The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission this week named 22 individuals as recipients of the Carnegie Medal, given throughout the U.S. and Canada to those who risk their lives to an extraordinary degree while trying to save the lives of others.
Meredith Iler is a powerful persuader won't rest until every severely injured hero in uniform who needs a handicapped-accessible home gets one. Since 2005, as chair of the non-profit organization, Helping a Hero, she's used her powerful contacts with luminaries in the world of politics and industry to raise money to build 25 custom-built homes.
Inspired by a church sermon, an attorney and his wife gave up a dream to buy a boat, and instead will pay college tuition for an entire kindergarten class.
"I want to be like Harold Hamilton," was the constant refrain on blogs and in comments regarding a news report on the 86-year-old hustler. The retired Lutheran pastor buys extra cases of anything on sale in the grocery stores and delivers them to any one of 8 charities in Lincoln Nebraska.
Shykh Seraj is a hero to 140 million Bangladesh farmers, half of whom live on less than one U.S. Dollar a day. His 10-year television show has been teaching impoverished farmers how to better work their fields and rise above grinding poverty.
The Purpose Prize honors "what may be a new trend -- retirees taking on some of the country's biggest social problems." The five winners of the first-ever Purpose Prize, announced today, all 60 years or older, will split half a million dollars.
The Boss is talented; he's cool; and he's even got time to help a young school boy who was rocking out way past his bedtime.
In a remote corner of Ethiopia, a single dilapidated bridge had been critical to the lives of hundreds of thousands of Amhara highlanders who live without running water or electricity and depend on footpaths for their commerce and well-being. "If this bridge is broken, their lives are broken…" Ken Frantz, a former builder from Virginia, […]
Injured veterans are getting help from a custom home builder in Houston, Texas, who recently presented one soldier who'd survived an explosion in Baghdad with an unexpected gift: a home built especially for them, mortgage-free.
American University Law School graduates Whitney Louchheim and Penelope Spain launched a Washington, DC program where volunteers are mentoring juveniles, trying to keep them from returning to jail in the future. Five years later, Mentoring Today now has a solid track record, inspiring mentors to donate more than 1,800 volunteer hours, which have helped more than 30 young men to remake their lives. Last year, the nonprofit raised more than $350,000 from donors and grantmakers to fund its services.
Katie Spotz is a 22 year-old endurance athlete rowing across the Atlantic Ocean. Alone. Along the way she's raising awareness for her cause: clean, viable drinking water.
At the age of 29, Andrew Shelley sat stuck in the same predictable 9 to 5 job as his father, until he decided to set out on a backpacking journey around the world to places where a wheelchair had never been before.
An Oregon truck driver, Junichi Shimizu, who helped save the lives of three people involved in a fiery traffic accident, including a driver who was trapped in his burning vehicle, was awarded the 2009 Goodyear North America Highway Hero.
Armed with a good education, high ideals and the courage to match, Uttam Sanjel created a new answer to the problem of child destitution: the construction of schools quickly and efficiently using bamboo. Bamboo is inexpensive (its use lowers the budget for construction by 60 percent), strong, earthquake-proof and easy to find.
A man toting 120 books while riding a stubborn donkey is a thrilling sight for hundreds of children in the rural villages of Colombia. Luis Soriano is a man with a mission to save rural children from illiteracy.
Nothing in Oprah Winfrey's life has made her prouder than creating her school for girls in Henley-on-Klip, South Africa. And nothing, she says, has given her more headaches.
In the last few years, Washington's great sports impresario and philanthropist suffered from a rare brain disease that robbed him of everything but his burning love of life and sports and his burning desire to help sick children and the poor in Washington and around the world. When he saw children in need, his generosity was boundless.
A Harley-riding Wisconsin senior has been given the National Franciscan Peace Award for 2009, an honor previously given to Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II. Don Ryder works as the Wausau city safety director, but it is his work on a life-saving water project in drought-ridden Africa that earned him the prize.
The Tech Awards is an international program honoring innovators from around the world who are applying technology to benefit humanity. This year's winners received their awards at a Gala yesterday in San Jose, CA.
Olly Neal grew up in Arkansas during the 1950s. He didn't care much for high school. One day during his senior year, he cut class — and wandered into the school library. He stumbled onto a book written by African-American author Frank Yerby. And the discovery changed the life of a teenage boy who was, in Neal's memory, "a rather troubled high school senior."
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