Kathy Broussard started out as part of a volunteer group of pilots flying critically ill patients from all over Texas to Houston for medical treatment. In 1999 she found out some of the patients couldn’t afford the $50 to $100 cab fare from the airport to the treatment centers so she started “Houston Ground Angels” – volunteers driving needy patients to and from treatment centers for free. Eleven years later 50 pilots and 300 drivers participate, having completed 6,000 missions between 2001 and 2010. Broussard is now retired and is a full-time ground angel - whose “groundwork” includes letting patients stay in her home.
Irene Zola’s mother died in a nursing home in 2008, an experience that made Zola want to change the way the elderly are treated. As a resident of Morningside Heights in Manhattan, she researched how the needs of the senior population were being met. In 2009 Zola started “Morningside Village”, a program that pairs the elderly with local volunteers who help them with day-to-day needs. All the elderly and most of the volunteers - ages 18 to 81 - live in a 24-block area. Across the United States 40 million people over age 65 live alone – but alone shouldn’t mean lonely.
Sid Lerner, a 79-year-old former advertising executive, founded the “Meatless Monday” campaign to reduce the amount of fat Americans eat. He started his own nonprofit and has the backing of chefs such as Wolfgang Puck and Mario Batali, as well as a partnership with Johns Hopkins School of Public Health – through which he is reaching school and hospital cafeterias. Lerner’s goal is to have people become aware of how much meat they are eating – 5.6 pounds as a weekly average – by having them slowly change their eating habits – and not bite off more (meat) than they can chew.
The nonprofit Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation funds programs in 8 prisons nationwide to rescue racehorses that are abandoned because they’re not winners, they’re injured or they’re too old. Every year thousands of these racehorses are slaughtered and their meat is sold overseas. However, in these special, pre-release programs prisoners are trained to “gentle” the horses so they can be adopted. While caring for a horse, a prisoner learns compassion and patience, responsibility and self-respect. The prisoners and horses develop a mutual support that begins in shared rejection and ends in a second chance. It’s a new kind of “horsepower”.
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