(children clapping, singing).. (orchestral music).. MAGNUS MCFARLANE-BARROW: It's never about a bunch of rich people giving to a bunch of passive, poor people.

It's not about us charging in from outside and saying, "We're going to solve all your problems."

It's about working and walking alongside.

SCOTT NEESON: I'd always carried around the, I think, classic prejudices that charities were not my thing because I don't know where the money's going.

There's also that belief that because it was on the other side of the world, it's not my problem.

KRISH VIGNARAJAH: I believe that LIRS could tell a different story.

That we could explain how we are a nation of immigrants, that 99% of us trace our ancestry to a place outside of our borders.

BOB GAY: There isn't one person, poor or rich, that cannot help another person.

JOSEPH GRENNY: We're a place where people have built, a bunch of convicts, people that have been arrested on average 25 times, they've built the number one rated moving company in the entire state.

DAVE DUROCHER: The day you get here, you become part of the solution, not the problem.

MAGNUS: I was thinking, well, we would love to provide Mary's Meals here, but it's just taken me three hours to walk up this mountain.

There's no road.

They said, “we'll come to the bottom of the mountain and we'll carry the food.” And so we did.

And that keeps going to this day.

And I suddenly realized this was going to be a lot harder to stop than it had been to start.

And here we are 30 years later.

(orchestral and piano music).

ANNOUNCER: Funding for this program was provided in part by: The Paul & Kim Willie Family Foundation, The Brent and Bonnie Jean Beesley Foundation, Steven Anderson, The Sorensen Legacy Foundation, Bill and Roceil Low, Mike Erickson, Jack Wheatley.

And also: Esperanza Foundation, Clayton and Marla Foulger, Tom and Kelly Olds, Bill Child, The Larry H. and Gail Miller Family Foundation, Richard and Nancy Marriott, Jeanne Quinton, Joe and Barbara Christensen.

ANNOUNCER: With additional support by: Lifetime Products.

(energetic music).

ANNOUNCER: Lifetime is a proud supporter of Lift: Connecting Humanity.

(calm music tones).

GARY SINISE: Hello, I'm Gary Sinise.

In the mid-90s, I played a character named Lieutenant Dan Taylor in the film "Forrest Gump."

Wounded in battle during the Vietnam War and struggling with the mental anguish of having walked his platoon into an ambush where many were also wounded or lost their lives, Lieutenant Dan withdrew into the shadows, alone and in pain, until he was rescued from despair by the simple goodness and open heart of his friend, Forrest.

Since our launch in 2011, my own foundation, the Gary Sinise Foundation, has been helping wounded veterans, first responders, struggling Gold Star Families, and supporting our troops all over the world, honoring the dedication of these heroes.

There are many kinds of heroes in this world.

Some have their praises sung, but others work quietly, far from the headlines.

They aren't soldiers or first responders, they're volunteers.

They work in our hometowns, they work all over the world.

Some give up everything to do it, and that is our story.

(melancholy Native American inspired music).

(rumble of truck).

(melancholy Native American inspired music).

GREGG REVELL: Most of the houses that we're uh, servicing today, most of the people don't have electricity and running water.

ARDEN HESS: How many of you are here for the first time?

(crowd murmuring).

ARDEN: We will ask you to go ahead and take things, to load up and take it right to their homes, knock on the doors, tell them that you're here with some supplies for them.

GARY: The Greek word, "philanthropia" means to love people, and while it's easy to love family and friends, true philanthropy looks to the stranger, to those who may be different than us.

For centuries, helping our neighbor may have been a natural thing.

(dramatic orchestral music).

Then technology changed the world, cities grew, we became more isolated.

The industrial age spawned a society largely divided into haves and the have-nots.

Gigantic industries sprang up in America.

But many working families were desperately poor.

At the same time, a handful of men gifted with energy and vision reaped fabulous wealth.

Like most men, Andrew Carnegie was a mix of parts and deeds, good and bad.

But the good he did lives after him.

He was born in Dunfermline, Scotland in 1835 to a family struggling to survive.

Like millions of others, the Carnegies looked to the American dream, and in 1848 emigrated to Allegheny, Pennsylvania.

At 12 years old, Andrew was hired as a bobbin boy, changing spools of thread in a cotton mill for less than two cents an hour.

Eventually, that boy would make more money than any man in the world.

(upbeat rhythmic music).

The money came from steel.

Opportunity and ingenuity cut the cost of steel in half.

By 1900, Carnegie personally dictated the price of steel and took home 25 million a year.

Part of his success came from a ruthless management style.

His steel workers put in 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, with no holidays.

When workers at his Homestead plant went out on strike, he had the state militia sent in.

His creation of a corporate colossus, using poorly paid workers, contributed to a gap dividing rich and poor.

But Carnegie knew it, and he regretted it.

The solution, he thought, was philanthropy.

"The problem of our age," he said, "is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship."

Andrew Carnegie's endless generosity graced his checkered memory.

The richest man in the world almost succeeded in dying without wealth.

By the end, he gave away 90% of his fortune.

His philanthropy dwarfed any other individual act of giving in American history.

His gifts became a beginning, the beginning of a tradition of wealthy individuals doing everything they can to address the shortcomings of society.

The rich should lift the rest.

But many acts of philanthropy in the world are made by people who are not famous or wealthy.

MIKE SWEAT: Thank you guys for making your sacrifice and your family and coming to uh, Hopi.

LEO LACAPA, JR: Thank you for everything you guys are doing for our people.

Thank you very much.

GARY: Most philanthropic organizations start with a single individual, an individual who refuses to let the inevitable challenges stop them from making a difference.

They start giving what little they have and eventually find themselves giving of their whole lives.

(upbeat Scottish bagpipes music).

Magnus McFarland-Barrow never intended to get involved in philanthropic work.

Years ago, he was a fish farmer in the Scottish Highlands.

But for some, the compelling need to do something becomes a call.

MAGNUS: It was never my plan to get involved in this kind of work at all.

I don't really know what that feels like to be hungry, to live in fear of not knowing where your next meal is coming from, you know, or to be a parent of children and to live in that agony of not knowing how you're going to feed them.

We were feeling very moved by the suffering.

And we just came up with this very simple idea, my brother and I, what if we just tried to do one small thing to help?

And before we really had any kind of plan, we began asking family and friends to give us food and clothing.

And about three weeks after that initial conversation, we found ourselves driving this old truck out of this village, across Europe, and delivering the aid to a refugee camp there.

I had just taken one week's holiday from my work to do that and came back thinking I'd done my good deed, that it would be back to work as normal, and discovered that God had a very different plan, because there was this mountain of food and clothing that had arrived by then, and people kept arriving with more.

And I suddenly realized this was going to be a lot harder to stop than it had been to start, and decided to give up my job, sold my house, somebody gave me a truck, and I just began driving back and fore.

And I really said to God, “I'll keep doing this as long as people keep giving, and as long as there's a need.” Here we are, 30 years later.

(simple music).

SCOTT: I was president of 20th Century Fox International.

I was single, boat in the harbor, Porsche, SUV, had a beautiful house up in the hills of Brentwood, flying first class, Academy Awards.

GARY: In 2003, Scott Neeson was an Australian marketing executive in Hollywood, and then one trip changed everything.

