What do you do when a wedding you've planned for months is suddenly cancelled? The Fowler Family of Atlanta didn't let the four course meal and reception venue go to waste. They invited 200 of the city's destitute to join them.
As 91-year-old John Jack Potter faced eviction from the house he built and lived in for 56 years, his granddaughter decided to act. She set up a donation campaign on the website, Go Fund Me, and her story about the WWII combat vet losing his home attracted more than 5000 people who gave $138,000.
Katie Jones set up a big white board in her kitchen, numbering 1 to 34, she listed ways to make people happy in celebration of her 34th birthday. She placed a bag of quarters in a Laundromat. She left five dollars on the floor in the dollar store. She gave a Subway sandwich gift card to a homeless man.
A blogger on Tumblr shared an inspiring story about her mom who is a waitress and her long-time dream to go to Italy and visit her family's roots. She was telling a diner that her family is from Florence, but she's never been there. This man who we have never seen before tipped her $1,000 dollars for a trip to Italy. Walked out, not another word.
Proof that human kindness and generosity has not gone out of style, a wedding planner worked for weeks with volunteers and vendors in April to create the Wedding of a Lifetime for cancer patient, Jennifer Batugo and her fiance Brian Gargano. They needed a last minute date change for their planned August wedding because the bride may not live that long.
The power of social media was revealed on Reddit when regulars there rallied to provide aid to victims of the Boston Marathon bombings. Overnight, heroes were recognized and thousands of netizens donated to those people everything from pizzas to rooms with hot showers to free miles for airline flights. (CS Monitor)
Donors have flooded crowdfunding campaigns set up for individual victims of Monday's bombings at the Boston Marathon, raising more than $1 million in a matter of days. The campaign for newlyweds who both lost limbs has raised $518,971.
Mr. Rogers offered a famous answer to the question of what to tell children when scary things happen on the news. It holds true for all of us if we want to learn about what happened in Boston yesterday: Look for the helpers. We can always focus on the actions of the helpers, if we want to feel better.
A generous gift is making life more enjoyable for children at UNC Children's Hospital. It's a video game built with the same materials as real race cars. The lime green racing simulator won't be found in any arcade; Mark Smith designed it specifically with patients like Dylan in mind.
After she declined to play and all her coworkers won a million dollars in the Powerball Jackpot, the office manager of a real estate company, who was hired just three weeks ago, found out why the group calls itself a family. None of them hesitated to share a portion of their $83,000 net winnings with 'the new girl'.
In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, many Connecticut residents continue to struggle to recover their livelihoods and to provide nutritious food, safe shelter, transportation, clothing, and medical supplies for their families. A philanthropic family from Northwest Connecticut, who wishes to remain anonymous, has stepped in to help.
A lot of national attention has been showered on Billy Ray Harris, a panhandler in Missouri, after he returned a diamond engagement ring that accidentally dropped into his change cup when a woman was pouring in the contents of her change purse. The woman's husband, Bill Krejci, was so grateful for the honest man's efforts to return the ring, and so many friends asked how they could help, that a fundraising page was set up for Billy Ray on Feb. 14. As of this morning, Feb. 23, the Give Forward page just passed $100,000.
Al Capri pays just 50 cents for his therapy sessions and thousands of children have benefitted. Al's therapy comes from sitting in front of the claw machine, meticulously grabbing stuffed toys with the claw using concentration of a surgeon. He always wins the toys, which he donates by the boxful to needy kids.
This week, a Walmart store in Hastings, Mich., received a $10,000 check from an anonymous donor to pay off 43 customers' layaway accounts in their entirety, no strings attached. Anonymous donors such as this one are showing up across the country at some of the nation's biggest retailers.
In a show of seasonal goodwill, coffee drinkers in line at a Winnipeg drive-through paid it forward for 228 customers in a row on Friday, according to the staff at Tim Hortons. A customer at the Manitoba coffee shop started the chain by paying for his own order and the order for the car behind him. Inspired by the generosity, drivers paid it backward for the next three hours.
Jean Kabre is the concierge and event planner at 101 Constitution — a place full of people focused on power, influence, and Congressional lobbying. But when word got out that Kabre was helping support dozens of family members in his home village in Burkina Faso, the people whom Kabre had come to know as his friends, pitched in at astounding levels.
Even those hit hard financially by the devastation of Hurricane Sandy themselves, were reaching out to help families in Queens, N.Y., who are still in need 17 days later. One businessman who lost $160,000 in inventory still thought to use his Thanksgiving as a time to serve those worse off.
Someone called The Turkey Fairy has been leaving blankets, hats and gloves at a Cleveland bus stop in the middle of the night. On Monday morning, the items were discovered with a note that read, "Happy Thanksgiving. Take gloves, hats, blankets, & stay warm. Love, The Turkey Fairy."
17 years ago, a retired couple in Utah started making handmade wooden toys for poor and sick children. The little cars and trucks were received so enthusiastically in the local hospital, a workshop was set up which has since delivered more than 1.1 million toys to kids around the world. News spread around Cedar City telling of a Happy Factory where retired couples could come to laugh and give their time in a collective effort to make kids happy around the globe.
Friends answered the call on a sister's Facebook page to re-fill the heart of a woman with severe Multiple Sclerosis. They supplied things that most people would take for granted. What started as a dismal situation turned into a heart-warming campaign that spread across the social network like a friendly virus.
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