Inspirational News StoriesExcerpts of Key Inspirational News Stories in Major Media
Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.
The University of Utah student who foiled a federal oil and gas lease auction the Friday before Christmas hopes he can buy time for Utah's scenic redrock desert - and himself - until the Bush administration is out the door. Tim DeChristopher announced Wednesday afternoon that he would pay the U.S. Bureau of Land Management $45,000 to hold the 13 lease parcels he won in a Dec. 19 sale. The 27-year-old economics major faces possible federal felony charges after winning bids totaling about $1.8 million on 13 lease parcels that he admitted he had neither the intention nor the money to pay for. But since committing what he called an act of civil disobedience, DeChristopher has heard from hundreds of individuals around the country willing to chip in to keep drill rigs off the land and DeChristopher out of prison. So far, would-be benefactors have pledged $14,000, he said. The amount is based on a percentage of the $1.8 million; the agency requires such payments of all bidders to hold their parcels. Three Web sites have been set up to take pledges: www.wateradvocacy.org, www.oneutah.org, [and] www.bidder70.org. The 13 bids [DeChristopher] won by raising his auction paddle were on 22,000 acres of land near Arches and Canyonlands national parks. [He] admitted he ran up other bids by about $500,000 and said he would be willing to go to jail to defend his generation's prospects in light of global climate disruption and other environmental threats.
Sometimes a book, or an idea, can be obscure and widely influential at the same time. That’s the case with Ecotopia, a 1970s cult novel, originally self-published by its author, Ernest Callenbach, that has seeped into the American groundwater without becoming well known. The novel, now being rediscovered, speaks to our ecological present: in the flush of a financial crisis, the Pacific Northwest secedes from the United States, and its citizens establish a sustainable economy, a cross between Scandinavian socialism and Northern California back-to-the-landism, with the custom ... to eat local. In the ’70s, the book, with a blurb from Ralph Nader, was a hit, selling 400,000 or so copies in the United States, and more worldwide. Today, Ecotopia is increasingly assigned in college courses on the environment, sociology and urban planning, and its cult following has begun to reach an unlikely readership: Mr. Callenbach, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., and calls himself a “fringe, ’60s person,” has been finding himself invited to speak at many small religious colleges. This month, the book’s publisher, Bantam, is reissuing it. “For a while it seemed sort of antique to people,” said Mr. Callenbach, a balding and eerily fit man of 79. But now that you go out into America and young society, it apparently doesn’t seem that weird to them at all. "It is so hard to imagine anything fundamentally different from what we have now,” he said. “But without these alternate visions, we get stuck on dead center. And we’d better get ready,” he added. “We need to know where we’d like to go.”
In June, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life published a controversial survey in which 70 percent of Americans said that they believed religions other than theirs could lead to eternal life. This threw evangelicals into a tizzy. After all, the Bible makes it clear that heaven is a velvet-roped V.I.P. area reserved for Christians. But the survey suggested that Americans just weren’t buying that. The evangelicals complained that people must not have understood the question. The respondents couldn’t actually believe what they were saying, could they? So in August, Pew asked the question again. Sixty-five percent of respondents said — again — that other religions could lead to eternal life. But this time, to clear up any confusion, Pew asked them to specify which religions. The respondents essentially said all of them. And they didn’t stop there. Nearly half also thought that atheists could go to heaven — dragged there kicking and screaming, no doubt — and most thought that people with no religious faith also could go. What on earth does this mean? One very plausible explanation is that Americans just want good things to come to good people, regardless of their faith. We meet so many good people of different faiths that it’s hard for us to imagine God letting them go to hell. In fact, in the most recent survey, Pew asked people what they thought determined whether a person would achieve eternal life. Nearly as many Christians said you could achieve eternal life by just being a good person as said that you had to believe in Jesus.