SCOTT: I took a five week sabbatical, and I wanted to see the Buddhist monuments.

I'd seen Borobudur in Indonesia, I wanted to see Angkor Wat.

I ended up in Phnom Penh almost by chance.

And I think, to be honest, the initial motivation was more, I think, poverty voyeurism.

I asked one of the locals about, where is the true poverty in Cambodia?

He gave me an address, and I didn't really know what it was.

And it turned out to be the municipal landfill of Phnom Penh.

And it was the most apocalyptic environment I've ever seen.

You've got 11 acres of this fetid garbage.

It's got this terrible heat, the most dreadful stench.

However, it was the home and workplace for over 1,000 children.

A large number had been left there by their parents.

It was literally causing me sleepless nights, thinking about those kids there.

And it really, it just shook me to my core.

When you're standing on that landfill, and the child is right in front of you, there's no plan-B for the child, all those things vanish.

It is my problem.

It was really hard to see, and even harder to walk away from.

GARY: Another trip changed another life.

Becky Douglas was a homemaker in suburban Atlanta, the busy mother of 10 children.

BECKY DOUGLAS: I'd never seen anything like it.

I'd never seen people with open, gaping wounds that had not been treated, with rotting hands and feet.

It was just overwhelming.

PADMA VENKATARAMAN: India has the largest number of leprosy-affected people in the world.

I have been involved with socioeconomic re-habitization of leprosy-affected people for more than three decades.

BECKY: I just kept thinking, why doesn't somebody do something about that?

And finally, one morning I woke up and I thought, “Well, you're somebody.

Do something.” So I called three of my friends together.

We sat around my kitchen table.

We decided that we would form a charity to treat the leprosy-affected in India.

PADMA: We met in Washington, D.C., and we both had the same goal, same purpose, same ideas.

(energetic Indian instrumental music).

PADMA: Becky was very, very keen to help leprosy-affected people in India.

And naturally, she's an American.

She has to understand first the Indians, and then how it works, and the culture.

(busy street sounds).

BECKY: We knew nothing about leprosy.

We knew nothing about medicine.

We knew nothing about India, essentially.

I'd been there for a few days.

PADMA: Her heart was very much into it.

She wanted to do this.

So I felt very, very happy to collaborate with her.

The language, culture, nothing is a barrier when you have a common purpose to serve.

KENNETH HODDER: My intention was to practice law for my entire professional career.

I practiced for several years corporate and real estate law in Los Angeles, and I loved it.

But I remember one day when the senior partner called me into the firm, told me I was doing a great job, and then gave me a large bonus check.

PARTNER: Done for our firm and present you with this check to show our gratitude.

KENNETH: I saw the assembled papers for all the deals I was working on at that time, and I decided it wasn't enough, that God had something else in mind for me.

PARTNER: Have a great day.

KENNETH: We come to our work as a result of a calling.

We come to it knowing that we are giving up secular employment, that we won't have any wages or salary, that we'll receive a living allowance, be provided a place to stay, and a car to drive, but that beyond that our life will be dedicated to helping others.

There is not a single Salvation Army officer today, that I know of, who would say that he or she made the wrong choice in life.

GARY: Krish O'Mara Vignaraja is now the head of LIRS.

As a child in Sri Lanka, she was exactly the kind of person she now helps... (machine guns firing, inaudible troop commands).

GARY: A refugee caught up in a long and deadly civil war.

KRISH: So my family was part of the religious and ethnic minority, Tamil and Hindu.

So my parents knew pretty quickly that they needed to seek refuge.

We had submitted the application, hadn't heard anything, assumed that nothing would come to fruition, and of course, lo and behold, just in the nick of time, um, my parents' visas came through to move to the U.S.

I was nine months old, my brother was three.

My parents came with no jobs, just $200 in their pockets and two very young kids in their arms.

I know how different my life could have been if we had stayed in Sri Lanka.

Because I was so young, when we hit the jackpot, for me I think my entire life has been about recognizing that we were the lucky ones.

And when I was approached about this job, it truly did feel like a calling.

And so my hope in taking on this role is that in some way kind of give back and pay it forward to so many immigrants who were just like my family, who wanted to come here, and live a safe and decent life and raise their kids here.

I think there's part of it that is just basic humanity.

GARY: Safety, security and love are just three needs that connect humanity.

With the call, comes a desire to meet those needs.

The desire to help others, to share and to connect, began early in the life of Chadi Zaza.

IMAM CHADI ZAZA: When I was first grade at school, and this is my first time I speak about it, I had a classmate in my classroom who was poor, but I didn't know that.

And one, in one day during recess, he came to me and asked, "what do you have in lunch?"

I felt like, I have and this person, he doesn't.

After the school finished, I went to the grocery store in our neighborhood and I bought a container.

And I provided to him.

And that was the most beautiful moment I never forget.

And from that day, I realized the sweetness of helping others and giving.

And I spent my whole life on that principle.

When you give, you feel happy.

I established a project in charity in my country when I was 14 years old.

Since then, I realized this is my call.

It's coming from the heart.

There is a spiritual need.

(voice vocalizing).

GARY: Lynette Gay was a trained medical assistant.

Bob Gay was a high-ranking executive on Wall Street.

But in 2002, they went to Africa.

LYNETTE GAY: I feel it was a calling that we received many years ago.

BOB: We took all our kids to the villages of Africa.

And to this day, we have seven children, and they continue to work in the villages.

It started way before our children.

My father was the CEO for Howard Hughes, one of the wealthiest people in the world.

So I saw a life of a lot of privilege.

But then when I was 11 or 12, he took me to Mexico City for the first time and there, looking out the window of our hotel suite, I saw people washing their clothes in a mud stream.

And kids playing soccer in bare feet on rocky, dirt fields.

All my life began at that point, really, to focus on the poor and the needy.

LYNETTE: My calling was to acknowledge the self-worth, and the value of every individual that I would ever come in contact with.

BOB: But we went out to the villages of the Rift Valley where there's great famines and problems and I'll never forget going into one village and the chief telling us about all the challenges that they had with basic food.

And he said, “Before you go, would you offer a prayer for us that we could have food?” LYNETTE: “And that the rains would come.” BOB: “And that the rains would come,” yes.

And we did.

And people just take their gifts and use them to bless another life.

You can give them hope and the world will change.

(reflective music).

GARY: From the time he was 27, Bill Jackson spent every other year providing medical care in dozens of countries.

BILL JACKSON: It began in 1986.

It began just about five days after I arrived here.

I was out on Palawan Island the first Sunday I was here.

There was a little kid in the front row, about four, with a bilateral cleft lip.

There were lots of children, lots of people here who had neglected problems.

So it just started.

DOUG JACKSON: My father started this foundation 30-odd years ago.

He's an outside-of- the-box thinker.

He doesn't follow the game plan of anybody.

And he just kind of has his own concept of how things should be done.

And he just does it.

I've done this my whole life.

I was fortunate enough to be born into a family where humanitarian work was placed high on the list of priorities.

We focus on visual impairment around the world.

We found that there are too many people that can't function in life, can't provide for their families, can't go to school, only for the fact that they can't see.

(local language chatter).

DOUG: We're doing more than just giving vision.

We're giving people hope.

