In the town of Squantum, just southeast of Boston, four little girls found a way to turn the tragedy of the Boston Marathon bombing into a plan of action for good. These ten-year-olds, all best friends, wanted to raise money to help the family of Martin Richard, the 8-year-old boy who died in the bombing.

Squantum is a small bedroom community of just 400 families. It was here the girls set up a lemonade and baked goods stand just outside the Kennedy Library. Though none of the girls personally knew Martin, they knew they wanted to help.

Brigid Norris said the group had hoped to make $100 but had so far raised over $3,000.

The girls, like the rest of the world watched the unfolding stories and learned Martin had been standing near the finish line of the race with his family when the bombs ripped through the area. His mother Denise received a brain injury. Martin’s 6-year-old sister lost a leg in the blast.

Ciara O’Connors is the one who came up with the idea. She said she would want people to help her if this had happened to her.

Trisha Loney, the mother of one of the little do-gooders, Mary Loney, kept vigil over the girls while they sold their goods to an appreciative public. She said the girls saw a picture of Martin and realized he was just like them and all their friends and that put it in perspective for them.

As the money piles up in the little toy cash register they are using, the girls are amazed at their success. Brigid was amazed that four or five people gave $100 and didn’t even take a cookie.

The quartet has pledged to five all the money to the Richard family.

Mary Loney talked about being up till past midnight working on signs and baking brownies. Lauren Manning was excited to be able to do something good.

Customer Tina Dellorfano told the kids what a great thing they were doing when she stopped to buy cookies. She said it is the small moments of goodness that will help us forget the bombing.

This week a study released shows some very good news about a potential new campaign to stop smoking. This time the campaign is aimed directly at youth smokers, specifically teenagers and high school students. According to the study, exercising is a highly effective way to get these students to stop smoking.

The theory behind the study was that the nicotine in a cigarette creates a physical buzz that the kids enjoy. Because the students had been smoking for a year or less in most cases they had not become addicted to the nicotine directly but rather the buzz it provided. Heavy exercise was enough to provide that same buzz to the smokers and remove the need for nicotine or smoking.

Obviously this is still just a preliminary study but researchers say it is absolutely great news for smokers worldwide. This could easily be developed into a nicotine and exercise based stop smoking plan that may become the most successful stop smoking system ever. No word on when a follow up study will be conducted but doctors and researchers are hopeful that this will lead to something major. This is absolutely great news for anyone that has ever seriously struggled with stopping a major smoking habit.

Karen Klein, a grandmother who works as a school bus monitor, has had an unusual week.  It began when four male, middle-school students who regularly ride on her bus began taunting her. Several kids on the bus filmed the events and one video, entitled “Making the School Bus Monitor Cry” was posted on YouTube.

By Wednesday, the video had more than 100,000 hits and since then has reached more than 1,000,000 hits. It shows Klein, sitting on the bus and enduring taunts and cruel remarks from the four boys. They picked on her age, her weight and other factors relentlessly. The video lasts more than 10 minutes.

Klein displays unbelievable control in the face of the bullying she was subjected to. She has spent 20 years as a bus driver and monitor. She says the 4 boys involved have been known to misbehave before but there has never been anything like this, in all her years working with the kids.

Officials from the Greece School District where the students are schooled, along with local police, are looking into the incident. While Klein doesn’t want charges pressed against the boys, she does feel they should be punished and made to publicly apologize.

Where the story takes an amazing turn is in what happened next. The viral video caught the attention of Max Sidorov of Toronto who created a fundraising event on Klein’s behalf.  The “Let’s Give Karen – The bus monitor – H Klein A Vacation” had received more than $100,000 in donations from more than 10,000 online sympathizers by Thursday. As of today, the fund has swelled to $335,000. The fund appears on Indiegogo.com and will conclude July 20, 2012.

The original intention of the fund was to give Klein a vacation, far from the Greece, NY location of the incident to the country of Greece. Now that the funds have surpassed anyone’s wildest dreams, the excess will go to help Klein enjoy her retirement.