A Dutchman who is able to withstand freezing temperatures that would kill most people will submerge himself in icy water for almost two hours in a world record bid. Wim Hof, known as "The Ice Man", has spent the last 20 years testing his talent in the most extreme conditions from scaling mountain tops wearing nothing but a pair of shorts to swimming under sheets of ice [at] the north pole. Now he is set to break his own world record by submerging himself in a Plexiglas container filled with ice at temperatures as low as -20 degrees for more than 1 hour 45 minutes. Mr Hof discovered his unusual talent over 20 years ago during a stroll in the park in his native Holland. "I was really attracted to it. I went in, got rid of my clothes. Thirty seconds I was in and a tremendous good feeling when I came out and since then, I repeated it every day." It was the moment that Mr Hof knew that his body was different somehow: he was able to withstand fatally freezing temperatures. Mr Hof began a lifelong quest to see just how far his abilities would take him. In 2000, dressed only in a swimsuit, he dove under the ice at the North Pole and earned a Guinness World Record for the longest amount of time swimming under the ice. Whilst many scientists around the world find Mr Hof's ability an anomaly, Mr Hof says it is merely a case of mind over matter. Practising an ancient Himalayan meditation called "Tummo," or Inner Fire, Mr Hof says he can generate his own heat. Mr Hof now travels the world teaching the technique through his record attempts, lectures and talks.
Stefan Lyon has many titles: Author, humanitarian, international philanthropist. And seventh-grader. Stefan has just finished his third book about his San Francisco adventures with his pet rats. As with his first two books, all proceeds go to build schools in Africa. "I want to help the less fortunate," said Stefan, 13, at a recent book signing at a law firm in a downtown high-rise. "There are a lot of AIDS orphans in Africa." For $5,000, he financed the conversion of an abandoned cowshed in Kakamega, Kenya, into a two-room school. He's now halfway through construction of an eight-room school for 100 children ... in the neighboring village of Bungoma. Stefan is on a book promotion tour for the holidays, hoping to raise the last $30,000 to finish the school. Stefan, who has his own nonprofit, the Stefan Lyon Foundation, knows that he's not a typical 13-year-old, but he also doesn't know what all the fuss is about. Stefan was always a compassionate child. "He'd sit with the kids who got bullied at school until they felt better," [his mother] said. By elementary school, Stefan passed out cookies and blankets to the homeless at the Civic Center from his red wagon. He'd insert notes in the cookie bags: "I'm thinking of you." "God loves you." In the third grade at St. Brendan School, he was inspired by his teacher, Renée McHugh, who gave a lesson on Africa and explained how little money was needed to build schools for orphans. He wanted to sell cookies from his wagon to finance an African school. A supermarket gave him free cookie dough, and he got to work.
Happiness is contagious. The more happy people you know, the more likely you are yourself to be happy. And getting connected to happy people improves a person's own happiness, [a research team] reported in the British Medical Journal. "What we are dealing with is an emotional stampede," Nicholas Christakis, a professor of medical sociology at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said. Christakis and James Fowler, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, have been using data from 4,700 children of volunteers in the Framingham Heart Study, a giant health study begun in Framingham, Massachusetts in 1948. They have been analyzing a trove of facts from tracking sheets dating back to 1971, following births, marriages, death, and divorces. Volunteers also listed contact information for their closest friends, co-workers, and neighbors. They assessed happiness using a simple, four-question test. "People are asked how often during the past week, one, I enjoyed life, two, I was happy, three, I felt hopeful about the future, and four, I felt that I was just as good as other people," Fowler said. The 60 percent of people who scored highly on all four questions were rated as happy, while the rest were designated unhappy. People with the most social connections -- friends, spouses, neighbors, relatives -- were also the happiest, the data showed. "Each additional happy person makes you happier," Christakis said. "It is not just happy people connecting with happy people, which they do. Above and beyond, there is this contagious process going on." And happiness is more contagious than unhappiness, they discovered.
As a plastic surgeon, [Geoff] Williams could live in a sprawling house, cruise in a snazzy sports car and wear custom-made shoes instead of the $5 pair he snagged at the thrift store a few years back. Instead he spends his money on hundreds of strangers, half a world away. Grown men with rope-like tumors engulfing their eyes, nose, lips. Teenage girls with heads cocked permanently to one side because of burn-tightened skin. But mostly children — with faces split up the middle like a half-open zipper. Williams invests in faces. As he worked and taught in wealthy hospitals, his mind was preoccupied with thoughts of the hundreds of desperate mothers in Vietnam who had swarmed him during a volunteer training trip, thrusting their deformed babies at him and begging for help. Only 20 babies were treated that trip; about 180 were sent away. "Leaving, looking down at those lights, I knew these mothers were going home with total disappointment," Williams recalls. "I remember making a promise to myself then, to those mothers: I may not be able to find you, but I'll find someone like you. I'll come back. I'll do more." Several months later, he took another volunteer trip, this time to India. "I thought I'd do it a couple of times and get it out of my system. After about a year, it just hit me — it would not be easy to stop doing it." He took a leave of absence from the University of Texas in 2003 to immerse himself in treating the forgotten patients in developing countries. He never went back.