We're giving people their confidence back.

We're giving people the ability to feel joy.

GARY: At times, the call comes from a desire to change the past, to make the world better.

Dr. Zaher Sahloul was raised in Syria.

DR. ZAHER SAHLOUL: I'm a physician.

My specialty is pulmonary and critical care medicine.

I came to Chicago in 1989 to pursue further training.

My family is still in Syria, my parents.

As everyone knows, Syria have been the midst of humanitarian crisis, started in 2011 and led to the displacement of the half of the population, 5.6 million refugees, and the death of about 600,000 people.

So this is one of the worst humanitarian crisis in our lifetime.

(explosions, machine gun fire, yelling in foreign language).

DR. SAHLOUL: I think medicine in general is a humanitarian profession.

In Arabic, we call the doctor "Hakim".

“Hakim” means the wise person.

You become a doctor or you become a nurse or professional, and you do what you think that it is the right thing to do.

What would I do with the skills that I had here in the United States if I don't share it with other people, you know, if I don't help, who will be helping?

GARY: Sometimes the urge to better the world comes from very close to home.

JOSEPH: One day we discovered that our son was a heroin addict, and it was horrifying.

Nothing I did seemed to help.

And my son got deeper and deeper into his addiction, started to get arrested, going to jail, and eventually was facing prison for the first time.

And it was in the midst of a lot of that chaos and pain that my wife and I felt like if we can't do something for our son, we still have to do something for somebody.

We wanted to say, "Is there anybody out there that's working with long-time criminal offenders, long-time drug addicts, people with broken lives for long periods of time and really helping them change?"

GARY: Joseph Grenny was imagining what would become “The Other Side Academy,” and what he needed first and foremost was the person to run it.

JOSEPH: We need leaders who have come from a broken life and have figured out how to navigate their own way out.

Tim Stay, our CEO, and I flew to Los Angeles, and we were going to meet Dave Durocher for the first time.

It's the most improbable job interview I could imagine.

He told us about his life.

He'd spent up to 20 years in prison already, in and out constantly, a violent, horrible life.

DAVE: I was a drug addict for well over 27 years, a life of turmoil and chaos.

And the best way I can explain it is I lived in purgatory.

I did a two-year prison term, a five-year prison term, a six-year prison term, a ten-year prison term.

The day I got out, I was on my way back.

That particular arrest was really ugly, high-speed chase, helicopter involved, complete wanton disregard for public safety.

The cops had kind of blocked the intersection.

As I approached it, I had a decision to make.

Am I going to go through the roadblock and risk suicide by cop, or am I going to stop and let them arrest me?

And I decided to go through the roadblock.

(sirens and car crash sounds).

The cops commenced to pulling me out of the car at gunpoint and giving me one of the worst beatings of my life.

I had that coming.

Six weeks later, I went to court.

I had no idea what to expect.

The judge said, "Mr. Durocher, against my better judgment, I'm going to give you the opportunity of a lifetime.

I'm going to send you to one of the only places that we're aware of in this country, it's a life skills training academy to help people like you."

And I ended up staying in for eight and a half years.

I fell in love with the fact that I have a life, it has meaning, it has purpose.

I don't need to be a drug addict, I don't need to be a criminal, I don't have to spend the rest of my life in prison.

That isn't who I am, this is who I am.

GARY: The desire to help relieve the suffering of others often comes from something deep inside us.

We call it a moral compass, a light.

For some, it comes from faith in God.

TANISE CHUNG-HOON: People do it because they love God.

They do it because they love their neighbor.

KRISH: So many faith-based communities believe that this is our way of doing God's work on Earth.

RICK SANTOS: For me, working together, working in coalition is actually just a very natural thing.

And usually those folks, the ones that I've met, have felt really driven by this sense of common humanity.

They talk about this African proverb, "If you want to go quickly, walk alone.

If you want to go far, walk together."

WARNER P. WOODWORTH: But we can work together and build a community, a community of people who love the human race and want to make it better.

JENNIFER POIDATZ: Hopefully, most of us feel we were all part of one family.

And so we know it's our job to take care of our family.

YOTAM POLIZER: There's a saying in Judaism and in the Bible that says, "The poor people of my city comes first."

But we think our city is not that small anymore.

Our city is humanity.

Our city is the world.

IMAM ZAZA: As a Muslim imam, I want to work with everyone.

MELANIE DUBOSE: It's a beautiful thing that happens to see different faiths from different backgrounds that all come together in harmony.

(pensive piano music).

DR. SAHLOUL: In Islam, we have this famous saying that one woman went to heaven just because she gave a drink to a dog in the desert who was thirsty.

So if you save an animal, you go to heaven.

If you save a human, you go to heaven.

That's kind of the essence of all religions.

And this is the essence of our, you know, shared values.

I believe that there's huge shared values between Christianity and Islam and Judaism and other faiths.

KENNETH: So we see a little bit of ourselves in each other.

We understand one another.

We all have aspirations and dreams and hopes and fears.

So helping others is, I think, a part of being human.

KRISH: There are massive, imminent, ongoing challenges that we all face together.

And that, I think, is humanity.

It's that common core that brings all of us together.

(voices murmuring).

MELANIE: JustServe has a way of uniting a community.

I think that's what makes it so dynamic.

It's bringing all people together no matter their faith, their background, their race, their political views, anything.

It builds unity for communities through service.

GARY: JustServe was created by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

But the Church acts as a silent partner.

LYNN G. ROBBINS: It's a platform.

It's a tool.

We refer to it as a resource to connect volunteers with community needs, people that want to serve but just don't know where to find the opportunities.

MELANIE: I always think back to when I was a kid.

There was a family that lived next door that was really struggling.

I went to school with a couple of the boys.

They always had holes in their clothes, holes in their shoes.

They didn't have anything.

But that year, my family decided to give them a Christmas.

So we got together food, clothes, presents, and we had a friend dress up as Santa.

(knocking on door).

After Christmas break, I saw those boys at school in my class and they talked about some of the presents they got.

I think that was the first time in my life that I really understood the importance of service and why we're serving.

We can really make a difference in someone's life.

We can really give them what they need to help lift their spirits.

GARY: Yotam Polizer's group, IsraAid, was founded in Israel, but the group continues to reach beyond its borders.

YOTAM: Since 2001, since our inception, we were responding to crises in 55 countries.

When the war broke in Syria in 2011, we, at IsraAid, and many Israelis, realized that these people are our neighbors and they're really going through the worst atrocities a person could think of.

There were millions of Syrians fleeing to Jordan and to Turkey, to Lebanon, and many of them from Turkey they continued to Greece.

Our team was really the first on the shore when these boats reached there.

And we were the first to provide medical support.

And you know, the organization is called IsraAid, right?

So these people from Syria, they saw these shirts, "IsraAid."

Our logo is the Star of David.

These people were shocked.

They never expected to receive support from Israelis.

Through this terrible, terrible tragedy, we have an opportunity not only to save lives, which is our primary goal, but to really build bridges and change people's perspective.

GARY: In 2008, Chadi Zaza was an imam in Syria.

He memorized the entire Quran, but he knew not one word of English when he received a surprising offer.

IMAM ZAZA: I get an invitation to be an imam for Islamic Center in New York.

So I accept that invitation.

