Making a World of Difference

Our annual event honors individuals who have made a substantial difference in people’s lives around the globe through their humanitarian efforts.  Four outstanding humanitarians will be honored at the “Making a World of Difference” gala planned at Tempe Center for the Arts on Thursday, October 11, 2018. This is Tempe Sister Cities’ way of thanking and honoring humanitarians who bring hope and comfort to deserving people worldwide. Everyone is invited!

   

Click Here to Register for the 2018 "Making a World of Difference".

                         

 

Making a World of Difference awards began in 2006 and has honored worthy humanitarians based upon their world-changing ideas and experiences.

Past honorees include the following:

 The 2017 Honorees:

Chances4Children

headquartered in Scottsdale, provides hope and life-saving support to more than 5,000 children in Haiti. Their work includes food and clean water programs, medical clinics, orphan care, leadership development and empowerment programs for women and church communities. Families once torn apart for lack of basic needs are now surviving and thriving. Kathi Juntunen traveled to Haiti in 2005 determined to help starving and abandoned children. She founded Chances4Children and serves as President. She has made more than 80 trips to Haiti and together with her husband has adopted three Haitian children and will be attending this event. To learn more visit: www.chances4children.org

Harvest India

is a faith-based movement that reaches out to millions of the "lowest of the low," victims of the ancient caste system, and many others who are sick, outcast and destitute.  The goal is to not only meet daily needs, but also to provide hope and skills for the future.  Located in Southeast India in the city of Tenali, Harvest India reaches out to remote villages throughout the country.  Programs provide elderly care, leprosy care, orphan care, food distribution, clean water wells, medical camps, schools and vocational training.  Dr. Suresh Kumar, President, carries on the work begun by his mother Lilithamma founder of Harvest India will be attending this event. To learn more visit:  www.harvestindia.org

World Bicycle Relief

founded in 2005, specializes in comprehensive bicycle distribution across Africa, South America and Southeast Asia.  To date some 350,000 bicycles have been distributed and more than 1,000 bicycle mechanics have been trained. WBR bicycles are specially designed specific to the environment of distribution and are locally assembled for students (including girls), healthcare workers, farmers, and entrepreneurs.  Studies show that a bicycle can increase family income by 35 percent; student attendance increases 28 percent and academic performance improves 59 percent.  Mike Veitenhans, World Bicycle Reliefs Director of Global Partnerships, will be attending this event.  To learn more visit:  www.worldbicyclerelief.org

Thirty-three Buckets

is a student-entrepreneurial project headquartered at Arizona State University.  In 2011 Mark Huerta, then an undergraduate biomedical engineering student, learned about a problem in Bangladesh where a school's water supply was contaminated by arsenic.  Encouraged and mentored by EPICS Engineering Projects in Community Service) Mark assembled a team and set out to create water filter prototypes.  Thirty-three is arsenic's atomic number hence the name of the project.  Research proved that arsenic was not the contaminant, but the name stuck. The team found existing technology to solve the problem and after three years installed a system that now produces 2,000 to 4,000 gallons of clean water per day.  After this experience the team pressed on and worked on successful filtration systems in villages in the Dominican Republic and in the village of Cusco, Peru, Tempe's sister city.  Mark says,"To see those kids drink clean water for the first time is the most rewarding feeling you can ever have...I wanted to change the world.  The thing I would never have expected was how the world changed me."  Mark will be in attendance at this event.  To learn more visit:  www.33buckets.org

2016 Honorees

Ines and Tracy Allen who founded IMAHelps,

an organization that conducts medical and dental missions to Central and South America through cooperation with volunteer doctors, nurses and dentists….  

Mallory Brown who, as a college student, founded World Clotheline

when through her travels she found that disadvantaged people around the world almost never had “new” clothing and receiving something new changed their outlook and their determination…  

The Flying Samaritans of Arizona

who bring medical and dental help to remote areas of Mexico and Central America.   

