By Gary Hume | Apr 26, 2023
Ann Higdon knows the despair of going nowhere. Homeless as a kid, she grew up with no love for learning and little hope. It took just one teacher’s kind words to drive Higdon to try harder and finish school. Through the years, she has convened a chorus of...
By Gary Hume | Apr 26, 2023
When she retired after more than three decades in the Ohio public school system, Florence Catledge returned to her hometown of Montgomery, Ala., where she rekindled a romance with her high school sweetheart, Joe, who was also an educator. As happy as that circumstance...
By Gary Hume | Apr 26, 2023
In 2005, I learned about a small and growing movement of parents in Washington state that inspired me. These parents had lost custody of their children to Child Protective Services due to neglect or abuse – and then transformed their lives to get their kids...
By Gary Hume | Apr 26, 2023
In 2001, my husband and I moved to Houston from Ohio, where I had spent 10 years running a nonprofit labor management organization. I grew its annual budget from $25,000 to $500,000, including raising $1 million to build a rural elementary school science center and...
By Gary Hume | Apr 26, 2023
At certain times, a human life takes a quantum leap. That happened to me in 2000 while on a journalism assignment in the Nairobi slums. The activist and Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai introduced me to a network of women who – without funding – were taking...