And in 2011, the crisis in Syria started.

A group of friends and I were working to help to send some aid to the people in Syria.

GARY: The organization would be called Rahma Worldwide.

“Rahma” means mercy in Arabic.

IMAM ZAZA: So this is why we chose “Rahma” as a word.

We started in Syria, but then we expand to help the Syrian refugees who flew to Lebanon, Jordan, and then we add Yemen.

So we're trying to remind people of the basic meaning in our life.

And in our religion, the mission number one of our prophet is being merciful.

(train horn, clacking of train wheels on tracks).

GARY: Making a difference in the lives of others is a daunting task.

The burden seems never ending, but for those who have made it their life's work, they wouldn't have it any other way.

Mary's Meals began by feeding children in Bosnia, but within a few years, they found themselves working in some of the world's poorest communities.

MAGNUS: So we found ourselves in Malawi, in 2002, a year of terrible famine there.

We were just doing very simple emergency feeding projects, taking food into villages where people were literally eating the leaves of trees and the roots of trees to survive.

I met this family.

I visited them at their home, and the mother of the family was dying.

She said to me, "There's nothing left for me now except to pray that somebody's going to look after my children when I'm gone.” And then I started talking to her oldest child.

He was called Edward.

He was 14 years of age.

I asked Edward, "What's your hopes?

What's your dream for your life?"

And he said to me, "I'd like to have enough food to eat and I would like to be able to go to school one day."

And that really got me thinking about that link between hunger and children missing out on education in a new way.

It's not just about that immediate suffering.

It's about those children being robbed of their future because they haven't even learned how to read and write.

It was those words that Edward spoke that really made us start to think about one meal every day at a place of education.

We'd meet the immediate need of the hungry child for food, but at the same time it would enable them to come into the classroom to get that education that can set them free.

We're not going in and saying, "We're just going to feed everyone."

We're saying, "This is a school feeding program."

It's a very particular intervention, always connecting food to education.

We begin and the community takes the lead on this, building a small structure that acts as a kitchen.

And it's our job as an organization to procure the food locally as much as possible.

And then it begins.

Those community volunteers each day turn up at the school's first light, and they begin cooking that food served to the children.

I remember Chaone Mountain, it's called in Malawi.

Again, I ended up there by accident, and again I was led there by children.

They pointed to this big mountain on the horizon and they said, "Would you come with us there?

We're going there, up to the village on the top of this mountain.” So I went up with them.

And I realized then when I got to the top of the mountain that an ambush had been set for me, because there was literally about 1,000 people on top of the mountain.

All the community leaders were there.

And basically they were saying, "You're the Mary's Meals guy.

We need Mary's Meals in our community."

I was thinking, "Well, we would love to provide Mary's Meals here, but it's just taken me three hours to walk up this mountain.

There's no road.

How would we get the food here?"

They said, "We'll come to the bottom of the mountain and we'll carry the food if you can get it to the bottom of the mountain."

And so we did.

And that keeps going to this day.

The people of Chaone Mountain walk and meet our trucks and carry it on their heads.

Three hours up this very big mountain.

And again, I love that.

It kind of symbolizes what Mary's Meals is about, in essence, those communities meeting at the bottom of the mountain.

We are doing our bit and the community is doing their bit.

We're meeting each other in that desire to beat the hungry trials.

(peaceful orchestral music).

GARY: Krish Vignarajah sees her work as sharing the American dream.

She's lived that dream herself.

She's an Asian immigrant who went to Yale and Oxford and eventually became policy director for First Lady Michelle Obama.

KRISH: Our focus is on families and refugees.

So we began in 1939 as Lutherans were fleeing Nazi Germany.

So we have responded to every single immigration crisis since 1939.

Welcoming the stranger is one of the most important things that we can do.

Even before a refugee or refugee family arrive in the U.S., we begin our connections with them.

So once they arrive at the airport, we were there to greet them.

We have found an apartment or home.

We have furnished it with modest furnishings.

We try to stock the refrigerator with culturally familiar foods.

We'll introduce them to the community.

We'll begin talking to them about employment, figuring out what skills they may have.

But we try to have a very hands-on approach.

We sort of accompany them every step of the way.

(children reciting French language).

KRISH: We face an unprecedented number of people displaced, 80 million around the world.

We know that we have our work cut out to explain who refugees are, why they come, why they're not dangerous, why they're actually valuable contributors to the community.

I took on the leadership role because I believe that LIRS could tell a different story.

That we could explain how we are a nation of immigrants.

That 99% of us trace our ancestry to a place outside of our borders.

I have a young daughter who's three the same age as my brother when we came to this country.

And I know my daughter's life will be easier because my own parents' lives were hard.

(water splashing).

A story that has always stayed with me is that of Joseph.

So Joseph grew up in Liberia.

His mother would regularly be taken by the rebel soldiers because her last name sounded similar to that of the President's.

And so because of this issue of mistaken identity, she would be taken away.

They knew that they had to flee for their lives and so they actually went to Koutouba, to the Ivory Coast.

At the time, his mother got sick and so he needed to support the whole family.

So he began to work in a swamp, knowing that the very next day he had no choice but to return.

He and his family were resettled to the U.S. and that's how we connected with him.

He at one point was homeless, living on the streets of Washington, D.C. but still he didn't give up.

And so we worked with him.

He ultimately went back to school, became a police officer with the DC police, got his degree in criminal justice, and has found ways to not just contribute to his community but to also work with other refugees.

He never gave up hope.

The resiliency in him mirrors so much of the resiliency we see in so many of the families that we work with.

That's the heart of what LIRS does and to me that's the American dream.

GARY: The Salvation Army was established in London in 1865 by William and Catherine Booth; to assist those suffering from poverty and affliction in meeting their physical and spiritual needs.

KENNETH: The Salvation Army is an international part of the Evangelical Christian Church.

So the Salvation Army works in 133 countries today.

We have hospitals, we have hundreds of schools, we have homes for the aged.

We have the youth programs, the homeless programs, the drug addiction programs.

And all of those are designed to meet the needs of a local community.

So whatever the need is, there's the Salvation Army.

A few years ago I visited one of the Salvation Army's adult rehabilitation centers, which is where men and women who are suffering from substance abuse will come for help.

I happened to be there on graduation night and those who were present, many of whom were also suffering from substance abuse, enjoyed it enormously.

During the course of the presentation, a side door to the platform opened and there was a little girl of about seven or eight years of age.

And when she saw her father, she started to run toward him.

And he knelt and he opened up his arms.

That room was filled with men and women who had lost their families, their livelihoods, their homes.

It seemed to me as if for just a moment they felt that they were recovering much of what they had lost.

That moment, probably best symbolizes the kind of restoration, redemption, reconciliation, and love that the Salvation Army wants to see in every life, in everyone who comes to us.

MELANIE: So tomorrow is the Franklin County Christian Community Outreach One Day event.

These different churches and different nonprofits have all formed to come together and they figured out how to find certain resources.

DR. BRIAN MEYERS: A little bit more than uh eight years ago, the local doctors and dentists in this area had this vision to give away free medical care and free dental care on a day.

And out of that, this Franklin County One Day Community Outreach was born.

JENNIFER STROOP: Dr. Meyers told me about this opportunity.