2015  Honorees

Dr. Douglas Jackson - President and CEO of Project C.U.R.E., an organization that began in 1987.  Today Project C.U.R.E. delivers help and hope to more than 130 countries around the world.  Some three semi-truck loads of donated medical supplies and equipment are shipped to the desperately needy...every week!  In addition, Project C.U.R.E. sends teams of medical professionals to assist partner hospitals and clinics, provides medical supplies to traveling doctors and nurses in the form of C.U.R.E. Kits, and delivers Kits for Kids, backpacks filled with needed items to help parents in developing countries care for their children.  Dr. Jackson has a long list of lifetime achievement awards, has served on many national Boards, and currently is a director of the Institute for International Education which administers the Fulbright Scholarships. He delivers a spellbinding message of hope.      www.projectcure.org        

2014 Honorees

C. Mead Welles… “A Leg to Stand On” (ALTSO) *was traveling in Indonesia when he looked out a window and saw three underfed and exhausted boys. Two were pulling the third boy on a garbage can lid. This boy’s leg was deformed, raw and bleeding, and he could not stand . His knuckles, also bleeding, showed that he had also been pulling himself around. This sad incident propelled Mead to found “A Leg to Stand On” (ALTSO), an organization that provides free prosthetic limbs, orthopedic devices, mobility aids, surgery and care to children in the developing world who have lost limbs or suffer from congenital disabilities. Since 2002 ALTSO has transformed the lives of some 12,000 children in parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East and South America.     Maria Keller… was a little girl who loved to read. When she was eight years old she learned that some children in the world did not have books to read. She vowed she would collect one million books in the next 10 years and distribute them to children in need. She has already collected more than one million books and distributed them to hospitals, shelters and orphanages in America and several countries…and she just turned 14! She is traveling from Minnesota to attend the event and has been invited by Changing Hands bookstore to address children in several schools and to be a keynote speaker at a teacher appreciation event. As we go to press a book drive for children’s books…to be distributed locally…is in the planning stages.  

Dr. Mark Henderson…GlobalResolve

*Dr. Henderson is Associate Dean of the Barrett Honors College and Professor of Engineering at Arizona State University.  He is co-founder of several global design initiatives including GlobalResolve, a program that provides design and entrepreneurship opportunities to students by involving them in worldwide technological projects that directly improve the lives of underprivileged people in developing countries, especially in the areas of energy, clean water, and agriculture.  In the past year, GlobalResolve has involved over 200 students doing 40 projects in 9 countries including Ghana, Peru, Mexico and Arizona.

 Several of Dr. Henderson’s students will showcase their projects making an impact globally. Henderson works closely with the Clinton Global Initiative, and student change agents in Changemaker Central -- ASU’s initiative to empower student innovation and activism to solve national and global challenges.

 For example: a GlobalResolve student team originated a project to support and educate subsistence farmers in Pumamarca, a small village near Cusco, Peru, (our sister city)  about the use of biochar to radically increase crop yields.  From this, GAIA, International  was born, and its founder, Kathleen Stefanik, participated in this spring's  Clinton Global Initiative University conference and is continuing a partnership with Chelsea Clinton’s organization. Stephen Annor-Wiafe, a MasterCard Scholar from Ghana, has started a venture in his home region to improve palm oil production and increase the market share for small farmers. And Michelle Marco, a change agent from Changemaker Central and president of the GlobalResolve Club, began a continuing project that included a group trip over spring break to build a greenhouse and improve living conditions in an orphanage in Peru.

2013 Honorees:

• Janine Skinner - Feed My Starving Children Janine is the Arizona development advisor for Feed My Starving Children, a Minnesota-based non-profit organization that works in more than 70 countries. She annually organizes some 115,000 volunteers to pack and ship the nutrient-filled MannaPac- Rice meals that cost less than 22 cents per meal to produce. These meals are saving lives and can quickly reverse and prevent malnutrition. She recently organized the 24-hour all-volunteer “Change the World from Phoenix”campaign...packing one million meals in 24 hours with volunteers working in two-hour shifts! She is now leading a campaign to raise $1,000,000 to purchase a larger facility where more volunteers can pack even more meals. Inasmuch as some 6,200 children around the world die each day from hunger Janine and her volunteers are truly, Making a World of Difference.  www.fmsc.org  
• Dr. John Gillan – Dental Missions Abroad Dr. John Gillan, Mesa-based Endodontist, has conducted and personally financed some 26 dental missions abroad... helping the forgotten and underserved. He brings his own supplies, including books, to share with professors and local dentists. He goes where he is most needed and treats patients “in the bush.” Dr. Gillan has made two trips to Romania, 16 trips to Kosovo and six trips to Cameroon. He is helped and supported by his wife Cindy and children who have accompanied him on most of these missions. In 2009 he received the Medal of Gratitude from the President of Albania for his help educating Albanian dentists. He also received the Spirit of Service Lifetime Award from the American Association of Endodontists. The Gillan family treasures the many friendships they have made over the years as they continue Making a World of Difference.

