Our annual event honors individuals who have made a substantial difference in people’s lives around the globe through their humanitarian efforts. The 2011 honorees have been chosen. Plan now to attend the Making a World of Difference Awards and Dinner on Thursday, October 6, 2011 to hear their amazing stories. Taking home the awards this year are:
- Boot Girls (Texas) supporting our U.S. Veterans
- Terry and Anne Guerrant for helping 15,000 of the world’s poor to start businesses through micro loans
- Lisa Hopper (Tucson) World Care; recycling for humanity first
To register for this special event you can call us at 480-350-8181 or register online.
Making a World of Difference awards began in 2006 and has honored worthy humanitarians based upon their world-changing ideas and experiences.
Past honorees have included the following people:
Christa Brelsford
Christa, an ASU graduate, was in Haiti working with a literacy program when the Port-au-Prince earthquake struck in January, 2010. She was trapped under a collapsed house and lost her right leg. Upon her return to Tempe, Christa started Christa’s Angels, an organization which has since rebuilt and staffed a school destroyed in the quake.
Austin Gutwein
Austin was only nine years old when he learned that 2,057 children were orphaned every school day by HIV-AIDS virus. He wanted to help, so he started a basketball shoot-a-thon in his neighborhood and then shot 2,057 baskets. He quickly raised some $3,000. He then partnered with World Vision, an international relief organization, and founded Hoops for Hope. Today, Hoops of Hope has raised millions of dollars and continues to build schools, hospitals and clinics to help the sick and impoverished people of Zambia, Africa. Sometimes one person can make a difference……and sometimes that one person is a child. Hoops of Hope.
Cindy Hensley McCain
Cindy is a life-long humanitarian. In the 1990s, she founded the American Voluntary Medical Team that organized missions to disaster-struck or war-torn third world countries and completing some 55 missions. In 1991, the AVMT went to Bangladesh to provide assistance after a cyclone. It was here Cindy found a baby girl who would have died without medical treatment. She brought the baby and another child in desperate need back to Arizona and the McCains then adopted the baby, Bridget, who is now a happy and healthy 18-year-old. Cindy also sits on the Board of Operation Smile, an organization that mobilizes volunteers worldwide to repair childhood facial deformities, has participated in medical missions to Morocco, Vietnam and India, and serves on the Boards of Directors for The HALO Trust which works to remove land mines in war torn areas.
Barbara and Don Liem
Tempe residents Barbara and Don Leim are well known for their passion for volunteer activities, especially their devotion to Friends of the Orphans, a fundraising organization dedicated to improving the lives of orphaned, abandoned and disadvantaged children through Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos (Spanish for “Our Little Brothers and Sisters”). This organization houses impoverished children throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and South America, providing stable group homes where they receive education and a loving support system. Barbara and Don first became involved in 1973 when they traveled to the home near Cuernavaca. Through the years, Barbara and Don have raised literally millions of dollars to benefit Friends of the Orphans. Former pequenos are educators, doctors, accountants, carpenters, farmers, mechanics, artists, administrators and social workers. All of the homes strive to be self-sufficient and most operate their own schools, clinics, gardens and farms. What the homes are unable to provide is donated by caring friends worldwide like Barbara and Don Liem.
Mona Purdy
Mona founded Share Your Soles, a charitable foundation that distributes clean and gently used shoes to impoverished people throughout the world. In 1999 she traveled through Central America and saw children painting tar on the soles of their bare feet so they could run a race during their village festival. She happened to meet an American orthopedic surgeon who was visiting the village. He told her that if these children had shoes there would be a lot less need for him to travel to the region to perform amputations of children’s infected limbs. Upon her return home, Mona collected used children’s shoes from neighborhood schools, families and friends and at Christmas time delivered them to an orphanage in Honduras. Mona’s life was forever changed when one of the orphanage workers asked her “When are you coming back?” Today, thousands of volunteers clean and prepare the shoes and airlines, corporations, and embassies help with the transport and Mona’s shoes are helping people in need all over the world.
Frank Shankwitz
1n 1980, Frank and his coworkers and the Arizona Department of Safety helped a dying seven-year-old realize his dream of being a being a policeman by arranging rides in a patrol car and DPS helicopter and presenting the boy with a custom highway patrolman’s uniform. After the boy died, Frank and four others started the Make-a-Wish Foundation to grant the wishes of terminally ill children. In Arizona, the foundation has granted wishes to over 3,000 children since 1980 – almost 200,000 kids have been served worldwide.
Irma Turtle
Irma was a successful advertising executive who then began to offer specialized tours to remote areas of the world, especially in Africa. As she began to see the great need for health care, for education, for basic needs such as animals to replenish family herds after drought, she went to work. She asked herself, “who will help these people?” The answer: Turtlewill, the Foundation she started. She has raised millions of dollars to build schools, hospitals, medical clinics and continues to “make a world of difference.” Turtlewill Foundation.
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