I've helped in the past and um I decided I'd come give my free time doing the dental aspect of it today.

And why not?

I mean, if you can help somebody who's in need, then I mean, that's what we're here for.

DR. MEYERS: In addition to the medical and dental services that are provided that day, the Lions Club started doing eye care, also a clothing drive.

MELANIE: There will be a food truck they found from an organization called “Second Harvest Food Bank” that's out of Nashville.

There's people that have donated clothes, food, hygiene items, all kinds of things.

So people need help of any kind they're there.

J.T.

STEVENS: I believe there's close to 20.

ZARTE FOWLER: Yeah.

J.T.

: 20 people... ZARTE: 20 people.

J.T.

: Volunteer today to come and hand out food and pack food up for the people here in Winchester.

GENEVA BANKS: Well, I couldn't tell you all exactly what they all brought last time, but it sure was good, it was good.

I appreciate it.

MELANIE: People will start showing up around 7:00 or so, just lining up.

We'll find out what they need.

KAREN BENTON: When I first moved here, I was actually a client coming through.

They have pulled teeth for me here.

I wanted to give back.

I'm a photographer, so I went to MC and I asked her if they could use my services.

She said, "Yes, ma'am."

So I've been doing that ever since.

DONNA FIKE: This is my second year coming here.

Um, I just thoroughly enjoy coming and helping out others.

The first time I came, I had a woman that it had been two years since she'd had her hair cut.

And I said, "Well, how would you like your hair cut?"

She goes, "I don't know.

Just make me look pretty."

But my reward really and truly is seeing the smiles on their faces.

CARLOS LOPEZ: We saw that they were doing haircuts, and then the free food and everything like that.

It's a pretty good experience so far.

DR. MEYERS: This event is so special, and that's why I come back year after year, is to be a part of something that can just share the love of Christ to our community.

LYNN: It's built so many wonderful bridges with the community, softened hearts, brought many faiths, different faiths, together so that it's just having a marvelous impact.

MELANIE: The need can be great in a community sometimes.

I've seen people that said, "You have no idea what this means.

I can feed my children now."

And it's just heartbreaking to hear their stories, but at the same time, they'll end up coming back and saying, "I want to help somebody else."

GARY: Faith-based organizations have many common ideals and goals.

These include more than just hard work and a desire to help others.

One common ideal is selflessness.

MICHAEL KRUGER: We as Christians have a duty to serve vulnerable communities or those who are marginalized or oppressed in any way, without expecting anything in return.

To me, that's what speaks to philanthropy.

It is the selfless act for the other.

The Bible uses a wonderful example.

Jesus is standing in the temple and uh people are moving in, and he sees the wealthy bringing the large amounts of money and making a big show of putting that in the offering plate.

(gold pieces clink into offering plate).

And then a widow walks in, and as the Bible says, she just drops her two mites into the offering plate.

(tiny sound of two mites into plate, and pensive music).

And Jesus' comment on that is he looks at that and he said, "Those who are wealthy gave out of their abundance."

He says, "But that woman gave everything she had."

Some years ago, I flew with some of our regional leaders to Papua New Guinea.

You know, one looks at Papua New Guinea and you imagine it as this tropical paradise, and yes, at the coastline it is.

Um, but in the highlands of Papua New Guinea, it is incredibly dry, it is arid, and the communities that live there have very little access to water.

Uh we'd worked with some water engineers on trying to work out how do we bring water to these villages in such an arid region.

And they'd found a water source.

So we then brought water from that water source over that 18 miles, or 26 kilometers, to those villages.

For the first time in their life, those communities had access to clean, potable running water.

(water rushing).

And I went into those villages and we were greeted with much fanfare and with wonderful respect.

And I remember one of the eldest gentlemen there, he looked at me and he said, he says, "I don't think you can know what it is like for the first time in my life," he says, "I can turn open a tap or a faucet in my village and I get clean running water."

He says, "I don't think you can understand what that means to me."

Because they can now take charge of their own lives.

(water flowing out of faucet).

Access to water means that they can plant more crops, that means they can reap, they can feed their own families.

And what is excess, they can take to market, generate income for their communities.

I remember him looking at me and he said to me, "Why is it that you do what you do?

What, what motivates you?"

The colleague of mine whispered to me and he said to me, "Michael, remember, Jesus is the water of life."

And I was then able to share with this man why... why it is that we bring aid to vulnerable communities like this.

It is because of what Jesus has done for us, that we reach out to those communities to try and change their lives and make their lives better than what it is.

GARY: The best philanthropy includes the act of listening.

SHARON EUBANK: What is it that the people themselves really want?

What do they want to happen?

Let's not impose something onto them.

Let's listen to what they want and then see if we can respond together in partnership.

The second question is what are they willing to do?

What do they have the ability to do for themselves?

It's really the exchange of helping each other understand each other's lives and in that exchange there's richness for both.

GARY: For Imam Chadi Zaza of Rahma Worldwide and for Sharon Eubank of Latter-day Saint Charities, the central goal is to pass the baton, to hand over the responsibility to the very people who are being helped.

IMAM ZAZA: And our way in Rahma to make the volunteer own the projects, to be successful in this, it's your successful, it's your project now.

So when you make people work in this field, have this responsibility, they're going like go to the last step to make it successful.

SHARON: When the city of Mosul was taken over by ISIS and people had to flee, ISIS had cut every electrical wire, they had smashed every facility, they didn't want anything to be usable again.

So when people came in, they had to start from the Stone Age of building that big beautiful city back up again.

They came to Latter-day Saint Charities, through one of the Christian churches there, and they said, "Will you help us outfit this so that our kids can go back to school?"

We could have bought the desks that they needed and just outfitted the school with furniture, but we wanted those families to be involved in what they could do.

And we said, "Is there any way you would be willing to be trained and make the desks yourself?"

GARY: Hopelessly unemployed refugee men were put to work welding, sanding legs, and lacquering the finished desks.

The very small salaries they were paid helped families purchase critical supplies.

SHARON: Every one of those parents was invested in education and so proud that they were able to, with dignity, do something for their children.

That's the process I care about, to invest the people in their own resources, that they have capability, that they have dignity, that they have respect, and they aren't just a charity case that needs somebody to bring them something.

That process is the thing I love the most.

MAGNUS: It's never about a bunch of rich people giving to a bunch of passive, poor people.

It's not about us charging in from outside and saying, "We are going to solve all your problems."

It's about working and walking alongside those communities in need of help.

But this has to be owned by the local community.

So that means, you know, the community organizing itself.

Where I monitor 17 schools.

MAGNUS: It's those amazing people who are struggling with poverty themselves every day, giving their time freely to cook that food, to serve that child, that beautiful work of love.

So in some ways I think of Mary's Meals as helping those parents, helping those communities be the parents and the communities that they want to be.

(pensive piano music).

BILL: So we're in about 25 countries, and we've always managed to find good local people to work with.

People who understand the population in that country, who speak the language, who are there year round.

98, oh more than that, 99% of our surgery is all done by local doctors.

DOUG: So we go in and we talk to these doctors and say, "Let us help you establish a practice that will attract the paying patients."

And if you can bring in paying patients, then you'll be able to help us with doing some charity patients.

We don't pay our doctors to do work.