  email: gillendo@cox.net
• Dr. Brian and Keri deGuzman - 4Matifoundation The deGuzman's traveled to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where they saw children begging on the streets and families living in deplorable conditions. They knew they had to help. They have adopted four Ethiopian children and created the 4Mati Foundation that supports and develops programs targeting education, health care and orphan support. In order to care for hundreds of orphans (UNICEF reports there are some six million orphaned children in Ethiopia) they are working to create self-sustaining projects and teach the communities how to care for their own people. Last year they completed construction of a small food production facility that produces MITTEN, a highly nutritious product made of 12 drought-resistant Ethiopian seeds and grains. In addition they are raising money to build a school which will open next year, and will serve some 2,000 children including girls. Their efforts are changing the destiny of children in Ethiopia and Making a World of Difference. www.4Matifoundation.org

 

2012 Honorees:

• Derreck Kayongo- Global Soap Project

Derreck's Global Soap Project collects used hotel soap bars, reprocessing it to save lives in impoverished countries. Since 2009, the Atlanta-based nonprofit has provided about 150,000 bars of soap for communities in 10 countries, including Haiti, Kenya and Afghanistan. Kayongo, a Uganda native, considers the soap he provides for poverty-stricken children "a first line of defense" to help fight disease. It's very humbling and at the same time very rewarding to know that there are folk out there who think that we are doing something so important to human survival that it warrants recognition of this magnitude. On behalf of all the poor that live on a dollar a day, we receive this recognition with immense joy. His efforts show that someone does really care which is Making A World of Difference.  www.globalsoap.org

   

• Dr. Raul Osorio- The Osario Foundation/Medical Missions to Peru

As a young man Dr. Osorio immigrated to America where he attended high scholl and college. To mee expenses he took a job cleaning offices at night...at a New York City morgue. Here he met many doctors and developed an interest in  medicine. He then attended medical school in Spain and after graduation joined the U.S. Air Force serving as a flight surgeon with assignments in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. He was transferred to Williams Air Force Base and upon leaving the military set up practice in Mesa, Arizona.  In the early 1980's he began organizing medical missions to his native country, Peru, bringing modern medicine to impoverished areas in and around his hometown, Caraz.  The missions began with a handful of doctors and nurses and continues through 2009 with the traveling medical team now numbering more than 60 members.  The little towns celebrated his arrival with parades, speeches, and American Flags. The very next day surgeries were scheduled and supplies had to be sorted and surgery rooms leaned and prepared. Over the years Dr. Osorio led dozens of people, young and old. Through his leadership the City of Mesa and Southwest Ambulance stepped up to donate and deliver two much needed ambulances and a fire truck to the area. Today Dr. Osorio is still practicing medicine in Mesa and serves as Consul General for Peru in Arizona.   www.theosoriofoundation.org

   

• Edgar Rodas and Cinterandes-Mobile Medicine in Ecuador

As a medical student in the 1960's, Dr Rodas was inspired by Project HOPE (Health Opportunities for People Everywhere) and other programs that brought medical aid directly to the people. Dr. Rodas became Minister of Health for Ecuador, but was frustrated at the lack of care for "marginalized" people. He wanted to find a way to bring free medical assistance to the poor and the isolated peoples of his country. His dream was to create a health clinic on wheels to travel to the remote areas of the Andes Mountains, the tiny fishing villages, and the settlements of the Ecuadorian Amazon. He began by assembling a small medical team that traveled to small hospitals in the Amazon jungle. Ten missions and three years later his dream of a Mobile Surgical Unit(MSU) came true. While governmental and private groups had refused to finance the MSU, General Motors instructed its subsidiaries in Ecuador to do so. The Cinterandes Foundation began in 1995, and has treated some 50,000 people and performed almost 7,000 surgeries. There have been some 852 medical missions. The Cinterandes MSU team includes medical doctors who volunteer their time as well as medical and nursing students from around the world who join the team and receive college credit. Research and educational programs have been added and the work continues.    www.cinterandes.org