Over sandwiches and pizza, a group of high school students here debated the pros and cons of combating poverty in five desperate nations. They scrolled through Web sites, analyzed statistics and considered how much they knew about the economy, language and culture of each country. This was no mere academic exercise. The students, at the Meadows School, have real decisions to make and, they hope, real people to rescue. By the time they scattered after their lunch period, the group had deferred until next month the decision on where to spend the $25,000 they had raised, but seemed to be leaning toward Peru. That may seem like a lot of money for a student group, but it was the entry fee for the school to become investors in Pro Mujer, a nonprofit lending institution based in New York that issues small loans to poor women in foreign countries to use for buying tools to start or expand small businesses. In raising the money and investing it with Pro Mujer, the Meadows School is by all accounts the first high school to operate a microbank. The founder of the Meadows Microcredit Action Group, Justin Blau, 17, and its faculty adviser, Kirk Knutsen, have bigger plans for their endeavor. Pro Mujer will mete out the $25,000 to recipients in the country the students select and return to the school both regular status reports as well as a modest amount of earned interest. The group plans to use that interest and other money raised locally to invest in smaller, more specific projects through Kiva, another microfinance lender, with no minimum entry requirement.
Note: For lots more on the exciting, amazingly successful microlending movement, click here.
There is hunger in the forest at night. It is the witching hour of stealth and surprise, when wolf packs hunt their prey. Using a natural calculus of speed and distance, wolves drive their quarry deep into the snow. The chases end with an assault of teeth and snarls. Learning what's beyond the menace is not for the faint of heart. But Shaun Ellis and his girlfriend Helen Jeffs are willing to risk their lives and leave behind the last remnants of a human existence to survive in the world of the wolf. "It's almost like the wolf brings out a subconscious in you, a way of dealing with the world," Ellis said. But to do so, Ellis and Jeffs have to become wolves themselves. "Lose your human, think wolf," Ellis said to Jeffs. It is a skill he has honed in the last few decades. He has done what many scientists thought impossible and has become an accepted member of a captive wolf pack. "This is the way that you need to study these animals. Get close to their world. And then they will share their secrets," he said. As a man living among wolves, Ellis bade farewell to the comforts of human society and took his place on the ground to learn the ways of a canine hierarchy. He created his own sanctuary to study captive wolf behavior at the Coombe Martin Wildlife Park, on England's southwest coast. His goal is to find ways for wolves to peacefully co-exist with ranchers whose cattle are susceptible to attack. At a nearby pub one night, he met a woman who discovered she was fascinated both by the wolves and the man living among them. Jeffs became Ellis' assistant. And later on, something more.
Note: Don't miss the amazing and touching five-minute video of this love affair at the link above.
Paul Rice stands at the edge of a dirt road, overlooking the volcanic peaks and adobe homes of this small Nicaraguan town near the border with Honduras. On a visit to the coffee-growing hills above San Lucas, Rice cultivated what would later become the American fair trade movement. Founded in 1998 in a converted warehouse in downtown Oakland, TransFair USA began as a bare-bones operation with an unusual premise - put more money in the pockets of farmers in the developing world by persuading consumers thousands of miles away to pay a premium in the name of social justice. Modeled after organic produce and dolphin-safe tuna, Rice started the organization with the stark black and white label that told shoppers their coffee came from farmers who received a "fair price." Ten years later, Rice and his family spend every July in Nicaragua, visiting family and friends and working on fair trade issues. In San Lucas, Rice huddled with Santiago Rivera, a 67-year-old cooperative coffee farmer he calls "the real Juan Valdez." Until the Sandinista Revolution in 1979, Rivera worked on a private coffee plantation making less than 50 cents a day. When the new government acquired the farm, Rivera and some 20 other farmers were given the land to work collectively. TransFair says it has generated some $110 million in extra income for small coffee farmers like Rivera. "The great thing about fair trade is that when the market price would fall, we'd have the guarantee of a decent price," Rivera said. "When it'd go up, we'd get more. The great thing is the stability."
