A surprise gift during an Eastman School of Music concert drew a standing ovation and prompted the conductor to say it was the best moment he'd ever witnessed. Tara Fayazi, a tuba player, works really hard to afford classes at the conservatory but she's never been able to own her own instrument. 11 months ago, her friends began organizing fundraisers to help pay for one.
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.
People are seeking to spread good in the world after the loss of 26 people at a school in Connecticut by doing random acts of kindness in the names of those killed. Connected through the Twitter hashtag #26Acts (or #27Acts, which includes the shooter's mom) and at Facebook.com/26Acts, people are sharing their kindness details to inspire others.
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.
The text from Sister Diane at St. Ignatius Martyr church was as odd as it was urgent: A man is going to call. You must answer the phone. Kerry Ann Troy had just finished her daily cry time – that half-hour between dropping the kids off at school and driving back to her gutted house on New York's Long Island or to the hurricane relief center.
It started as a way for one Montana family to talk about the tragic school shooting of 26 children and adults. Now it's blossoming into an international movement to build a chain of handmade paper hearts to stretch for miles. Organizers will send a first shipment of 10,000 hearts – each linked to another and with its own personal message – this week.
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.
At least four Facebook pages were created to reunite people with photographs, kayaks, wedding invitations and other cherished mementos they thought were lost during Superstorm Sandy. The sites have reunited a woman with her wedding dress, an urn containing cremated ashes with a loved one, a mother with a baby album and the congregation of St. Elisabeth's Chapel-by-the Sea in Ortley Beach, which was destroyed by the storm, with a plaque bearing names.
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.
A program run by the Veterans Administration has successfully placed elderly U.S. vets with families who receive stipends for providing room and board. 1500 veterans are now living with families who want to thank the men for their service and keep them in loving homes instead of hospitals or nursing homes.
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.
Young people who are down on their luck in Los Angeles gave thanks yesterday for My Friend's Place, a privately funded center that has become a haven where homeless youth can nurture fragile dreams. It also gives them what food it can afford, and clothes, toiletries and hot showers.