imaginative and gifted with words. Karina, who is almost three, is in the top 0.03 per cent of children her age, placing her on a par with a four or five-year-old.
The Joy of Less
(Pico Iyer, New York Times) "The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches…My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles." The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen," though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20 and his first son, aged 5.
87-year-old former maintenance worker began writing poetry after retiring in 1986 - and that's only one of his artistic talents
(Jeri Rowe, Greensboro News & Record) Isaiah Enoch has to get around his small apartment in a wheelchair. But he doesn't let that stop his busy mind. He collects boxes that once held cereal, detergent and diapers. He cuts them, glues them and decorates them for what he calls "special people" by using markers to paint trees, cacti and geometric figures of almost every shape. With a little ingenuity culled from his many years in maintenance, he creates. He turns them into notebooks, pencil holders, file folders and sturdy pages to hold his life of memories. And Enoch has some memories. He's 87.
Couple seek to help Africans help themselves
(Jesse James DeConto, News & Observer) In 1978, the University Covenant Church in Davis, Calif., sent Jim Thomas, then 24, to the Congo as a missionary-nutritionist to treat protein-deprived children affected by slash-and-burn farming. At his send-off ceremony, Thomas met 20-year-old Gayle Duddles, who had been born in the Congo to missionary parents. She fled at age 2 as the Congolese started their fight for independence from Belgium. Thirty years later, the couple lead Africa Rising, a nonprofit agency that arranges short-term service-learning trips to East Africa, collects and distributes charitable donations and nurtures international support for organizations working to improve Africans' lives.
Iraqi girl healed, and headed home from Maine
(Meredith Goad, Portland Press Herald) Noora Afif Abdulhameed is a notoriously late sleeper, sometimes staying in bed until 11:30 a.m. But on Saturday, she was so excited, she got up at 8:30. "Today she wake up early," said her father, Afif Abdulhameed Otaiwi. "I told her, 'Time to go home.’ She wake up, she take a shower, she eat." Saturday marked a year to the day since Noora and Afif embarked on a 3,500-mile journey to Portland for surgery to repair damage to Noora’s skull caused by a sniper in the Iraq war. One year later, dozens of Mainers came to the Portland International Jetport to say their goodbyes.
Boy gets new wheelchair ramp after his was stolen
(Bakersfield Californian) A family is celebrating after receiving a generous gift from a local business. On May 20, 12-year-old Jonathan Albiar Duarte's wheelchair ramp was stolen from outside his home on Baker Street. Born with caudal regression syndrome, Jonathan is paralyzed from the waist down. Without the ramp, he struggled to get his wheelchair into and out of his house.
Dancing gives new life to handicapped shooting victim
(Bill Torpy, Atlanta Journal-Constitution) The spotlight breaks the darkness, illuminating Vincent Robinson, all 2-feet-7 of him. The image is stark: It appears the bottom half of a muscular man has melted into the stage floor. A woman in a wheelchair rolls from the wings and dives into his arms. Their bodies silently roll together toward the audience. Robinson punctuates the movement with a handstand over her, then glides into an embrace. It’s a dance that has drawn tears from an Italian bride and moistened the eyes of a guy Robinson grew up with in a very dangerous place.
11-Year-Old Graduates College With Degree in Astrophysics
(Fox News) Like all of this year's graduates, Moshe Kai Cavalin is excited that he completed college, with a degree in astrophysics. But unlike the majority of college grads, Cavalin is only 11 years old and stands 4 feet, 7 inches tall. At the age of an average sixth-grader, Cavalin has gradated from East Los Angeles Community College. But, graduating college at 11 may not be his highest goal in life. "I want to be a movie actor and compete in the 2016 Olympics in martial arts," Cavalin told NBC affliate Wood TV.
Dad injected him with HIV as a baby, he's survived to inspire
(Betsy Taylor, AP) Brryan Jackson has been left out of birthday party invitations and asked not to use water fountains. His daily routine at one point included 23 pills, three IV medications and two injections. But the toughest part of growing up with AIDS for him may be knowing how he got it. When he was a baby, his father entered his hospital room and injected a syringe of HIV-tainted blood into his tiny body. At times during his childhood, he was expected to die. Now 18, he'll put on his black cap and gown Saturday and graduate from Francis Howell North High School in St. Charles, near St. Louis.