   

2011 Honorees:

• The Boot Girls -Get Your Boots On Campaign

Five professional women from Texas created "Get Your Boots On" as a way to honor and assist injured veterans as they return from combat assignments. Because there are more than 1.4 million Americans serving in the U.S. military these women want to see an equal number of Americans in a pair of Boot Campaign "give back" boots.  The campaign provides a way for people to show support for troops (both past and present). Proceeds benefit partner charities that assist returning veterans dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and varying degrees of physical injuries. Many celebrities are now wearing "the boots" and helping with the campaign. To help the "Boot Girls" continue to make a world of difference, their signature boots can be purchased at www. bootcampaign.com/bootgirls.

   

• Terry and Anne Guerrant-The Guerrant Foundation

Terry and Anne created the Guerrant Foundation in 2005 with the mission to create "lasting change by uplifting the poorest of the world's poor through small loans for micro enterprise." Anne Guerrant was a professional tennis player...played at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and all the major tournaments. Her record includes wins over Martina Navratalova and Billie Jean King. As she traveled the world she was moved by the extreme poverty she saw in third world nations.  After visiting a micro credit lending program in India, Anne and her husband , Terry, created the Guerrant Foundation to help women and families improve their lives through tiny loans to start a business. Their goal is to personally give a million dollars and raise another million to help this important cause. So far more than 15,000 small businesses have been created in countries around the world.  www.guerrant foundation.org

   

• Lisa Hopper and World Care-

The story began when Lisa manages the radiology department at George Washington Hospital and conducted medical assessments around the world. She saw the need for medical aid...for the basics itself...food, shelter, and education...and realized that without proper access to education people would never be able to rise out of poverty. As she traveled she brought with her supplies for children, supplies she gathered in her home. After moving to Tucson and taking a position with the University of Arizona Medical Center she began collecting materials in her garage. In 1996 she put all of her retirement savings into World Care and devoted herself to its development. Since then World Care has collected over 15 million pounds of resources value at over $40 million dollars and redirected them away from landfills and into World Care programs. World Care was one of the first on the scene at Ground Zero providing supplies and personnel. Today, World Care has come a long way from that garage...it provides supplies to more than 150 local nonprofits and reaches more than 60 countries around the globe. World Care is "dedicated to providing humanitarian aid in areas of education, health, emergency relief, and environment.  www.worldcare.org

     

2010 Honorees:

• Christa Brelsford- Christa's Angels

Christa, an ASU graduate and Doctoral student at Arizona State University School of Sustainability, was in Haiti working with a literacy program when the Port-au-Prince earthquake struck in January, 2010. More than three million people were affected...230,000 died, 300,00 injured, and more than a million left homeless. Christa and her brother Julian were volunteering with Heads Together Haiti in Darbonne, just south of Port-au-Prince. When the earthquake hit Julian and others escaped, but Christa fell and concrete slabs collapsed trapping her legs. Julian and two Haitians worked some 90 minutes to free her. Once Christa was pulled from the rubble she needed medical assistance. One of their friends owned a motorbike, and they took Christa two miles to a U.N. peace-keeping mission. As one friend drove the bike another sat on the back with Christa "holding me in his arms like an infant. My leg was still flopping around. We drove...in the dark on pothole-rutted dirt roads with buildings collapsed all around, Haitians screaming out for help..." Christa was then airlifted to Florida where she underwent four surgeries and her right foot was amputated. Christa is grateful to be alive and is determined to help the people of Haiti.  Upon her return to Tempe, Christa formed a foundation called Christa's Angels to help Haitians recover from the earthquake, to rebuild the school operated by Haiti Partners and to provide opportunities for the Haitians who rescued her. The school is being rebuilt and funds are now needed to pay each of the 17 teachers $80 per month, and to pay for daily lunch (52 cents per person) for students and teachers, often their only meal of the day.    www.christasangels.org

 

