Audette Exel lives a double life. In the world’s financial capitals, the business owner advises companies on mergers and raises money for global fund managers. In Nepal and Uganda, Exel is better known as founder and chief fundraiser of the Adara Foundation, which provides health care and education for people in two of the world’s most impoverished nations.
The 50-year-old woman also dances, blond hair flying, to entertain a crowd of giggling teenagers.
(READ the story from Bloomberg)
They don’t call them man’s best friend for nothing.
While Arizona resident Bonnie Dodson was watching TV, her lab mix, Chips, started crying and crying.
He was crying because the man next door had fallen on hot stones and was calling for help when he could not get up.
Bonnie told KSAZ that she adopted the lab mix two years ago after he had been rescued from severe abuse.
– WATCH the video below
– READ the story in KSAZ Phoenix
Casey Baynes understands on a very personal level that no child wants to feel like they’re different. At a young age, teachers told Casey that her dyslexia would make academics more difficult. Despite the obvious challenges that come with a learning disorder, Casey had very high expectations for herself and worked hard to reach and then exceed them. She received her Associate’s degree before graduating high school and went on to become Towson University’s youngest Master’s Degree recipient at age 20.
For a time, Casey worked for a children’s non-profit, but then left to help run her family’s business. Not finding the work fulfilling, she eventually left that position to follow her heart. She initially met with social workers at hospitals and parents of children fighting cancer, sickle cell disease, cystic fibrosis and other life-threatening illnesses to find out how she could lessen their stress and make a difference in their lives.
“Not only do I believe I should try to help all seriously-ill children by providing them with a happier outlook, but I try to lead by example so my kids can start to get a sense of giving to others,” says Casey.
Although she doesn’t do it for the recognition, Casey is most certainly being recognized for the impact she has had in this area. In the last five years she received among other awards the “Ravens Community Quarterback Award”, “Bravo! Entrepreneur Award” from Smart Woman Magazine, and she was named by Kraft to be one of “100 Extraordinary Women” nationally.
Talking GOOD is an ever-growing collection of interviews with purpose-driven individuals who champion causes and lead by example. These people are “citizen-philanthropists” because they prove that one does not need money – just passion, energy, and dedication to make a difference. Talking GOOD was launched in 2012 by Rich Polt, principal of the Baltimore-based PR consultancy, Communicate Good, LLC. See the entire archive of interviews here. To nominate someone for a Talking GOOD spotlight, please fill out this form, or email [email protected].
The New Zealand landscape is set to be greened to the tune of 40,000 new trees this year as part of the final stage of the national Living Legends conservation and planting project.
Living legends from the sport of rugby are being honored and will participating in planting native trees in 14 different regions through 2015.
The project, started in 2011 when New Zealand hosted the Rugby World Cup, is being run in conjunction with provincial rugby unions to leave a legacy of that country’s honor that year.
This week a new sailing barge was launched on Lake Champlain that its backers hope will soon be in the vanguard of a new carbon-neutral shipping alternative. Volunteers with the Vermont Sail Freight Project built a 39 foot cargo vessel of the type that once plied the inland waterways throughout the northeastern. Like them, the Ceres will sail without any sort of motorized assistance.
Tennis star Roger Federer has long been considered one of the good guys in sports. A recent Twitter post by a young fan, however, takes Federer’s sainthood to a whole new level.
A 17 year-old cancer survivor from Rockville, Md. was invited to Wimbledon with her family by the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
But Federer didn’t just perform a perfunctory handshake and sign a few things. He went way beyond the call of duty.
An Iowa man, Chris Ihle, 38, noticed a big, old Pontiac car stalled on the railroad crossing, and then he heard the train whistle.
The elderly couple were not moving inside the car as the Union Pacific locomotive bore down on them.
The father of three sprinted toward the car in time to push.
(READ the story in the Des Moines Register)
U.S. factories revved up production, hired more workers and received a surge of new orders in July, helping them expand at the fastest pace in two years.
The gains could provide the spark needed to accelerate economic growth.
Meanwhile, British manufacturing grew in July at its fastest rate in well over two years — its fourth straight month of expansion. The reading was the strongest since March 2011, according to Reuters.
