Lesson 36: Extraordinary

BP Oil spill. Kidnappings. Missing children. A bad economy. Unemployment. Two wars.

When we scan the news channels today, it seems like there's an awful lot of bad news. But today I am spending a good portion of my evening researching nonprofit organizations, and all I see is good news. I am completely inspired by the things that people who work in the nonprofit sector
are accomplishing. Here are a few that I learned about today:

Kids Who Give-Kidz Who Give is a national program celebrating and rewarding kids who are active in their communities! These youth being celebrated by this organization range from kids who have organized other young volunteers to kids collecting books to give to underprivileged communities.

Everybody Wins DC-Everybody Wins supplies children in the DC area with positive role model who reads to DC youth and inspires them to read. Volunteering through books? Sounds like a winner to me!

Kidz Helping Kids-Kidz Helping Kids educates and partners with children and adults globally, who want to be the difference. When I perused through this site I read about kids who were collecting money for children being trafficked in Ghana, sending books to the Philippines and starting pen pal programs with children who went through Hurricane Katrina.

DC Scores-DC Scores is pretty special in that it links athletics with academics. Through soccer, poetry & service-learning, DC SCORES inspires youth to lead healthy lifestyles, be engaged students, & become agents of change in the community.

And the best part is that these organizations that focus on teaching kids how to become agents of change early in life are just the "tip of the iceberg." There are so many young people who are working to make a difference. And these are the people who can grow up to fix things like the environmental disasters, financial meltdowns and violence.

I'm completely inspired by the organization I Got Heart, which gives grants up to $500 known as Heart Awards, to young people in the DC for service projects that they design. And just so it doesn't seem like this is just a platform for an organization I love, I've gotta say that in researching these organizations, the greatest thing I've learned from this lesson is that there is hope. There's hope in this generation. There's hope that things will get better. And there's hope that the young people will grow up to be compassionate and concerned citizens prepared to address the problems of the decades to come not because they have to but because they have the heart to do so.