Man given up for adoption as baby finds family on Facebook
(Jeni Oppenheimer, Telegraph) Richard Marks, 33, has been reunited with his birth mum Carol Horridge who gave him away at just three-days-old so he could have a better life. He grew up with his adopted parents living just two miles from his biological family without realising and when he was 18 decided to search for his birth mum. Mr Marks contacted Bury Social Services and discovered his sister Andrea Roczniak had dropped off two letters in the hope he would get in touch but had since moved away.
Paralyzed stroke victim walks for first time in two decades after Botox injections
(Anne Barrowclough, Times Online) A stroke victim who has been paralysed for more than two decades can walk again after being injected with Botox. Russell McPhee was a healthy meat worker who played football, cricket and basketball when, at the age of 26, he collapsed suddenly at work. When he woke in hospital he was told he had suffered a stroke and would never walk again.
Brooklyn kids give back in South Africa
(Soledad O'Brien, CNN) It's late Sunday morning inside a cavernous Salvation Army Church in Soweto, South Africa. Services, complete with African and traditional music, have just finished and a catchy drum beat with a distinctly American hip-hop sound is coming from the stage. The group of teenagers dancing around the drums is 8,000 miles and an 18-hour plane ride from their New York home. They are mostly from Bushwick, Brooklyn -- a community of about 109,000 people only five miles from Manhattan. For some of these kids, it's their first time away from home.
Readers help a 'lost boy' hunt his family
(Meghan Irons, Boston Globe) In Weston, a sixth-grade class read about Kuol Acuek's quest to find his brother in Sudan and decided to have a bake sale to raise money for his trip. In Newton, the husband of an employee at Lasell College, where Acuek was a student, was so moved by the story in The Boston Globe that he helped to pay for the $2,000 ticket for the trip. Across the area, Acuek has received an outpouring of support and donations. More than $9,000 has been raised for Acuek to return to his homeland of Sudan and begin the journey to find his brother Geu.
Raising a philanthrokid
(Hayley Mick, Toronto Globe and Mail) "It was not a great parenting moment," Colleen Taylor says of her response to an event that would re-route the life of her daughter. It was Christmas in Winnipeg, and they came across a homeless man eating out of a garbage can. Hannah, then 5, asked: Why? Mrs. Taylor answered as best she could, then hoped her child's crisis of conscience would blow over. But the questions kept coming: Why doesn't he have a home? Why do we? Who loves him? Finally, a year later, Hannah turned to a teacher who encouraged the little girl to take action.
Grade-schoolers use penny donations to help homeless man
(Linda Shaw, Seattle Times) DeBraer Brae never would have guessed he'd have a home thanks to some 8-, 9-, and 10-year-olds. "Not in my wildest dreams,"" he said. "And believe me, I have some wild dreams sometimes." But here he is with the secondhand wheelchair that students at Seattle's Hawthorne Elementary bought for him, sitting in the apartment where they're paying his share of the rent. He's wearing clothes they purchased, too, and he points to the cellphone they provided.
Renewed approach to test the 'magic of Montessori'
(Kirsten Stewart, Salt Lake Tribune) Gail Williamsen stands on a chair, hoisting her 5-year-old daughter for another peek at baby birds nesting outside their kitchen window. "Oh cute," whispers a wide-eyed Lauren, as if seeing the nestlings for the first time. Ten months ago Lauren, who has Down syndrome, struggled to express her enthusiasm. But the nest, its squirming inhabitants and other worldly wonders have proven great tools for coaxing words from the reluctant speaker. Williamsen calls it the "magic of Montessori," a student-driven approach to learning endorsed 100 years ago for physically and mentally impaired children.
Once-homeless Penn student aims high
(Kia Gregory, Philadelphia Inquirer) Every day last summer, Steven Vaughn-Lewis would update his Facebook status: 64 more days . . . 63 . . . 62 . . . counting the days "until Penn." What one freshman year will do. Today, the tall and lanky 19-year-old who had barely left his Strawberry Mansion neighborhood has his sights on visiting China, a career in international affairs, and, at last, a driver's license. For Steven, the University of Pennsylvania opened doors in ways this former foster child never imagined.