Pen Farthing, who founded a nonprofit that reunites soldiers at home with stray dogs and cats they cared for during combat, has been named the 2014 CNN Hero of the Year.
“There is no stronger bond between man and dog than that formed during war,” Farthing said at the CNN Heroes All-Star Tribute gala, set to air on the network December 7.
Farthing was awarded $100,000 to support the cause he started after experiencing difficulties trying to bring his dog back to England from Afghanistan, where the two formed an unbreakable bond.
“Speaking from my own experience,” Farthing, 45, said, “I know that the dog I looked after was my saving grace from the stress of conflict.”
(WATCH the video below or READ the story at CNN Heroes – *NOTE auto-playing audio)
A deluge of love and compassion has reached a 54-year-old homeless man who had the courage to put into action the Christian tenet, “Ask, and it is given.”
Neal Shytles posted an ad on the Facebook pages of local television stations around his hometown of Virginia Beach asking for someone to invite him for Thanksgiving dinner.
I was very alone last Thanksgiving and really would not like to go throughout that this Thanksgiving… PLEASE, if you have room in your home and in your heart to share your Thanksgiving, I not only (would) be thankful, but would also consider myself blessed to spend this time with you.
Shytles has lived in the Norfolk, Virginia Union Mission shelter for a year. He pays a small amount of rent from his monthly social security check, according to WTKR-News Channel 3, who interviewed him on Tuesday about the ad.
Even before Channel 3 aired the full report Tuesday evening, he began receiving offers from viewers volunteering to adopt him for the day.
The very first call he got came from a young military family, The McLemores from Newport News, 30 miles away. They offered to pick him up, and said another military couple with children would also be coming, fulfilling his wish for a “family atmosphere” at the table.
“The girl is a sweetheart,” he said of Ashley McLemore, who called the mission and spoke with Neal Tuesday morning. “I’ve been so blessed. I love the people here at the Christian mission, but I just wanted a home to go to.”
Both the mission and the television station were flooded with calls following the story that aired later that day.
Invitations Flooded In
“I’d like to donate a turkey and corn and potatoes to whoever takes him in, wrote Tanner Doerr on WTKR’s Facebook page.
Shay Shannon Blankenship from Chesterfield, VA, wrote, “For the wonderful man that wants family for the holidays: I’m in Chesterfield, and I’m willing to pick him up on Wednesday and he can hang out for thanksgiving with my family for a day or two. And then I will return him to where he stays. How do I reach him?”
“I want to send him a Christmas package,” commented Joe Walls.
A television station in Ohio said they would send a care package, and had set up a fund for him that people were already donating to.
Neal is trying to take it all in stride, but told the Good News Network, “I cried all day yesterday. I’m a big guy, but then the reporters were reading all the letters to me that they’d gotten.”
“Sometimes you don’t see the hearts of people until something like this happens,” he said after a long pause. “People do have big hearts.”
The New Face of Homelessness?
Self-portrait by Neil Shytles
In a sense Neal has become the new face of homelessness for the many thousands of people around the country who have seen his story. He received a lot of offers from Wisconsin. A man in Sioux Falls, South Dakota offered to fly in Neal for the holiday and a family in Arkansas who owns a trucking company even offered to have their truckers pick him up and bring him back again. But, Neal, who has not traveled outside of his state except to DC, said he was already committed to the McLemores. “Maybe Christmas!” they responded.
The former taxi cab driver hopes he can get some of the other guys from the mission placed with a family. “I know they are responsible and they would like to have a family atmosphere, too.”
“Last night, Paul, who works here but is also homeless, said, ‘Oh my gosh, that is such a good idea. I wish I would have thought of it.'”
Perhaps Neal’s story has planted seeds for the future, like when Kimberly Kelly posted on Facebook, “I’m starting a program called Home for the Holiday in the Charlottesville area to help others get adopted! I would love this program to spread.”
As often happens when stories of homeless people go nation, two of Neal’s relatives contacted him.
