When Katie Davis Majors moved to Uganda, accidentally founded a booming organization, and later became the mother of thirteen girls through the miracle of adoption, she determined to weave her life together with the people she desired to serve. But joy often gave way to sorrow as she invested her heart fully in walking alongside people in the grip of poverty, addiction, desperation, and disease. After unexpected tragedy shook her family, for the first...

"When he graduated from Harvard Medical School, Jim O'Connell was asked by the medical school Dean to spend one year setting up a program to care for the homeless population in Boston. It became Jim O'Connell's life calling, to help people known as "rough sleepers." For the past three decades, Dr. O'Connell has run the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program, which he helped to create. Affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital, the program...

"An ethnographic sociologist by training, Mary Gatta went undercover as a client in a New Jersey One Stop Career Center. One Stop Centers, developed as part of the federal Workforce Investment Act, are supposed to be an unemployed worker's go-to resource on the way to re-employment. But, with swarms of new clients coming through their doors, are these centers fit for the task of pairing America's workforce with new jobs? Weaving together her account...

"A beautifully told, inspiring true story of one woman's volunteer experiences at an orphanage in rural Cambodia - a book that embodies the belief that love, compassion, and generosity of spirit can overcome even the most fearsome of obstacles. Gail Gutradt was at a crossroads in her life when she learned of the Wat Opot Children's Community. Begun with just $50 in the pocket of Wayne Matthysse, a former Marine Corps medic in Vietnam, Wat Opot, a...

"Liz Hauck and her dad had a plan to start a weekly cooking program in a residential home for teen-aged boys in state care, which was run by the human services agency he co-directed. When her father died unexpectedly after a brief illness, Liz decided to attempt the cooking project without him. She didn't know what to expect volunteering with court-involved youth, but as a high school teacher she knew that teenagers are drawn to food-related activities,...