Note: For those who are not aware of the paradigm-busting fair trade movement, consider educating yourself on this wonderful new way of doing business by clicking here.
Scott Mackler was a husband, father and successful neuroscientist when he received perhaps the worst news imaginable. At the age of 40, he could run a marathon in three and a half hours, but it was about that time he discovered he had ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease. His brain was losing its connection to virtually every muscle in his body. Today, Scott Mackler's mind is sharp as ever, but his body has failed. Doctors call it "locked in" syndrome. Scott and his wife Lynn learned to communicate with about the only thing he has left, eye movement. To signal "yes," Lynn says Scott looks at her; to signal "no," he looks away. [Yet Scott can now write] words, one letter at a time, with nothing but his thoughts and the help of what's called a brain computer interface or "BCI." He wears a cap that picks up the electrical activity of his brain and allows him to select letters simply by thinking about them. Then the computer turns his sentences into speech. "I hate being helpless and when other people put words in my mouth," he wrote. It isn't fast. It takes 20 seconds or so to select each letter. But he writes well enough to continue his research and manage his lab at the University of Pennsylvania, where he still goes to work everyday. Asked what it has meant to their relationship, Scott's wife Lynn tells Pelley, "Well, he's happier. He can communicate with not just us, but with the world. This gave him his independence. His working, intellectual, scientist independence back."
Just imagine what you might do if a doctor said you have only two weeks left to live. For 11-year-old Brenden Foster ... who was given that prognosis earlier this year after learning he was suffering from leukemia ... the answer was probably not what you'd expect. Instead of asking for an expensive toy or a fancy vacation, he decided to focus all his remaining energy on feeding the homeless. "They're probably starving, so give them a chance," he said. He was too weak to do it himself, but his determination caught on near his home in Seattle, where neighbors and residents launched a food drive. His story touched people so deeply that it spread, inspiring food drives from Los Angeles to Pensacola, Fla. In just two weeks, an 11-year-old boy, too sick to even work a paper route, has raised tens of thousands of dollars and brought in truckloads of donations to local food pantries. "When I told him he was dying, he cried," his mother recalled. "And he said, 'When I get to heaven I'm going to ask God why it had to be so soon because I had so much more I wanted to do.' Everything that he wanted to do was to help others and to benefit others." Foster, who devoted his final days to lifting others up, became bedridden. The kid who could once outrun any of his friends could no longer walk. Last week, Foster could hardly keep his eyes open, but he didn't waiver from his wish. "'Tis the season to give," he said. Foster lived long enough to see his dream come alive, before dying in his mother's arms Friday morning. "Follow your dreams, don't let anything stop you," Foster said.
It wasn't immediately obvious to Walter Semkiw that he was the reincarnation of John Adams. Semkiw is a doctor. In 1984, a psychic told the then [skeptical] medical resident and psychiatrist-in-training that he is the reincarnation of a major figure of the Revolution, possibly Adams. But one day in 1995, when Semkiw was the medical director for Unocal 76, the oil company, he heard a voice in his head intoning, "Study the life of Adams!" Now he found details much more telling than those silly coincidences he had learned a dozen years earlier. It was all so persuasive, thought Semkiw ... that as a man of science and reason whose work requires him to critically evaluate empirical evidence, he had to accept that he was Adams reincarnated. If you have never had a paranormal experience ... you are in a lonely minority. According to periodic surveys by Gallup and other pollsters, fully 90 percent of Americans say they have experienced such things or believe they exist. Raised as a Roman Catholic, Semkiw is driven by a what-if optimism. If only people could accept reincarnation, he believes, Iraq's Sunnis and Shiites might stop fighting (since they might be killing someone who was once one of them). He is dismissive of the idea that reincarnation has not been empirically proved. That was the status of everything science has since proved, be it the ability of atoms to vibrate in synchrony (the basis of the laser) or of mold to cure once-lethal infections (penicillin). Dedicated to the empirical method, Semkiw believes the world is on the brink of "a science of spirituality."
Note: This article overall is strongly dismissive of paranormal phenomena, yet it contains some interesting information. For Semkiw's website on the return of the revolutionaries, click here. For an excellent essay on how science is sometimes blind to new concepts, click here.