“My cousin saw it in south carolina, and they got kinda mad because I never told them my situation. they saw it and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us about what was going on?’ It was really important to me that someone who is actually family, showed me they cared. They were really upset. They asked me if I needed anything.”
“I texted my best friend who lives in Detroit, telling him about the media reports. He said, ‘See, people do want to help. All you have to do is ask.'”
(WATCH the follow-up video featuring the McLemores below)
Growing up in 13 different foster homes and the pain of physical and sexual abuse left Tina Thomas feeling empty and incomplete. But Tina is a survivor and no longer can be defined by her past.
Fate intervened in her teen years when, despite never having broken the law, she was assigned a probation officer, Mary Beth Ryan. That summer, Ryan asked Tina to be a peer mentor at a special camp for abused girls. It changed her life forever.
“That weekend was the first time I felt needed, and that I belonged,” she told Talking Good, a website that profiles people who make a difference in their communities. “It is also when I realized that I wanted to make an impact on people’s lives.”
In 1999, two weeks after graduating high school, Tina enlisted in the Marines. She served for four years, stationed in Camp Pendleton, just off the Pacific Coast in southern California. Military service not only allowed Tina to grow as an individual and a professional, but it provided her with a sense of belonging, something she yearned for as a child.
Now 34-years-old, she wants people to know that no person should be defined by their past: “If I’m a victim of sexual trauma and foster care, the statistics say I’m supposed to be a certain way. But I’m me … I’m not a number.”
Tina with daughter, Arianna
In 2013, Tina moved to Washington, DC, along with her 11-year-old daughter Arianna. She works at the Federal Aviation Administration, but continues to serve her community as a volunteer, often alongside her daughter. She also joined The Mission Continues’ DC, a service group for veterans that tackles malnutrition and obesity in the nation’s capital. “All of this service work provides me with structure and growth. It keeps me motivated and gets me out there so that I can continue to make a difference.”
Last week, The Meredith Vieira Show chose to honor Tina for her service, with a touching video, and a surprise check for $10,000. Watch the video below…
New data shows that beginning in early 2014, Greece’s economy began emerging from its deep recession, expanding for the first time in five years and confirming predictions the country has left the worst of its economic crisis behind.
Leo Moody was driving home from work on a rural Maine road Monday night when he spotted an SUV submerged upside-down in shallow water and a frantic woman inside.
She told him her baby was trapped in the backseat.
Luckily he carries a knife with him for peeling apples or whittling wood, he told the Associated Press.
The 44-year-old logger dove into the frigid water and later recalled that he couldn’t feel his frozen hands as he sawed at the car-seat straps with a knife.
“I kept telling myself, ‘Don’t drop the knife.’”
After that ordeal he used CPR skills that he’d recently reviewed to revive the baby.
Jason Brown had a five-year, $37 million contract with the St. Louis Rams but decided it was all meaningless – and just walked away from football.
Brown quit the sport he worked his life to master so he could become a farmer, even though he had never farmed a day in his life. What he was thinking? He was thinking about service.
In 2012, he “decided to step out on faith” starting a farm in Louisburg, North Carolina called First Fruits Farm that donates the first fruits of every harvest to food pantries.
“We were blessed with gleaning and harvest opportunities… where more than 10,000 pounds of cucumbers and 100,000 pounds of sweet potatoes were donated for local hunger relief efforts,” he wrote on his website.
“More than 600 volunteers lent a helping hand.”
(WATCH the video below or READ the story at CBS)*NOTE the auto-playing audio!
I would love to share with the world this amazing woman, Shirley Richardson of Richmond, Virginia.
She is the executive director of the program, Building the Fire Within and the Carl Gordon House. She has been donating her time to rebuild this house to help women.
She has served on the YMCA board of directors and has mentored middle school girls in the Mirror Me program.
She is an ordained elder at the James Cleveland gospel ministry, too. Since 1995 she has served as a spiritual leader in Kairos Prison Ministry.
