July 25, 2012 With California's high recidivism rate, it takes real heart change and support to keep youth out of prison
When Julio Lee stepped outside the gates of the Norwalk youth correctional facility in 2009, the 19-year-old kneeled on the dirty asphalt as tears stained his cheeks.
July 18, 2012 Prisoner's son now serves as a mentor for other children whose fathers are behind bars
Eight-year-old Lucius Jenkins watched as police officers handcuffed his father and lead him off to prison. He didn't understand why. All he knew was his dad was taken away "and it wasn't playtime" anymore.
July 9, 2012 Two journalists discuss their current globe-hopping adventure to document God's work
The mass media's foreign reports often reduce real people and real situations to stereotypes and pithy summations designed to tug heartstrings. Each report contains a kernel of truth, but it filters though in a condensed or warped form. Journalists Andrew Nicodem and Ryan Gilles hope to counteract this distortion by putting names and faces to people experiencing God's redemption as they struggle for justice, dignity and life around the world. Their 15-month trip will take them to 10 different cities.
June 29, 2012 Purdue University graduate student and soon-to-be professor helps give the poor a voice
Her job: advising, teaching and researching. Her vocation: listening, especially to the voices of the poor.
June 26, 2012 Geneva College Professor Wendy Van Wyhe leads students by example into a relationship with their neighbors
Men and women drift in and out of the local soup kitchen housed in a church just a few blocks away from an unusual college dormitory in Beaver Falls, Pa. Once a week, Professor Wendy Van Wyhe and a couple of her students take the short walk down the street to visit the diners and help clean up after the meal.
June 20, 2012 More Christians - and churches - are getting involved in foster care in their own communities
Jami Kaeb goes grocery shopping with two toddlers crawling around in her grocery cart, and another tottering beside her. Her oldest daughter, 9-year-old Paige, pushes another cart with two more kids sticking their heads out before the cart gets piled high with frozen pizza, cereal boxes, and chicken breasts.
June 20, 2012 WORLD's Eastern region winner transcends Maine stereotypes
Parts of Portland, Maine, resemble a touristy postcard. Sailboats dot Casco Bay and lighthouses stand guard along the rocky coast. People jog or walk their dogs past brightly painted Victorian homes. Dimillo's floating restaurant offers lobsters for $36 a pair.
June 20, 2012 WORLD's Western region winner finds fathers for the fatherless
John Smithbaker stands under the wide Wyoming sky teaching 7-year-old Brayden, a fatherless boy, how to swing a bat. He shows Brayden how to plant his feet. He switches the position of Brayden's hands on the bat. Brayden swings and misses. Smithbaker readjusts him, again and again.
June 13, 2012 New city ban on public feeding violates assistance agencies' freedom of religion, suit claims
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and several Philadelphia religious groups filed a federal lawsuit against the city last week over new ordinance they say make it much harder for them to carry out their mission to feed the city's homeless.
May 2, 2012 Documentary reveals horrors of sex trafficking, but also hope
Benjamin Nolot's award-winning documentary Nefarious, Merchant of Souls, chronicles the filmmaker's journey around the world as he investigates international sex trafficking of women and children.
April 27, 2012 NYU students pair musicians with charities to bring more attention to both
Tapping away on his iTouch, Yaochuan Shao works out the melody to an original Chinese pop song, complete with band accompaniment. Shao, 22, studies finance at New York University, but in between classes, he writes and performs pop, jazz and the easy-going Brazilian bossa nova music.
April 26, 2012 The Urban Ministry Institute, which provides seminary classes to prisoners, is growing from 5 to 26 California prisons
The prison guards at the California Rehabilitation Center (CRC), a Level II correctional facility in Norco, Calif., rushed in when they saw a group of inmates submerging a man's head in the communal sinks, thinking they were preventing a race-related murder.
March 21, 2012 The CASE Act, which will increase punishment for trafficking offenders, received more than 873,000 signatures
For more than five years, police officer Brian Marvel patrolled the North Park area of San Diego, a neighborhood with a high prostitution rate.
March 7, 2012 Mentoring one town's at-risk youth teaches students that community transformation is a long-term process
During a recent after-school program at a church in Beaver Falls, Pa., college student Nate Mansor spent the better part of the afternoon with a 6-year-old girl wrapped around his ankle, impeding his efforts to prevent her 8-year-old playmate from trying to steal his hat. Despite their playful innocence, the energetic elementary school students have a higher than average chance of committing a crime by the time they're adults, a statistic Mansor hopes to prevent from becoming a reality in their futures.
February 22, 2012 Homeless residents of Skid Row get a chance to show off their inner diva at the Karaoke Coffee Club
Wednesday nights on Los Angeles's Skid Row look the same as any other night, with hundreds of homeless people pitching tents along the sidewalk and settling into their blankets for the night.
February 15, 2012 Four engineering students win innovation awards with proposal to convert shipping containers to maternity clinics
Pregnant women in Malawi, one of Africa's poorest countries, have only a 50 percent chance of surviving pregnancy and labor. Known in the local vernacular as "pakati," they are literally dangling "in between life and death," said Jan Snyder, a professor of engineering at Arizona State University.
February 10, 2012 California woman will spend Valentine's Day asking God to heal the brokenness at the heart of sex trafficking
On Tuesday, millions of amorous men will converge on flower shops and candy stores to buy tokens of love for their wives and girlfriends. Millions of other men around the world will slink into dark alleyways and seedy hotel rooms to buy girls for sex, transactions that fuel an insatiable demand for human trafficking.
January 25, 2012 Erica Pelman offers pregnancy resource center for Jewish women
Erica Pelman, 32, balanced on her lap her chubby-cheeked, 9-month-old Raviv, who had been up almost all night teething. We sat in a coffee shop around the corner from where she and her husband live in Silver Spring; a babysitter was home with their 3-year-old, Micah. Pelman would head to the post office shortly to mail parenting books to the mother of a 1-year-old who took her advice and did not have an abortion.
January 11, 2012 Pride Industries has grown 20% in 2 years and now employs over 2,400 disabled workers in 11 states and D.C.
Transit vans pull up to a brick and glass building in Roseville, a Sacramento suburb, and 600 employees head to work. Some head to the bustling warehouse, using fork-lifts to load piles of shrink-wrapped boxes into trucks. Others sit quietly at computers or microscopes where they solder microscopic pieces for laser printers.
January 2, 2012 California-based nonprofit sells fairly priced t-shirts to help migrant workers in China
At Newsong Church in Irvine last month, clothing manufacturing director Michael Lew had a strange request for his fellow congregants: Wear your t-shirts inside out.
