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...
By Gary Hume | Apr 26, 2023
Two tumultuous decades in the telecommunications industry took a toll on Charles Fletcher’s income and his spirit. When he retired in the 1990s at the age of 58, he found some peace of mind through volunteering at a Dallas-area equine therapy center for children...
By Gary Hume | Apr 26, 2023
In 2005, the Rev. Richard Joyner had a realization. He had presided over too many funerals at a church of just 300 members. In one year alone, 30 congregants younger than 32 years old had died. “We had at least 20 funerals per year, and a lot of the deaths were...
By Gary Hume | Apr 26, 2023
As a high school teacher in Del Paso Heights, Sacramento, one of the most violent neighborhoods in the U.S., I worked for decades to foster peace among students caught up in gang violence. When seven local students were murdered in 1989, I created a peer court for...
By Gary Hume | Apr 26, 2023
Sunflower County sounds like a happy place. But the rural Mississippi Delta county is one of the poorest in the nation. An alarming 54 percent of children live in poverty, and the high school graduation rate is just 59 percent. When I moved back there in 2009 after a...