The great watershed event of this present chapter in American life has been the 9/11 attacks and all that has ensued in response, both in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as here at home. The terms in which the attacks were understood and the framework in which the U.S. would respond were laid out very quickly after 9/11 by the president. It was a battle of good against evil, "us" vs. "them." We Americans were encouraged to think of ourselves as "good and compassionate," terms in which the president frequently described us, while those who opposed us were evil people who "hated our freedom." I can go along with this a little ways. The attacks of 9/11 were an appalling evil. Where the line is drawn between good and evil is another matter. The Soviet dissident and author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, "If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being." Lincoln resisted the temptation that comes in every time of conflict and fear, in every polarized situation, to draw the line between good and evil between the two sides. Lincoln famously wrote, "In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party." That is not to say that Lincoln doubted that slavery was evil. He did not. But he refused to claim his own side as God's or to depict, as Bush does, any who opposed him as the embodiment of evil.
The crowds that 25-year-old Nick Vujicic draws as an evangelist would have been unimaginable only a few years ago, and impossible had he been born under other circumstances. "In some third world countries ... I would be seen as cursed, a shame to the family," said Vujicic (pronounced VOY-chich). "The possibilities of me being killed at my birth would have been quite high." But Vujicic, who was born without arms or legs, does have one of the most powerful of all human attributes: a voice. Through the ministry he calls Life Without Limbs and a motivational program titled "Attitude is Altitude," Vujicic said he has made 1,600 speaking appearances in 12 nations. "No matter who you are, no matter what you're going through, God knows it," he said. "He is with you. He is going to pull you through." Like all skilled evangelists, he can imagine the deepest vulnerabilities of his listeners, especially among teenage audiences. "I used to think that I needed my circumstance to change before I had any hope," he said. "I wanted to know that there was someone else out there in my position, to know that there is hope, that there is more than just the little box that I see in my life." He cannot avoid the reasons why people are fascinated by his physical condition, and he uses it to his advantage in his speeches, often delivered from a tabletop in front of the audience. He says it lends credibility "to know that somebody has been through something, that they've learned something that you know you need to apply in your own life."
Note: Watch an amazing four-minute video titled "No arms, no legs, no worries," on this inspiring man. Nick has overcome challenges that are almost guaranteed to make your problems seem like nothing.
Barack Obama is alone on this Saturday afternoon in the city, his press secretary nowhere in sight. He's not carrying anything with him. Not even notes. Yet he appears confident as he answers questions about his spiritual life, a subject that would make many politicians -- on or off the campaign trail -- more skittish than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. If an hourlong conversation about his faith unnerves him, Obama's not letting on. The first question he fields without hesitation: What does he believe? "I am a Christian," the 42-year-old ... says. "So, I have a deep faith," Obama continues. "I'm rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there's an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived." It's perhaps an unlikely theological position for someone who places his faith squarely at the feet of Jesus to take, saying essentially that all people of faith -- Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, everyone -- know the same God. That depends, Obama says, on how a particular verse from the Gospel of John, where Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me," is heard. "Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion," he says. "I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure."
Note: For those who want to understand the spiritual beliefs of Barack Obama, the full article at the link above is highly recommended. Even better, for the powerful transcript of this interview between the religion columnist of the Sun-Times and Obama, click here.
Jules Dervaes and three of his adult children live on one-fifth of an acre in Pasadena, Calif., a block away from a multilane highway. On this tiny sliver of land, they manage to be mostly self-sufficient. “This is our form of protest,” says Dervaes, who is 60, “and this is our form of survival.” The family harvests 6,000 pounds and more than 350 separate varieties of fruits, vegetables and edible flowers annually. They brew the biodiesel fuel that powers the family car. Solar panels on their roof reduce energy bills to as little as $12 a month. Goats, chickens, ducks and two rescued cats are in residence. Red wiggler worms turn the kitchen and garden waste into compost, which is then recycled back into the garden. Dervaes’s father worked for Standard Oil, but his son took a markedly different path. Dervaes moved into his current Pasadena home in 1985 — temporarily, he thought. As the years passed and his hopes of relocating to the country were delayed, he “decided that he wanted to see how much we could grow here,” says his 33-year-old daughter, Anais. The family generates cash for their limited expenses by selling produce to local restaurants. Though Dervaes and his children are accustomed to the neighbors’ strange looks at their crowded lot, the local chefs don’t seem to share the skepticism. “They’ll call me in the morning and pick the amount that I need for that night,” says Jim McCardy, who owns Marstons, a restaurant in Pasadena. “The flavor is just incredible.”