 

Klein has been seen on NBC’s Today show with Matt Lauer and on the local news station WHEC out of Rochester, NY. She expresses her thanks to those who have sent her flowers, letters, and email and reached out through Facebook to show their support and to those who have donated on her behalf.

In an effort to familiarize his North Carolina classmates with wheelchair basketball, a 12-year-old boy was working to raise funds for the event when he was robbed of his fund-raising cash.

Nolan Turner was born with spina bifida and had recently gotten involved with the sport which changed his life. His classmates had repeatedly asked about it and Nolan decided to see if he could raise enough money to stage a game locally so they could witness it firsthand.

With his mother, Amy Moore, watching over him from indoors due to her allergies that day, Nolan sat out front of his Cary, N.C. home on March 22 collecting donations. A stranger approached and made idle conversation before snatching the cash jar and making off into the woods with about $250.

Nolan screamed but the man got away. His mother didn’t even realize what had happened until she saw Nolan yelling and then putting his head down on his table. When she went outside, he told her he’d been robbed. Police located the jar with about $100 in change still inside but the cash gone. They continue to search for the man.

Nolan’s goal was to raise $1000 to host a wheelchair basketball event at his Briarwood Elementary School conducted by Bridge II Sports, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping adults and children with challenges be able to play individual and team sports.

Just after the theft, another man approached Nolan and learning of the theft, gave him $60. Since then, as the outside world learned of what happened to Nolan, the support, both emotional and financial, has been overwhelming. His fundraising efforts have now surpassed $25,000. One cruel act has elicited thousands of kind ones.

Turner couldn’t be happier. His classmates will be able to see a wheelchair basketball game close up and personal. Bridges II Sports will host a full-day event at Nolan’s school where the kids can even try the sport out themselves. The extra money will be used to help fund Camp Carefree events. Camp Carefree is a one-week summer camp program for kids with various health problems, which Nolan has attended in the past.

Why is wheelchair basketball so important to Nolan? His mother explains that as they were eating pizza after his very first game, Nolan commented that playing made him feel like a normal person. He’s always been the oddity and this is a place where he can compete and feel good.

Undaunted by his experience, Nolan will next attempt fundraising for track and field wheelchairs which can cost $5000 each. He told his mother he was going to become the Martin Luther King, Jr. of the disabled. Way to go, Nolan.

In Plainsfield Township in Michigan, an unusual event occurred recently. A woman with a cart full of toys came around to the service desk and asked if it would ok for her to donate them.

The stranger also inquired to the clerk if she could reduce the balance or if she could pay off some of the layaways for the store customers. Dannell Goddard, who was working the counter was confused by the request.

She told the lady, identified as just a woman in her 30’s that store policy required that she have an I.D. to pay her layaways. The lady smiled and told her that she didn’t have any store layaways; she would just like to help some of those that did.

The woman looked through nearly 800 tickets and selected 3. She picked ones that had toys in them. All in all she spent about 500 dollars and left a ten dollar balance on the accounts. Dannell reported that the stranger was very excited and happy to pay the money. The stranger said that she had been given much in her life and wanted to return the blessings to someone who deserved it. The lady never gave her name and left the store smiling.

One of the recipients of the strangers’ generosity was interviewed and replied that she wished she could thank the “Secret Santa”. All her layaways were for her only son that she was raising by herself. She had hoped to be able to get the toys out on her next paycheck. Then the store called and her world was turned upside down.

The customer thought it was a joke at first and went to the store to find out. When the customer arrived, she found a receipt with 10 dollars on the balance and a note that said “Happy Holiday from a friend”.

The entire layaway order had been for her 12 year old autistic son. The customer said that she had become weary of the holidays as had some other folks. In an effort to survive, she had adopted the idea that everyone was out for themselves and that life was just one trial after another.

But this Secret Santa had reminded her that there were still people out there that thought of others before themselves. The customer hopes that the person who gifted her with money also knows that her generosity also brought back faith in people as well. The customer has been inspired to one day do the same for someone else.

In that vein, 24 hours after the news report aired, another person paid off 13 more layaways at a total of about 2000.00 dollars.

Secret Santa strikes again.

