Pushpa Basnet, a Nepalese woman who runs a home for children so they don't have to live behind bars with their incarcerated parents, was named the 2012 CNN Hero of the Year on Sunday night. She was in her twenties when she started a home in Kathmandu where children can receive education, food, medical care and a chance to live a more normal life.
Matthew Petronis sat in his dorm room on Oct. 29, watching TV in horror as his childhood home burned down. He felt helpless that night -- but not for long. Only a few hours later, Petronis set up the first fundraiser to help the neighborhood.
An abused Filipino child who lived off a garbage dump has won a prestigious award for the work of his children's charity, which benefits his fellow street kids. Cris Kesz Valdez, aged 13, was handed this year's International Children's Peace Prize at a glittering ceremony in The Hague on Wednesday, where he received a $130,000 prize presented by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Barbara Casados only uses her sewing machine for one thing -- a very special thing. She makes sick children feel better by giving them personalized Superhero capes. It started when she tried to solve the daily fights with her son over wearing clothes to school. She bribed him with the promise of a crusader's cape. Next, she sewed them as a business. But when someone came to her about making them for kids in a cancer ward -- 65 kids -- she couldn't say no to a single one of them.
Five years ago, Leo McCarthy lost his 14-year-old daughter, Mariah, when a drunken driver hit her and two of her friends as they walked down a sidewalk near her home. But he refused to let her tragic death become just another statistic. Knowing that the driver was 20 years old -- not even old enough to drink legally -- McCarthy made an unusual promise to the teenagers attending Mariah's memorial service in Butte, Montana.
A businessman has taken charge of local slum children in New Delhi -- kids as young as two years old, whose impoverished parents sent them out begging on the streets. He envisioned a brighter future for the youngsters outside his door and agreed to be a daily caretaker, hiring tutors to teach them to read. Over the past decade, Arora and his wife have brought about 150 children under their wing.
James Slatcher is being hailed a hero, credited with saving more than 100 lives, after a devastating fire tore through a 36-unit townhouse development in Sutton. The 21-year-old was out playing basketball at around 3 a.m. when he noticed the smoke and sprang into action.
John Legend is going to have to watch his back with this ‘college hunk' winning hearts on the internet.
Spring break may mean beaches, bikinis and beer for some, but students participating in Break Away, a national nonprofit group that steers people to community service projects, are delivering meals to AIDS patients, teaching Native American kids and repairing the environment in Utah.
Positive trends are good news for teen pregnancy and smoking, volunteering and drug use, proving that today's youth are better than they have been in a long time.
The winner of Philadelphia's "Big Brother of the Century award," Tom McElvogue, has been a mentor to many kids over the years. This one was very special.
He was once considered one of the biggest jewel thieves in the United States. He spent 11 years in some of the nation's toughest federal prisons, but on Friday Larry Lawton was sworn in as an honorary police officer -- the first time in the nation an ex-con will receive such an honor. He has dedicated his life to keeping kids on a lawful and successful path.
When two teammates on the Washington Spirit women's pro soccer team, learned where they would live this summer, they thought someone was playing a prank. The one-time Olympic medalists were placed in a retirement community. But it grew on them quickly and surpassed their expectations.
Students will no longer have to choose between exercising their brain in front of a computer screen or working up a sweat at the gym.
A cross-country runner in North Dakota carried an injured competitor across the finish line during a high school track meet, a show of compassion that stood out as other teens kept running.
A teenager devoted his high school senior project to improving the lives of foster children with a special way of making them feel more at home.
In Milwaukee, there's an experiment underway to set at-risk boys on the right path. They're offered pay for doing neighborhood chores and they receive guidance from older men in the community.
Rock star Ozzy Osbourne was so blown away after seeing these kids play his signature song that he sent them a $10,000 donation.
What happens if you give a thousand small PCs to Ethiopian kids who have never even seen a printed word? Within five months, they'll start teaching themselves English while circumventing the security on your OS to customize settings and activate disabled hardware. All, without instruction.
A group of Washington D.C. high school students collected coats for people who needed them, but what made the project more amazing is the fact that the kids wrote encouraging notes and put them inside the pockets as a surprise for recipients.
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