(READ the AP story in the Washington Post or the Kansas City Star)
South Korean petroleum company, S-Oil wanted to show that it valued resource conservation in the nation’s capital, Seoul, where gasoline consumption is the highest in the world. With more cars on the roads, parking spaces were more and more scarce, and Seoul drivers wasted expensive fuel wandering around looking for parking spaces.
Sgt. Reckless became a war hero to Marines fighting in Korea 60 years ago. The small Mongolian horse hauled supplies and ammunition on the front lines through constant gunfire for soldiers who last week remembered the bravery of their four-legged hero.
The mare became a national hero after a published article in the Saturday Evening Post described her service. Under heavy fire in 1953, she ran 51 supply trips in a single day. The mare was promoted to Staff Sergeant and is now immortalized in a bronze statue unveiled on the grounds of the Marine Base in Triangle, Virginia July 26.
Alaska Airlines is teaming up with The Nature Conservancy to help restore coral reefs in Hawaii. Touting the paper-reducing benefits of its mobile app, the airline will donate $1 for every customer who downloads the mobile app during the month of August. Passengers can rid themselves of the need to print paper boarding passes at the same time as they help rid the Hawaiian reefs of invasive species.
At one time in his life, after a divorce, Gary Pickering was homeless.
Now, Pickering is building small, portable ‘micro-houses’ for people living on the street.
They’re small, but have many of the advantages of real homes for those looking for respite from the harsh weather.
Community volunteers got together and built 40 of these shelters and they’ll deliver them to wherever the homeless people need them.
A curious father who wanted to take a closer look on his way home after noticing smoke billowing into the sky became a fire hero.
Wondering where it was coming from, Terry Jackson drove towards the terraced house in Radcliffe, Lancashire, England.
He would run into the burning building three times to rescue a family stranded inside.
New Yorkers’ newfound love of Cronuts has raised $3,800 this week to help feed the city’s hungry.
Thanks to Dominique Ansel, creator of the coveted pastry, a special passion fruit version is being giving away every day this week.
The Cronut Project will select two people from among those who donate to the Food Bank For New York City, NYC’s major hunger-relief organization — one to the day’s highest donor, the other will go to a random donor.
One widow is giving her travel-loving husband a final adventure at sea. In March 2012, Beverly Smith, 56, put the ashes of her late husband, Gordan Scott, in a bottle and tossed them off the coast of Big Pine Key, Florida.
With his remains were $2 and a note instructing whoever recovered the bottle to “call and tell [her] where he is.”
A mother was forced to make the life-or-death decision to drop her baby from a burning apartment’s window.
Luckily, Zna Gresham, just 10 years old, was there to catch the tiny newborn as she plunged 20 feet to the ground.
A woman in a wheelchair then helped the children while fire workers put out the fire.
A 10-year-old boy who acquired driving skills by go-karting and playing the video game “Mario Kart,” put those skills into action, saving himself, his brother and grandmother.
Gryffin Sanders of Golden, Colorado was riding in the car with his 4-year-old brother when their 74-year-old great-grandmother, Darlene Nestor, passed out in mid-sentence.
The “Peace Ark” hospital ship of the Navy of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has begun its “Harmonious Mission — 2013”, arriving in Pakistan, the 4th stop of the mission, on July 29 to begin a six-day-long goodwill visit to offer humanitarian medical assistance.
During the visit, the hospital ship will dispatch medical detachments to offer medical services at the Sifa Hospital of the Pakistani Navy, and training in Karachi, and perform surgery jointly with Pakistani medical staff. In addition, the dispatched medical detachments will also visit local schools to donate medical services to children in need.
(READ the story from the People’s Daily)
Pierre Paul Thomas, 68, spent most of his life seeing only vague shadows, until an accident left him needing surgery on his face.
His injuries were treated at the Montreal General Hospital, where, during a consultation with a reconstructive plastic surgeon, he was given the opportunity of a lifetime.
A Whitby restaurant has offered to help a nine-year-old autistic Oshawa boy whose lemonade stand was nearly shutdown by a sour neighbour who called police on him during a recent holiday.
The Baton Rouge restaurant will open its doors to Corbin Potter and his siblings and let them sell lemonade to their customers on Aug. 13. All proceeds will go to the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto.