It seems the slow economic situation is having at least a few positive effects on society as a whole. The most recent good thing to come out of the economic troubles is a reported decrease in teen pregnancy all across the United States. The official report for teen births in 2010 finally came out and the decreasing trend continued but this time the rate decreased even more rapidly.

According to the research group only about 3% of teenagers end up in a situation where they have children, this is a 9% drop from the previous year and almost 20% lower than two years ago. Overall this is great news because it means that kids are being smarter and safer but at the same time analysts say the economic situation has played a major role in the decrease.

For the past 3 years teenagers have been having children substantially less often, each of the past 3 years has set a record low because many teenagers are simply no longer deciding to have children due to money concerns. This has led to a variety of downstream benefits and overall analysts and experts are simply happy to see the continued trend. No word on how much they expect the teenage birth rate to drop next year but analysts are hopeful that the downward trend will continue for the next few years which will help in a variety of ways and will eventually help lead to economic recovery.

Hector Cortez went to Chicago’s Lake View school as a young man. Within the Lake View school there existed a heavy gang influence that translated to join the gang or lose your lunch money. Hector joined the Latin Kings so he could escape the hazing and the gang related trouble that he knew would come to him and his family.

Although Hector became a member or the gang to protect his family, he wanted out so that he could have a better life free of gang influence. In a strange turn of events and an encounter with Modesto Lopez, Hector wound up leaving the rough life of the street gangs and entered a private Christian college.

Modesto Lopez helped Hector with lunch money, books and even car repairs as he mentored the young man. With the help of Modesto Lopez, Hector went on to become a Baptist minister and he obtained a bachelor’s degree in human relations and anthropology.

Today Hector gives back by mentoring in the BIG BROTHERS BIG SISTERS organization to help kids avoid the pitfalls of the street and to find the kind of life he did. After forty years of mentoring he still finds the work fulfilling. He is the chief diversity officer where his experience on the street and his Latino heritage gives him an edge.

Hector supervises many faith based recruitment groups in multicultural areas. His goal is simple; give each kid the same opportunity that Rev Modesto gave to him. Rev. Modesto Lopez was the man who changed Hector’s life and Lopez, now 83, says he saw Hector’s potential. Today that simple act of faith on the part of Lopez has helped Cortez to become a great man.

Cortez remembers fondly how he saw Lopez as a nuisance. He couldn’t understand why Lopez wouldn’t leave him alone. Hector’s father died at 33 and with his mother and 5 more siblings at home, Hector had to grow up. Lopez helped Hector overcome it and Cortez has never forgotten the lessons his mentor taught him.

He still feels that giving back to the world is the greatest work of all. Cortez says that the changes in people are the most amazing of all. He has watched the toughest of men become loving and caring people. One example is a Lutheran minister in Florida. Hector mentored this man and later the minister is modeling some of his own programs after the work that Hector has done. Hector Cortez helps kids off the streets and into a new life.

Royal Oak, Mich. Dr. Richard Keidan, a surgical oncologist at Beaumont Hospital has dedicated his life to performing surgery on Detroit area patients, but he also helps needy people in Nepal by building schools and clinics.

Keidan runs the Miles Levin Nepal Foundation in dedication to 18 year old Miles Levin, who died of a rare form of cancer in 2007. The foundation helps impoverished children in Nepal. 

Keidal says that the lives of the children of Khotang in Nepal are a far cry from Levin’s life and that his goal is to help bridge the gap between the health care and educational opportunities that he had and the ones the children of Khotang don’t have access to.

Keidan first visited Nepal in 1983 to mountain climb and ended up in love with the people and their culture. Now, he spends nearly three months every year there working with the children.

Keidan says there isn’t much resemblance to the Detroit suburbs in Nepal, as there is no communication, no phones, no power, no running water, no toilets, and no way to get anywhere except to walk.

Keidan helps in Nepal by building clinics, schools, and making sure there is clean water and toilets available. The people there help to manage the foundation’s work.

“We go and talk with the people in Khotang and their villages and instead of trying to tell them how to do things. Instead, we ask them what they need so that it’s their ideas, their proposals, and we want them to have a better life for them and their kids,” he said.