We partner with them, we help them to be successful in their own private practice.

And in exchange, they're more than willing to do charity cases for us and to help the poor in their community.

And we feel like that's the way it should be.

It should be something where everybody's contributing.

LYNETTE: We work with ministers, we work with the chiefs, we work with the local people.

We don't go in, there again, tell them how to run it, we invite them to join us.

BOB: You would never enter into a country, which you're not a native of, without local partners.

Local people care for their own people, and they tell us where to go.

(young baby crying).

REBECCA NDIAYE: One thing with parents around this place is that because of their low knowledge about things, they are not able to properly take care of their children, even when they are sick.

And what we do is we educate them on the proper treatment and care of these children.

DOUG: Charity is not easy.

I mean, it's easy if you want to just go give money away.

I'm going to give some equipment away, I'm just going to give it away.

Anybody can do that, and you can feel pretty good about it.

We found out almost right away that was not the best way to do charity work.

It doesn't uplift and give you the results you want.

I don't think patients want to feel like they are a charity case.

And so our model is that people pay what they can pay.

Sometimes it might be a bag of rice, sometimes it might be a couple eggs, sometimes it might be a dollar or two.

We welcome that, we encourage that, we think that's best for them.

(ethereal flute-like music).

We had a gentleman in Nepal who his job was to cut wood.

He started losing his vision and he started missing the log, you know.

And he started actually hitting himself with the axe.

And he came in and he had wounds on his body.

He couldn't provide for his family, kids couldn't go to school anymore.

He heard about our partner doctors, our partner organization in Nepal.

He was able to come in, get his cataracts replaced with clear lenses.

And immediately he was able to go back to work and those kids went back to school and life was good.

DOUG: Charity work should be charity work.

No one should get rich, no one should be making money.

Everybody should be involved, I'll do what I do and you do what you do and we'll all put our efforts together and we can create something great here.

(energetic Cambodian music).

(teacher calls instructions to children in local language, children clapping and stepping).

GARY: Scott Neeson didn't know how to save the world, but he knew he could do something in one small part of it.

So he stayed in Phnom Penh and he stayed in the heart of the problem at the municipal dump.

SCOTT: What really struck me was when I was on this garbage dump in the first year or two there, no one ever asked for money.

They always say, “Som tov rien,” which is, "Please take me to study."

It was that request that just blew me away.

I mean, how do you say no to that?

OARK NAYHBUY: My sister and I, we get up so early in early morning, so we get up at 4:00.

And we went on to the dumps and to find like bottle or can, something like this to sell to get money to buy food.

NAY HEANG: We care each other.

She is like a mother because my family is not staying with us, so only her and me.

We have a small food, but she give it to me because she's loved me so much.

OARK: I've never think like I can go to school or think like to have better of a future like this, so... SCOTT: You need to have a community that is safe and habitable, and we ended up building small schools within the worst slum areas around the garbage dump.

That way, kids who lived in very toxic, dangerous areas didn't have to come to school.

We built the schools close to them.

And in 2013, we were approached by a Canadian firm, World Housing.

And for every apartment they sold in North America, they donated money for us to build a house.

So we started building these homes.

I think they're beautiful communities; they've got greenery, running water, shared bathrooms, electricity.

And they went to families who were encouraging their children to go to school as often as possible.

And their lives have profoundly changed.

And the great thing for me is that their children and their children's children will never know poverty again.

(children reciting as a group).

GARY: Becky Douglas and her friends started a project called Rising Star Outreach to help people with leprosy in India.

Their first project was a school in a leprosy colony.

BECKY: We started with just three to five year olds.

We now have a school that goes pre-K to 12.

These kids who had come from the leprosy colonies that couldn't read or write their name in any language, most of them, I mean because they'd been begging on the streets.

Pick any child and ask them their story and you'll just be blown away by the challenges that they have overcome, by their hopefulness, by their positivity.

It's really just a remarkable thing to see.

GARY: For centuries, people affected by leprosy in India have been considered to be cursed.

PADMA: There is a big stigma attached to this disease.

Actually more than anything else, it's the stigma that is keeping them back.

They can go to school, they can go everywhere, but the stigma is preventing them from mixing with the society.

(sounds of motorcycles, horns, and vehicles).

JENNIFER: I live in a colony where there are lots of people affected by leprosy.

So the nearby villages are afraid to drink water from our village.

If my grandma sends to me to any dance classes or any computer classes or that I might learn some skills, um, she would always tell me not to tell that I'm from that colony.

That was really bad for us to accept that, but when I come to Rising Star, my family is really happy because I'm studying in Rising Star.

GARY: Education of the mind was one thing.

Health of the body in a leprosy colony was another.

But leprosy is curable, and Rising Star created medical clinics.

BECKY: We started out with us just digging out wounds and the dirt without any anesthesia with pocket knives.

This year our clinic is set to give 40,000 medical treatments.

GARY: Advances in education and health is often not enough.

Families in leprosy colonies need help breaking hundreds of years of tradition and culture.

BECKY: Padma insisted on when we first opened the school, she said, "You know what?

If the parents are still begging when the kids graduate, the kids won't respect their parents."

And so we need to do something to make sure that those parents are also being lifted.

So initially when we started the school, the parents had microfinance, micro businesses that they were working on so that they would be self-sufficient and independent so that when the kids graduated, the kids would also be proud of their parents.

So it was lifting the whole family at one time.

PADMA: Microfinance is one of the best poverty alleviation programs.

You know, you give them the necessary funds that they require, and also give them the training.

This way they now know this is their money, and many of them have given up begging mainly because of the microcredit.

BECKY: One of our little guys wanted to have a tea business.

His name was Kopal.

So he took out a loan from the group for $3.

He bought a pot and two cups.

That was his tea business.

(man offering to sell tea in foreign language).

BECKY: So he paid his loan back, and then he took out a larger loan.

In fact, it was $8.

He bought this old beat-up bike.

And he just kept taking out more and more loans and growing his business until he now has a business that supports his family.

One time when he was asked, "What difference is there in your life now that you have this business?"

We thought he'd say something like, "Well, I get to eat every day now," or "My kids get to go to school.” But he did not.

He said, "You know, when I used to beg in the city in front of the shop, the shop owner would come out and curse at me and threaten me."

(shop owner yelling in foreign language).

BECKY: But he said, "Now, I supply tea to that shop.

When I come now, the owner sets a seat and offers me tea."

(men greeting each other).

BECKY: It's the dignity that they get as human beings that is the real measure of success.

It's not the dollars that they're earning.

It's that sense of, "I matter.

I can.

And I'm important to India.

I'm a productive citizen of India."

(rhythmic drum music).

GARY: Bob and Lynette Gay's Africa project started in Ethiopia, then expanded to Ghana, Sierra Leone, Namibia, and Uganda.

The Engage Now Africa program included initiatives for medical services, water and sanitation, and education.

LYNETTE: We were living in Ghana for three years there and still saw a lot of illness and death due to simple lack of knowledge.

And I remember telling my husband, “If we could have a college that could bring in high standards of public health training and also teach a sense of leadership to these students, to have a sense of wanting to go back into the communities."

BOB: So we just wanted a place of education and prevention, not just treatment.

LYNETTE: It's a center of all things good.