Before that, she served 30 years as a law enforcement officer for the Richmond Police Department.
Shirley is an angel on this earth. She has dedicated her life to helping and serving others and inspires everyone she meets.
Over the last seven weeks an anonymous benefactor has given out five envelopes full of cash to communities groups in Redford, Michigan.
Envelopes containing $1000, in ten crisp hundred-dollar bills, were mailed to the local library, the Tail-waggers Animal Clinic, a civic group, a credit union and to the Goodfellows, an organization that donates holiday meals and gifts to needy families.
The one clue that ties all letters together, written on each – four digits, 1679.
But no one can figure out what the numbers mean. They do know the donations mean a lot in the Detroit suburb where 20,000 households could be served by such generosity.
Construction was completed last month on a huge clean energy facility in South Africa that holds the new record as the continent’s largest solar power project.
The first of two giant projects by SolarReserve in South Africa,A huge project in South Africa, the Jasper solar farm, is now fully operational as the continent’s largest solar power project.
The Jasper Project generated about 1 million man-hours of paid work during its year of construction and used 45% locally sourced content.
A new Christmas television ad inspired by real events from 100 years ago has touched the hearts of ten million viewers on YouTube and many more watching in the UK.
Sainsbury’s, the second largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom, partnered with The Royal British Legion to portray the extraordinary events of Christmas Day, 1914, when the guns fell silent and two armies met in no-man’s land, after voices rang out singing Silent Night.
Commemorating the truce’s 100-year anniversary, the ad features the football match that some witnesses say took place between British and German forces during the two-day truce called by commanders along some sections of the front lines on December 24.
Soldiers also widely exchanged gifts, whatever they had — small tools, cigarettes, chocolate, schnapps — and sang Auld Lang Syne before returning to their foxholes.
The chocolate bar seen in the ad is raising funds for military families at Sainsbury’s, with all profits (50p per bar) going to The Royal British Legion to benefit Great Britain’s armed forces and veterans.
(WATCH the video below, and a short film about the story behind the ad)
Specialist Tyler Jeffries, a veteran who lost both of his legs fighting in Afghanistan, didn’t even want to walk again. He thought there was nothing more in life for him, but his mother Pamela was by his side every day, encouraging him.
Since he returned from combat, and throughout his recovery at Walter Reed Medical Center, and later at home, she has provided 24-hour care for him.
Walking again, Tyler wanted nothing more than to thank his mom for all she’s done for him.
With the help of Dreams Resorts and Spas, Jeffries and nine other wounded warriors were able to gift their mothers with a dream vacation.
The resort sent a video crew to Tyler’s home to surprise Pamela, surrounded by her family, with her much-deserved all expenses paid trip.
The company is looking for other nominations for people who need a break. They are giving away 10 more vacations to deserving individuals. Submit your stories at www.dreamsresorts.com/giveaway.
Video from China shows the goodness of strangers as 20 people rush to the aid of a woman run over by a car following a motorbike crash.
She and her husband were assisted by over 20 complete strangers while surveillance cameras record them raising the vehicle and pull the trapped woman to safety.
For their innovative strategies to help mold positive youth, eight organizations that mentor urban youth in six cities will share grants totaling $2.4 million.
The Thrive Foundation for Youth in Silicon Valley announced the awards today, which will continue their mission of helping guide disadvantaged young people to reach their full potential. Each of the outstanding groups will receive unrestricted grants of $300,000 over the next two years.
“Our grantees have discovered ways to create a constellation of competent, caring adults who are making a difference in the lives of children,” said Nicole Taylor, President and CEO of the Thrive.
These eight grantees have professional staff members who serve as primary “caring adults” day-to-day, and are role models who provide a consistent, compassionate and trustworthy presence. Collectively, these eight organizations impact the lives of approximately 15,000 young people throughout the United States.
