Grade 9 can be difficult and the challenges can seem endless: cliques, changing emotions, and moments of self doubt. But for Katie, grade 9 wasn’t only difficult, it was practically unbearable.
Her earliest memories revolve around pain. The pain of childhood abuse, a broken home, and the insecurity of poverty punctuate all the other memories she […]

Humanitarian:

having concern for or helping to improve the welfare and happiness of people.
a person actively engaged in promoting human welfare and social reforms, as a philanthropist.
a person who professes ethical or theological humanitarianism.

They are everywhere I look:
They are the Davids and the Frantzos in Haiti. The ones who live and work among the world’s […]

The bridge to get there was made of long strips of thin bamboo, loosely wired together. It was precariously laid across a rushing, muddy stream full of garbage and whatever else you can imagine, and I felt torn between taking in my surroundings and trying to focus on not falling through the bamboo to the […]

One moment is all that it takes. One moment where you breathe in, breathe out, and realize that life is never going to be the same. From that point forward, things are irrevocably beyond your control and you are waiting for the world to stop spinning - only it never does. The sun rises and […]

We meet a lot of people - too many to be able to recount or remember. Some of them are with us for a good time, some are with us for a long time and some of them leave an imprint on us for a lifetime. Cassie is like that for me.
There is something very […]

Miracles are cool. I don’t mean the Jesus-in-a-Taco style of miracle or the miracle that comes when you order the Holy Water from the televangelist with a bad hairpiece that’s on TV at 3:00 AM. I mean the kind of miracle that makes you wonder and marvel at the incredible gift […]

I am totally addicted to seeing people happy. I know, I know - happiness is an emotion, joy is a state of being, blah blah blah. But doesn’t it feel good to be happy? To feel that rush of good endorphins bubble up in your stomach, threatening to make you giggle or burst out laughing […]

For many people, a job is a means to an end. They do what they do so they can afford to do what they want to do. There is nothing wrong with that. We all need to eat and live, and we need to have a way to finance that life. Zig Ziglar, one of […]

Ernest Hemingway once described courage as “grace under pressure”. I like that. Especially because I think it describes Iveta’s life.
The first time Cole saw her, he was making his way through one of the nameless tent cities within Port Au Prince. When you are driving by them on the street they are […]

If you are like me, math is not on your grid: numbers float around, but you avoid them like the plague if at all possible. To those of us on this side of the debate, numbers are cold, harsh, and uninspiring. But many people reading this may be the total opposite: numbers give you a […]