Julia Smarto is a teacher’s assistant at a well-recognized school. In her free time, the 20-year-old teaches dance to preschoolers. Her lifelong friend Kelly Neville, 23, runs a jewelry business with her mother, Karen. Both women’s success is the result of hard work and unwavering support from their families, who ignored doctors’ “doom and gloom” outlooks […]
Most recently updated: December 2020 Imagine fleeing your home because of war, terror or persecution, only to find yourself in a foreign land with few resources. For the many refugees who come to the Chicago area each year, RefugeeOne provides crucial assistance during that difficult transition. The Chicago-based resettlement organization helps refugees find housing, acclimate […]
Crushers Club is a most improbable and quite remarkable story. Mother of three Sally Hazelgrove moves her family to Englewood—one of the most challenging neighborhoods in the country—because she feels called to help. Gang banging and shootings abound there; opportunities to escape that life do not. Hazelgrove asks young males loitering on street corners what […]
Susan Steel was given a timestamp of 12 months on her life in January of 2008. She was battling melanoma, and at the time she had already completed three years of intensive treatment at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. It is the world’s largest and top-funded melanoma clinic. Steel is a now a […]
Most recently updated: December 2020 Growing up in Jamaica, Mary McLaughlin often ate breadfruit, which she describes as tasting like a bagel when it has been baked or roasted. Today, McLaughlin, along with her husband, Mike, and a team of volunteers, is using that same breadfruit to combat hunger and environmental issues around the world […]
Founded in 1860 by three women (of course), the Boys & Girls Clubs of America help underserved youth reach their full potential as productive, caring and responsible citizens. The clubs do this by providing hope and opportunity—through extracurricular, character development and academic support programs—in safe neighborhood centers staffed by caring adults. A recent tour of the […]
Like so many of us, Josie Volpentesta has been touched personally by cancer. Inspired by the strength of a few close friends currently going through treatment and experiencing the effects of illness, Volpentesta wanted to find a way to give back and celebrate the strength of her friends, as well as other men and women […]
Last year, Chicago’s 14th annual Polar Plunge made national headlines when Mayor Rahm Emanuel dared The Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon to partake. Amidst a series of hilarious tweets and social media call-outs, including a social media campaign #SwimmyFallon, Fallon accepted the dare—and he plunged into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan dressed in his staple talk […]
When she was four months pregnant, doctors told Gretchen Berthiaume that her child would never walk—probably never do anything but sit on a couch. “Never, never, never,” is all she heard. Her daughter Gabbi was born with spina bifida, a condition characterized by the incomplete development of the brain, spinal cord and meninges, which can […]
It’s been said that the best way to teach children is through example. A team of teachers and musicians are leading the way for the students at Skokie’s John Middleton Elementary School and McCracken Middle School. It’s practically kismet that the key players involved connected through their love of music and philanthropy. Their shared passion […]