New York City
The Brotherhood/Sister Sol helps keep youth ages 8-22 focused on educational achievement and leadership with multi-year support five day a week providing after school care, counseling, summer camps, job training, employment, and college preparation.
Denver
Colorado UpLift helps urban youth overcome significant obstacles through long-term, life-changing relationships starting in the 2nd and 3rd grade. Salaried teacher/mentors build success through character education, with a focus on high school graduation and post-secondary engagement.
Portland, OR
Friends of the Children selects the highest risk children and commits to working with them from kindergarten to graduation. Friends works through chapters and affiliates nationwide.
Self Enhancement, Inc. guides underserved youth and families to reach their full potential. Their work with more than 7,500 students and families results in stable, supported families and an enhanced community.
Oakland, CA
Girls Inc. of Alameda County supports girls in becoming strong through healthy living and smart through education by providing girls with continuous, strength-based, youth development programming and strong adult role models to identify and nurture the potential for success in every girl.
Youth Radio is the nation’s leading syndicator of youth voices and a national model for media and technology education. The organization provides thousands of low-income youth with innovative media and technology training, paid employment, and wraparound support services to launch them into college and family-sustaining careers.
Washington, D.C.
Latin American Youth Center empowers a diverse population of youth to achieve a successful transition to adulthood through multi-cultural and innovative programs that address youths’ needs at all levels.
Chicago
Youth Guidance works through the schools to enable at-risk youth to overcome obstacles. Youth Guidance’s Becoming a Man (B.A.M.) program is a dropout and violence prevention program for at-risk male students in grades 7-12, and includes in-school courses and after-school sports.
The Thrive Foundation for Youth was founded in 1995 by Silicon Valley investor Bob King and his wife Dottie, who have given away $16.7 million from their offices in Menlo Park, California. Learn more at: www.thrivefoundation.org
Photo (top) courtesy of Thrive Foundation for Youth/iStock Ima
These people chosen at random on the street didn’t know how a big, clean plexiglass room would solve their stress but decided to step inside, close their eyes and give it a try. What happened next was an absolute delight.
Inside the “therapy” office they were surprised by adorable tiny kittens emerging through hidden doors. It was time to play!
The video was created by Soul Pancake, who brought us Kid President, and other fine glimpses into the art of making happiness.
“Sometimes it’s the really simple ideas that can make the biggest difference.”
A second grader in York, Pennsylvania came up with an idea last year after his father showed him a photo of a bench placed by a German school on their playground specifically so that lonely or shy children could be offered friendship.
Christian Buck wanted to put such a bench at his school, Roundtown Elementary, and the principal agreed. In the year since that one bench was put outside to foster relationship-building, others like it have popped up at schools across the country.
More than 200 schools around the world have since installed ‘Buddy Benches’ — both across the United States, and in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, India, Italy and Canada, according to Christian’s family, which has kept track of the growth, says the York Daily Record, which first reported the story in December and followed up six months later.
This week, the latest pair of ‘Buddy Benches’ were dedicated outside two schools in Ashland, Wisconsin for children to sit on as a signal that they would like someone to play with or talk to.
The benches were funded by the Parent-Teacher Organization as a tool to teach kindness after counselors realized it would be great “for several kids who feel like they don’t have friends,” reported The Daily Press.
The students have “greeted the idea with enthusiasm” after being taught that the benches are a way for kids to reach out to their lonelier peers.
Christian Buck Speaks to Rotary Club
“It really builds their self-esteem to ask others to play with them,” said Intermediate School Counselor Kelly Sundeen.
Resources are now online to help schools personalize their own kindness corner.
The simple idea has certainly made a difference in the life of Christian Buck, who has traveled to California and Connecticut to speak in front of groups about his inspiring project —while still only eight years old.
Photo (top) by Travis Powell, submitted to AshlandWi.com – Lake Superior Intermediate School students Margurite Ranta, Isaac Pearce, Dewey Zinnecker and Meghan Moffitt
Doctors have inspired top international football players to join together to promote and raise awareness of simple preventative measures in the fight against Ebola.