Note: A full-length documentary is being made of this wonderful family. To watch an engaging two-minute trailer, click here. See their highly popular website at http://www.pathtofreedom.com.
What if leaders of the world’s major religions got together one day and denounced all religious violence? What if they unanimously agreed to make this plain, clear and bold statement to the world? “Violence and terrorism are opposed to all true religious spirit and we condemn all recourse to violence and war in the name of God or religion.” It could change the world. More than 200 leaders of the world’s dozen major religions did get together January 24 in Assisi, Italy. Pope John Paul II and a number of cardinals were at the meeting. So was Bartholomew I, spiritual leader of all Orthodox Christians. So were a dozen Jewish rabbis, including some from Israel. So were 30 Muslim imams from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan. So were dozens of ministers representing Baptists, Lutherans, Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, Disciples of Christ, Mennonites, Quakers, Moravians, The Salvation Army and the World Council of Churches. So were dozens of monks, gurus and others representing Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Zoroastrians and native African religions. They unanimously agreed to condemn “every recourse to violence and war in the name of God or religion.” They also said, “No religious goal can possibly justify the use of violence by man against man.” And that “Whoever uses religion to foment violence contradicts religion’s deepest and truest inspiration.” They called their statement the Assisi Decalogue for Peace. Maybe you missed the story. It didn’t even make the newspapers the next day, hidden inside or not. What if leaders of the world’s major religions got together one and denounced all religious violence - and no one cared?
Note: Why is it that news about war and terrorism so frequently makes headlines, but the amazing news that leaders of religions from around the world got together to denounce all violence in the name of God and religion did not even warrant an article or story in any major media?
An outraged sheriff in Illinois who refuses to evict ... renters from foreclosed homes criticized mortgage companies ... and said the law should protect victims of the mortgage meltdown. Sheriff Thomas J. Dart said earlier he is suspending foreclosure evictions in Cook County, which includes the city of Chicago. The county had been on track to reach a record number of evictions, many because of mortgage foreclosures. "Many good tenants are suffering because building owners have fallen behind on their mortgage payments," he said Thursday on CNN's "American Morning." "These poor people are seeing everything they own put out on the street. ... They've paid their bills, paid them on time. Here we are with a battering ram at the front door going to throw them out. It's gotten insane," he said. Mortgage companies are supposed to identify a building's occupants before asking for an eviction, but sheriff's deputies routinely find that the mortgage companies have not done so, Dart said. "This is an example where the banking industry has not done any of the work they should do. It's a piece of paper to them," Dart said. "These mortgage companies ... don't care who's in the building," Dart said. "They simply want their money and don't care who gets hurt along the way. "On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We're not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We're just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today. When you're blindly sending me out to houses where I'm coming across innocent tenant after innocent tenant, I can't keep doing this and have a good conscience about it."
Note: For many reports of corporate corruption from reliable sources, click here.
Drew Chafetz, 25, a graduate of the private Maret School with a degree in economics from the University of Colorado, makes no money. He lives with his parents in Northwest Washington, sleeping in the same poster-filled basement room of his teenage years. But Chafetz, despite failure-to-launch appearances, is no slacker. He is actually on an alternative achievement track popular with his generation: social entrepreneurship. Using cheap Internet phone service and free coffee-shop wireless, Chafetz works full time on a project he founded called love.fútbol. The nonprofit organization helps build low-maintenance soccer fields in Guatemalan communities where children often have no place to play except garbage-strewn lots or hard-to-reach fields. Social entrepreneurship, the movement in which people launch nonprofit or business ventures to address systemic problems in impoverished areas, emerged nearly three decades ago and is growing in appeal among young adults who want to help vulnerable people. Rather than working their way up at a government agency or large nonprofit, Chafetz and others in their 20s or early 30s are leveraging business partnerships, grants and donations for their own initiatives to do good in the world. Every generation has its altruists. But many Millennials, born in the late 1970s or early '80s, are displaying a notable urgency to make social change. UCLA's national poll of college freshmen has found that ... about 70 percent of incoming freshmen in 2007 said it's "essential or very important" to help others in difficulty, the highest that figure has been in 36 years.
Note: For lots more inspiring stories from major media sources, click here.
Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.