• Guy Davidson-Grace Community Church/International Missions

 This popular pastor has served the Tempe, Arizona, community for decades, helped found two of its largest churches, and has been instrumental in many international missions as well. He has traveled the world assisting in establishing hospitals, schools, clinics, and orphanages. He has served on the boards of Food for the Hungry, Samaritan's Purse and World Medical Mission, Assist International, Anoor Sanitorium in Mafraq, Jordan, Ling Liang Schools in India, and Global Outreach. He has been instrumental in recruiting and sending short term volunteer medical teams to many third world nations, areas of natural disasters and war-torn areas of civil unrest. While at Grace Community Church in Tempe he inspired the congregation to participate in various projects including sponsoring a one-year program building more than 100 church community centers in villages and towns in India with schools, clean water and health education programs. In addition, Guy was instrumental in establishing and supporting hospitals and/or clinics in the Ivory Coast, Lebanon, Jordan, Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Taiwan. He helped establish orphanages in Eritrea, El Salvador, Egypt, Taiwan, Mexico, and India. He has raised funds for buildings and student scholarships for three schools in Calcutta, India, with more than 2,000 students serving families in the inner city, the poorest of the poor. Although he has just celebrated his 80th birthday he is not slowing down. He is currently committed to a plan for training and development to help the people of Cuba.

   

• Frank Shankwitz- Make-A Wish Foundation

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.

   

2009 Honorees:

• Barbara and Don Liem- Friends of the Orphans

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- Share Your Shoes

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.

 

• Cindy Hensley McCain- HALO Trust

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.

   

2008 Honorees:

• Austin Gutwein- Hoops of Hope

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.

   

• Dr. James Jackson- Project C.U.R.E.

Dr. Jackson journeyed to Brazil as an economic consultant for the U.S. government in 1987. While there he observed long lines of sick people waiting to enter a small clinic. Once inside he learned that children, parents and grandparents were being turned away for lack of even the most basic medical supplies. Returning home he collected $250,000 worth of donated surplus medical supplies in his garage and delivered a 40-foot, ocean-going container to Brazil at his own expense. He then founded Project C.U.R.E. Today his organization has expanded its collection points throughout America and is the World's largest distributor of donated medical supplies and equipment to developing nations around the globe. Project C.U.R.E. volunteers and staff are Ambassadors of Hope to millions of people and are currently sending supplies to Timbuktu, Mali, Tempe's sister city.   www.projectcure.org

 

• John Enright- Kafakumba Training Center, Zambia

John is the son of missionary parents and has served as a missionary in Africa since 1977. He is a licensed pilot and coordinates the Wings of the Morning Aviation Program which involves funding, flying, and giving support to the people of Zambia. Together with his wife Kendra, he founded the Kafakumba Training Center with focus on organic farming. In 2005, with the help from others, they purchased seven acres of immature banana trees on the outskirts of Ndola, Zambia, where they live. The banana farm is very successful as is the fish hatchery and the manufacturing operation of high-end woodworking products which they have introduced. Through teaching joint-ownership and profit-sharing concepts they are helping fuel a sustainable income and productive life for these people. John Enright is planting more than trees...he is planting seeds of hope.   www.kafakumba.org

     

2007 Honorees:

• Bernard Jennings- Asante- The Kenyan Eye Charity

 Bernard runs a highly successful opticians practice in the Irish town of Carlow. It was through his practice he came into contact with Sister Goretti Ward the Mercy Nun who wrote him a letter while she was serving in Kenya, asking him to send new glasses. Living in isolated conditions she had no means of repairing or replacing her much-needed glasses. Instead, Bernard packed up his instruments, traveled at his own expense to the tiny settlement, Nuu, and tested more than 330 villagers' eyes. Some were blind, some were in need of cataract surgery, some had thorns in their eyes, and others just needed glasses. He removed thorns, arranged for cataract surgeries, and provided new glasses for the others. He Made A World of Difference..     www.asante.yolasitecom

 

• Irma Turtle-Turtlewill Foundation

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.

 

     

• Hans Vielberth- Hans Vieberth Foundation

Hans grew up in war torn Germany and has always been a friend of America. He embraced the Sister City programs with Tempe and with other cities around the world. As a successful businessman he could have lived in opulence. He chose instead to share his success. He has donated millions to the University of Regensburg for scholarships. He led a book drive for Odessa, Ukraine when he learned all of the city's books had been destroyed by Communists. More than 1,000,000 books were collected and trucked to Odessa at his expense. There are many instances where he is "Making A World of Difference".

 

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