The “11 against Ebola” campaign, featuring Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar Jr, Philipp Lahm and others, promotes 11 simple health messages touted by doctors who are tackling the outbreak in West Africa.
Under the slogan “Together, we can beat Ebola” (#wecanbeatebola), players share the 11 health tips in animated films, radio spots, and posters in a multimedia campaign launched today.
“It is so important that we get the right information to those affected by the Ebola outbreak,” said Neymar Jr. “We all hope this positive campaign will improve people’s understanding of the Ebola virus and help us to reduce the chances of it spreading. Let’s all get behind this campaign to help our brothers and sisters in the worst-hit regions.
Each health message, such as “Report unusual illnesses” and “Cook meat properly”, has been chosen to improve public understanding about how the virus spreads, and to provide clear information that can be used to reduce the chances of the virus spreading in affected communities. Here are the rules for remaining Ebola-free;
The 11 Against Ebola Messages:
Wash your hands often and disinfect anything touched by suspected Ebola sufferers
Cook meat thoroughly before eating
Avoid contact with wild animals and bats, which can carry the Ebola virus
Always practice safe sex
Know the symptoms: fever with a loss of appetite, headache, fatigue, pain, vomiting, bleeding or diarrhea
Report unusual illnesses in your community
Seek immediate medical help if you have a fever with additional symptoms
Avoid skin or body contact with anyone suffering from Ebola
Wear proper protection if you are caring for an Ebola sufferer
Do not touch the dead or anyone who has died from a strange disease
Seek help for safe burials from local authorities
See links to all eleven individual videos, featuring the three above, plus Gareth Bale, Jérôme Boateng, Didier Drogba, George Davies, John Obi Mikel, Gerard Piqué, Raphaël Varane, Xavi, and Pep Guardiola, at the World Bank.
30 years ago, Bob Geldof organized the first charity supergroup (Band Aid) to record “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” — a highly successful song that raised more than $24,000,000 to “feed the world” during the famine in Ethiopia.
A new version of the song recorded over the weekend with some of the biggest-selling British pop acts, including One Direction, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and Bono, is set to raise millions, this time for the Ebola crisis in West Africa.
The Song Has Already Gone Bonkers
Since it’s debut Sunday night on British television’s The X Factor, Geldof said “Band Aid 30” sales have ‘gone manic.’ Pre-orders raised £1million in just minutes following the debut — and the single is already No1 on iTunes.
Government officials confirmed they would waive all VAT taxes on the record, so that 100 percent of the money raised would go towards the cause.
Singers who gathered in the same studio as Band Aid’s first group included Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Queen’s Roger Taylor, Elbow, Sinead O’Connor and Seal.
They sang the same iconic song, except with the lyrics tweaked to reflect the current Ebola virus, which the Irish musician-producer Geldof described as a “particularly pernicious illness because it renders humans untouchable.”
Like the original, the music video (below) ends on a high note, but it opens with a 15 second quiet, yet gruesome, scene of a gaunt Ebola victim being moved from her death bed.
It’s Christmas time, and there’s no need to be afraid
At Christmas time, we let in light and banish shade
And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world
At Christmas time
But say a prayer, pray for the other ones
At Christmas time, it’s hard but while you’re having fun
There’s a world outside your window, and it’s a world of dread and fear
Where a kiss of love can kill you, and there’s death in every tear
And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight we’re reaching out and touching you
Bring peace and joy this Christmas to West Africa
A song of hope where there’s no hope tonight
Where to comfort is to fear – Where to touch is to be scared
How can they know it’s Christmas time at all
Here’s to you
Raise a glass to everyone
And here’s to them
And all their years to come
How do they know it’s Christmas time at all
Feed the world, let them know it’s Christmas time again
Feel the world, let them know it’s Christmas time again
Heal the world, let them know it’s Christmas time again
