Our 20th Anniversary “Heroes in Action”

Our 20th Anniversary challenge wasn’t easy:

Start dreaming about the most loving, impactful, heroically selfless, and specific story that you can imagine yourself being assigned to help your community or the world. Feel into it. Does your story have heart? Does it potentially have legs? What is the overall budget? Our goal is neither to create your adventure nor entirely fund it. Our goal is to be the catalyst that transforms your dreams and intentions into specific actions that serve the good.

And the dreams poured in—big and small—from all over the world. Dreams of addressing the needs of young children, the developmentally disabled, and survivors of domestic abuse. Dreams of making steps toward cleanliness, basic facilities, and literacy. Dreams of teaching practices like acceptance, working through grief, expressing love, and feeling gratitude. We wish we could have funded them all.

We could fund 12. And we’re now extremely proud to highlight those who were awarded grants and to thank everyone who took the time to commit their dreams to written words. May they all come to be.

Ann McCarthy • Toilets for the Ruhanga Development School • Ruhanga, Uganda

“It’s so rewarding when you see children coming to school,” says Ann McCarthy, lead trustee and founder of the UK charity to support the Ruhanga Development School. Her pragmatic and affectionate approach, along with an enormous dose of respect, is helping this entire village thrive. Her grant will allow them to begin building better toilets for the girls in residence at the school. Her earlier fundraising helped bring clean water and a medical center to this village; they welcome volunteers. (ugandalodge.com)

Micheal Nelson Byaruahanga • Transformative Reading • Buliisa District, Uganda

“In communities where there is only one standpipe for water, where people are hungry, and where jobs are scarce, books are not a luxury,” wrote Micheal Nelson. “They are essential.” His grant will promote reading, books, and writing in a remote district of midwestern Uganda known as Buliisa. (facebook.com/nelson.byaruhangamcrhymes)

Robert Agenonga • Mobile School for Global Citizenship • West Nile, Uganda

“My Mobile School for Global Citizenship is designed to establish career prospects for young people in remote areas and support them in preserving and sharing their culture. The twofold mission of the project is preserving tradition and culture and investing in the present for a sustainable future.” (facebook.com/agenongar)

Erin Hopkins • Donation for Diapers • Roanoke, Virginia, USA

“The donation will go for diapers and wipes to the Parent Life program of Straight Street because the City of Roanoke has historically faced issues of poverty and segregation. This donation will help parents fulfill the fundamental need to keep their children clean.” (straightstreet.org)

Judith Voss • Celebration of Acceptance • Eugene, Oregon

“It is time to bring people with developmental disabilities out of the shadows and into the light so that others can begin to understand the gifts of the light they bring to our world and put an end to shunning those who are different from the dominant paradigm. I want to develop and implement social support training for staff in a group home to create a celebration of acceptance.”

Lisa Pepper-Satkin • Power of Words • San Francisco, California

“The HeartyKid platform is designed to support kids in becoming confident and compassionate human beings by not only teaching them that their words have power, but by showing them how to use their words powerfully to boost their self-esteem, overcome fears, develop emotional security, and uplift others. It is 100% volunteer-run and it will be awesome to fund more programs in the classrooms.” (myheartykid.com)

Irene Greaves • 15 Pillars of Lovescaping • Houston, Texas

“My goal is to create lessons to teach 1st- through 12th-grade students how to love through the intentional and purposeful cultivation of 15 Pillars of Lovescaping: respect, care, honesty, communication, empathy, trust, vulnerability, compassion, humility, patience, solidarity, liberation, hope, gratitude and forgiveness.” (lovescaping.org)

Colleen Daly Ferrand • Books for Children’s Grief • New York, New York

“My goal is to create two beautiful, intimate children’s picture books—one for boys and one for girls—that will soothe, comfort and bring hope and solace to little ones who have lost their mother. In service of this goal, I intend to further refine the manuscripts, illustrate them, self-publish and print them, and then distribute and read copies to children in need.”

Sadhna Jayatunge • Seeds of Achievement • Polpithimukalana, Sri Lanka

“My first goal is to enhance confidence in English by creating a passion for reading books in English for children in the village known as Polpithimukalana. Second is to meet parents of these children and lay the foundation for strength-based parenting by introducing tools for short-circuiting negative thoughts. Third, to conduct a workshop for the teachers and propose creating a learning environment based on teaching character strengths.”

Alison Bowser-Overtveldt • Resilience for Infants • Gatineau, Canada

“I will explore how mindfulness-based approaches to early childhood development could enhance the resilience of infants and toddlers in their capacity to respond to the challenges of this critical stage of human development.” (zerotothree.org)

Juanita Shay • One Million Gratitudes Exchange • Halifax, Canada

“I will create a logo for the One Million Gratitudes Exchange movement, with the intention to design clothing that visually also spreads the movement.” (facebook.com/groups/1020203884794081/)

Maggie Nazer • 5-Day Healing Intensive • Sofia, Bulgaria

“I will design and run a pilot 5-day in-the-nature healing and self-development program for a group of 15 survivors of domestic violence, as well as provide them with financial literacy workshops and personal consultations.”