It was a house she and her late husband built in 1956. Mary Cate Jones had spent the past few weeks packing up memories and preparing for a forced eviction from the home where she lived in Tennessee for 56 years. But after her plight was featured in the local paper last month, donations began pouring in. And now, thanks to more than 500 people and a $15,000 check from an anonymous donor, Jones and her family will be able to keep their home.
This July, after an Oregon couple walk down the aisle, they will hit the open road on a unique journey from Portland, Ore., to Portland, Maine, taking a leap of faith with dozens of people they've never met. The leap? The new bride and groom will sit down to breakfast with strangers across America and select 50 of those breakfasts to highlight in a book, Breakfast with Strangers: 50 Meals across America.
There is an extraordinary sign on the outside of a well-tended West Yorkshire vegetable garden: Help yourself. It is part of the sharing revolution across the UK.
The community of Laramie, Wyoming came together with strangers across the US in a touching tribute to a US soldier killed overseas who never got the chance to finish a project which was to become a meaningful gift for his wife -- the restoration of a 1959 Chevy truck.
No relative or friend proved to be a suitable donor match for Michael Andrade's mom. Weeks dragged on, with Lucy on a waiting list, while her condition grew visibly worse. Michael decided they needed to cast a wider net, and do everything he could to find a donor. Under the headline "Please help us find a liver donor," he added a grainy photo of himself as a boy on his mom's lap and wrote a detailed appeal on a Tumblr blog post.
Through next Saturday, people in Maine's easternmost county are being urged to think positive and be especially kind as the county celebrates what's been proclaimed as Positively Kind Week. Washington County commissioners are encouraging agencies, businesses, religious organizations and people to kick their kindness levels up a notch.
A powerful tornado ripped through West Liberty, Kentucky, last week, making the quaint community look like a war zone. Fortunately, the First Response Team of America was there to help with its specialized fleet of heavy-duty disaster recovery equipment. The team was named CNN Heroes.
A kindness project has deeply touched the community of Tillamook, Ore., after the death of two locals -- a young mom named Wendy and her 8 year old daughter --who were killed in a car crash. Their deaths broke the hearts of all who knew them, but their memory has sparked a chain of kindness.
A Lancashire couple who were known around town as the hardworking fundraisers for the neighborhood park were thrilled to find an anonymous donation of piles of £20 notes left on their doorstep -- a total of £21,480 tucked in a wicker basket.
Over the last three months, living in a chilly tent on the roof of a vacant South Side Chicago motel, Rev. Corey Brooks kept up his vigil against gun violence. On Friday, he was triumphant after a pledge of $98,000 from filmmaker Tyler Perry provided the final push for reaching the pastor's goal of raising $450,000 to buy and demolish the decrepit motel, a haven for drugs and prostitution.
An autistic boy was having a hard time 'letting go' of his nerves while singing a Frozen song – that's when the audience lent him their voices in support.
It wasn't a veteran detective or even a full-time cop who finally caught the man suspected of lighting 52 fires in Los Angeles last week. The hero is an Iranian-born real estate attorney by day, who patrols the LA streets by night as a reserve deputy working for the sheriff's office on nearly a volunteer-basis.
The overwhelming support shown to block club leader Cheryl Walker Williams, whose home was firebombed by drug dealers deserves the praise of the entire community. Walker Williams is a true hero in the city for helping to organize an East Side block club and standing up to ongoing drug dealer intimidation.
Midlife women are flourishing compared with men. Despite the daily gloom of economic predictions, women in midlife are more optimistic about their lives and futures than men are, finds a Gallup-Healthways daily poll of Americans' well-being. It may be key that the most optimistic women spend about six hours a day in social interaction.
Even the police stepped up to the challenge issued by London, Ontario to perform 1000 acts of kindness as a community this October. With just 2 days left, the third annual kindness challenge, issued by the London Urban Services Organization, has likely broken all city records for good deeds.
A new iPhone app launched this week, called LocalHero, lets friends help each other by identifying the people in a person's social network who are nearby and have the right skills or interests to assist with any task or need.
A simple plan is making sure that D.C. children who live in the troubled communities east of the Anacostia River see welcoming black male faces on their way to school in the mornings. Four times a week, at the crack of dawn, he and a small group of men walk the streets greeting students in a process they call "Safe Passage".
Lucas Jatoba was a Brazilian searching for a way to celebrate his 30th birthday. Since moving to Australia he has fallen in love with the people. So he decided to give 30 present to 30 strangers in Sydney and his friends made a video.
Candy Chang turned the side of an abandoned house in her neighborhood into a giant chalkboard that invited people to write down what they aspired to do before they died.
Young American volunteers marked Independence Day by continuing their remarkable clean up on behalf of Japan's tsunami survivors. And, their American-style celebration helped to lift the spirits of the struggling community there.
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