Some people have great smiles because they have dazzling teeth, and some have teeth that make me cringe - yet I love to see them smile because of how it transforms their face. Some people possess smiles that are not won easily, and when you finally receive one from them it is like a personal […]

When I first heard the news, I remember what one affected teenager was quoted as saying: “It all happened so fast. I feel lost, misplaced. They can’t bring our town back.” It turned out to be true.
When the residents of Slave Lake, Alberta went to bed one Saturday night in May, many of them were […]

When money passes quickly through your fingers, it can be easy to forget its value. It’s almost as if it magically (and sometimes, thankfully) drops out of the ABM when you punch in that not-so-secret code. It shows up in our accounts on payday, and disappears a few days later. Our laissez-faire view of money […]

“Ok, so tell me your best life moment,” I asked the group of one hundred students sitting on the floor facing me.
When I asked those words to that group of high school students I was looking forward to hearing their answers. First of all, we were in Alberta, and I half expected the […]

As of today, there are very few answers - only more questions. There will always be so much about the story that we will never know. How did she end up there? What led up to that moment? What was she thinking when it happened? Did she remember that there were people that loved her […]

I know Christmas is technically December 25th, but when you have never experienced Christmas, you don’t even care what day it is. You only care that someone took the time to think of you. That’s why when Christmas came to northern Thailand at the end of this past February; no one was too uptight, because […]

Like the rest of the people in that tiny, obscure village, he is dirt poor. But he has something that few others in his situation have: transportation. It comes in the form of a horse.
His horse is a far cry from a ‘trusty steed’. In fact, I would probably say it is more like a […]

They perform 66% of the world’s work, earn only 10% of its income, and own only 1% of the world’s property. The girl child has been unofficially dubbed as being endangered due to infanticide, sexual exploitation and statelessness. And yet, the world not only needs women for obvious reasons, the world needs women because of […]

I don’t think Shane ever pictured himself doing this. I am going to guess that he never, ever wanted to think about it again. But this time, when it came back to him, he was ready for it.
His earliest memory was coming through the front door of his house at the age of five, and […]

I first met him in the summer of 2007, in Dominican Republic. He was taking in some shade under the only tree that was close to where he worked: in the garbage dump. We would often sit there and chatter, me in my terrible Spanish and him rattling off in Creole and Spanish and smiling […]