It's now the only U.S. accredited College of Public Health on the continent.

And so the standards are high and rigorous.

GARY: Health and education is not always enough.

Sometimes the path to self -sufficiency requires more.

BOB: We've been involved in microcredit loans for a long time.

In that little Mwabaya Village outside Mombasa, we sat with a small group of women that were just organized into a new microcredit organization, I believe, called YEHU.

And there were 13 to 20 women.

The last count, I knew that, that was in tens and tens of thousands.

They worked together, paid their loans back, they were able to expand, oh and they were able to raise other money to help other people.

(pensive music).

The first person we ever helped, a young woman who went and collected chicken bone parts, that was all the waste that people would throw away.

And she would take those chicken bones and make broth and chicken soup and then sell it in the marketplace.

And we gave her a small loan to be able to start that business.

And as she began to make money, we asked her, "What was she going to do with the profits?"

And she said she was going to buy her son back from indentured servitude because she was so desperate at one time that she'd sold her child on a contract basis into slavery.

One of our favorite stories in microcredit is in Kumasi, Ghana, where we have this woman who had one talent, she knew how to bake bread.

And she just needed some money to be able to put together a small little bakery.

And we gave her the initial loans to be able to do that.

The last I heard she was baking, I think, 10,000 loaves of bread a day and employing 50 people.

I've been in Kumasi, and it's called the Alma Bakery.

LYNETTE: But they almost always talk in terms of how they've helped.

It's not, oh, I've made this much money, but I have now been paying my children's school fees.

I'm paying my niece's school fees.

I'm paying my sister's medical bills and I'm giving food to my neighbor.

BOB: The world is moved by individual people looking and working to help one another.

(dramatic music).

GARY: Over ten years ago, Dr. Zaher Sahloul had a dream of his own, to help rebuild the ravaged country where he was born.

DR. SAHLOUL: We have experiences and skills in the United States and other parts of the world that doctors in other countries do not have.

We try to build capacity in the local communities by focusing on training, which is sustainable.

People want to go and help in spite of the risk, and you know, we are creating this platform for people to share their knowledge.

As we met, we decided to kind of share this experience with Syria, I mean, this is a tragedy in our lifetime, which is not attracting that much attention.

More than 580 hospitals were bombed.

We're talking about hospitals being bombed intentionally.

I mean, I went to Aleppo five times.

Um, I worked in hospitals that are built underground because they were bombed multiple times, so eventually the local doctors built them like 20 meters underground, and in spite of that, they were bombed.

And last, we worked and we slept in that hospital underground.

So patients, we did surgeries.

We also donated technology.

We trained doctors in the emergency rooms, in the intensive care unit.

The world is not paying attention, I believe, to what's happening, and I think it's our responsibility as physicians to let people know that this is happening and that we can make a difference.

(Middle Eastern inspired music).

We had a medical mission to help Syrian refugees in Greece.

We went to this refugee camp.

We had this Syrian Kurdish family who actually invited us to their tent, and they offered us tea to drink.

And that was probably the best tea that I drunk in my life.

You feel the presence of generosity and you feel very close to God because he's waiting for you to visit that refugee, to provide some health care, to provide some treatment, to just tell them that I'm with you.

You go and you provide some help, and you are helping yourself more than you are helping the person that you are treating.

JOSEPH: When people ask me, "What's The Other Side Academy?"

I like to show them the moving trucks.

There's a fleet of gorgeous moving trucks back there, all branded by, paid for, run by, a whole bunch of convicts.

And so that, for me, is the best expression of who we are.

The businesses are entirely run by the students.

So we have "The Other Side Movers".

We've got a food truck.

We've got landscape services.

We've got a gorgeous thrift boutique.

And the students run it all.

They're the crew bosses.

They're the leaders.

They train the younger students as they come into the house.

Their lives have been so broken for so long that the only way they can make sense of all that madness in some ways is to commit to a mission that capitalizes on it.

DAVE: We interview them in jail, long-term drug addicts, people who have lived their life on the streets, in jails, in prisons.

I'm always looking for a soul.

I'm looking you right in the eye when I do the interview.

And I want you to prove to me that you are willing to make an investment and a commitment in your life and fix the broken pieces in your soul.

JOSEPH: If there's just a little spark in there, something that we can work with, then you're in.

DAVE: And I'll never forget a judge said, "Mr. DeRocher, stop.

You mean to tell me I'm supposed to send my inmates that are sworn to kill each other in jail and prison and they're going to go to The Other Side Academy and live peacefully under your roof?"

I said, "Yes, Your Honor."

He said, "You mind telling me how you're going to do that?"

I said, "Sure.

We're going to ask them not to”" That's exactly what he did.

He looked at me and he laughed.

And I said, "Your Honor, you've been arresting them 25 times already.

Your way's not working.

And when was the last time they were asked not to do it?

They just haven't had the opportunity to live in an environment where that's expected.

What do you have to lose, Your Honor?"

They started sending us people.

JOSEPH: They're taught starting the day they arrive that you're expected to tell the truth.

DAVE: Your first few months are spent here at the facility, sweeping, mopping, dishes, food service, laundry, cleaning the house.

Almost exclusively, everybody who comes to us has no idea how to work.

Some guys come in, they're 40 years old, they have the emotional base of a 9-year-old.

But the critical component is you're learning how to get up every day, go to work, be on time, have a good attitude, go home, go to bed, get up, do it again, every day.

The longer you're here, the more responsibilities.

The last 90 days that you're here, whether you stay two years, three years, four years, or five years, you go out in the community, you get a job.

Here's the difference.

Every single graduate, no matter how long they're with us, the day the work-out phase starts for them, we have a job for them, full-time employment.

And we have scores and scores of organizations that want to hire our graduates.

We try to have a continuum of care on the back end, which is really important, to make sure that we offer them the utmost success going forward.

GARY: There is no single road to success, no unique formula that works in every country, in every situation.

And yet, almost every organization sees results.

DOUG: I think of Michael, a first grader in Columbia, who was a cute little kid, kind of shy.

And when he came up to get his visual screening, we found out that he could barely see three or four feet in front of his face.

And when I mentioned that to his teacher, and even the principal of the school was there, they got a little emotional.

And this is what she said.

She said, "You know, I've been teaching for 20 years.

How many kids have come through my classroom that I thought were just slow, that really just weren't able to see the board?

And I didn't know it."

His parents didn't even know that he had a visual impairment.

This is a little boy that sits off to the side when they go out in the playground and play soccer.

He's not participating.

Well, we now discovered why.

And for a pair of glasses, that's a few dollars, we changed his life.

KENNETH: Several years ago, I was asked to speak at the opening of the Salvation Army housing development for veterans.

There was the gentleman who came up to me at the conclusion of the celebration.

He was a middle-aged Black man who had lived for many years in a box.

He said that he had, as a young boy, been kicked out of his home, but that when he came to the Salvation Army, his life had turned around.

And then he stood up tall and straight, and he said, "And now, Commissioner," he reached into his pocket, and he pulled it out.

He said, "I have a key.

I have a key to the place where I live."

And he took me to the little apartment that was in this development, and he showed me with great pride; his cupboards, and his refrigerator, his kitchen table.

That was a wonderful day for me, and I know it was for him because so much of life is in the simple things, so now he had them once again.

And even today, I will often carry around a blank key in my pocket to remind me of the kind of results we're trying to achieve.

JOSEPH: Today as we speak, we're doing 250 moves in a month.

The first time the first truck arrived in the parking lot, I remember we only had a dozen or so students at the time, we stood out in the parking lot and this white truck pulls in, driven by Dave Durocher, our managing director.

DAVE: Come on, get in.

(adult students express excitement).

DAVE: Truck number one.

JOSEPH: And there were hardened criminals standing there weeping because this was their truck.

This was their company, and this was their shot to regain trust with the community that they thought had given up on them.

It was an absolutely miraculous thing for me to see them sitting in that chair and imagine who they were two years before, broken and empty and desperate and hopeless, and to see them now confident and poised and presenting themselves as somebody who has every potential.

What better could you do with your life than to be able to be in a place like this?

DAVE: I started helping this organization.

It's a nonprofit and they raise money, and there's usually about 20 or 25 food trucks.

The ladies had asked us if we would help them.

They said, "I need a couple guys to go with me so we can go deposit this cash."

I don't know exactly how much they had, but they had a lot.

So they took a couple of my senior students with them.

EMPLOYEE: Hey, this is Will, this is Devita.

EMPLOYEE 2: Hey!

EMPLOYEE: They are going to be escorting us to the bank.

DAVE: And they jokingly said, "Well, gosh, I hope that neither one of you guys happen to be bank robbers."

They weren't necessarily bank robbers, but they had a history of taking money in similar situations and they escorted the ladies to the bank to make the deposit.

And the ladies, they laughed when they told the story and so did our students, but I'll tell you how important that was.

For the students to be able to accompany them, to do the right thing, to deposit that money, and to be trusted is unlike anything they've ever experienced, and it's moments like that that help change how you see yourself.

We literally teach them, it's one of our beliefs, “Act as if until you become.” If you're not nice, act as if you are.

If you're not kind, act as if you are.

If you're not honest, act as if you are.

And believe it or not, that's the catalyst for change.

You continually act like you're nice, and guess what you become?

Be kind, be caring, be good.

Act as if you're good until you become.

(rhythmic music).

GARY: In a sea of worldwide need, trying to help others seems like a fast highway to disappointment.

But measuring the one shows the impact of continued efforts.

(child reciting lesson).

MAGNUS: What is the impact of this?

Is this really working?

So, enrollment, you know, attendance rates, progression through school, academic performance.

So we've really built up this body of evidence that tells us this does work.

GARY: Changing lives can be as simple as a cup of water or a bowl of porridge.

MAGNUS: A few years after Mary's Meals began, I went back to one of the schools and the teachers introduced me to these two brothers, Small Peter and Lazarus.

The older brother, Lazarus, had started coming to school late every morning and he'd always been very punctual before that and they discovered that the boy's mother had died.

There was no one else at home, like so many families in Malawi, they became a child-headed household.

And Lazarus was just doing his best to look after his little brother.

Now the older brother, Lazarus, he was eating Mary's Meals at school every day, but his little brother was below school age and he got very sick.

And at this point, the older brother, Lazarus, learned there was one of those centers about one mile from their house.

Every morning he began carrying his little brother, who was very sick by then, to the nursery.

Only when he got him there, only when he knew that his brother would eat and be safe, did he carry on to school himself.

That's why he was late every morning.

So often I've made the mistake over the years of thinking, "I'm the giver.” And then you have an encounter like that and you realize that boy's a hero, he just saved his little brother's life.

Mary's Meals is part of that story, but he's the hero in the story.

You meet the young people who will tell you, "I never would have gone in a school ever without those meals.

I might not be alive without those meals."

And to meet them, you see the hope for Malawi.

You see how Malawi will escape poverty eventually.

Because of that, we like to call them Generation Hope, all those young people who, armed with an education, can win those battles that Malawi uh, faces.

GARY: For the world, success is measured when reaching hundreds or thousands of people.

But often it is more important to reach the one.

(people going through rubble).

YOTAM: In April 2015, following the earthquake in Nepal, a lot of the buildings collapsed after the earthquake.

About 10,000 people lost their lives and a million people lost their homes.

We decided to bring our search and rescue team.

My team made it only in the morning of the fourth day.

In order to find survivors, the first 72 hours are the most critical.

Every doctor will tell you that beyond that, it's very unlikely.

Uh, but we decided to give it a shot anyway.

We drilled in and we started to pull out people.

But unfortunately, we couldn't find anyone alive in the first day.

So we decided to keep on drilling down, basically, and in the morning of the sixth day after the earthquake, the commander of our team was listening with his headphones.

And, you know, and he told me he hears something.

Then he asked me because he knew I spoke the language, to crawl into this tunnel that they did about 15 meters deep.

(chatter of rescuers).

YOTAM: When I reached this deepest point that I could see, I screamed something in Nepalese.

Unbelievably, down from the bottom, not only that we were able to recognize movement, but this lady who survived for six days without food or water.

She was able to make a sound.

(sounds of rescuers pulling survivor out and swelling orchestral music).

RESCUERS: 1...2...3.... YOTAM: She was the last survivor of the earthquake in Nepal.

About two months later she was released from the hospital.

Now she's back in her village in the Himalaya with her two kids.

GARY: Changing individual lives is what keeps the givers giving.

They see a very real possibility for success, not only on a personal level, but on a global one.

KRISH: We're not going to be able to help every single vulnerable person fleeing war and persecution and violence.

Through diplomacy, through global engagement, I think we can improve conditions around the world that cause people to flee their homelands.

No one wants to flee their country, but so many people like them were given no choice.

RICK: The good news of the last 50 years has been that we've begun to address things like hunger, health in really significant ways.

If you look at the numbers from 1960, for example, the population of the world is more than doubled.

But if you actually look at all the trends and the indicators, the percentage of people who are, for example, chronically malnourished or hungry actually has gone down.

And so even with more people, we're actually having less people who are hungry.

The idea of ending extreme poverty by 2030 isn't actually a far-fetched idea.

Wow, that's incredible.

That's really important.

And I think it shows people that actually their dollars are making a difference.

MAGNUS: The person who shares, who donates, who volunteers, they're receiving a gift because their life becomes better.

They become more fully human.

They're the happiest people I've ever met.

They're the most joyful people.

SHARON: I am a giver and I am a receiver at the same time.

It draws you in in this idea of I'm going to help and in the end you become helped.

KENNETH: We rise by lifting others.

We become our best selves when we care for one another.

MELANIE: You just can't help but fall in love with people.

And the thing that I think I've learned the most is love and service go together.

You can't love without wanting to serve someone.

But you can't serve someone without falling in love with them.

JOSEPH: I have had more joy in a shorter period of time here than in any similar period of my entire life.

Who wouldn't want to be here?

SCOTT: We do have the power within us to make massive changes, not to the world, but to the life of an individual child.

BECKY: At the end of the day I would say the thing that I have learned the most is to never look at a person and judge them because every person has equal value.

JOSEPH: Honestly, there's a lot of cynicism in the world.

There are a lot of people that think, well, they're just that way.

And we give up on each other.

We give up on our neighbors.

We give up on our children.

We give up on politicians.

I live at a higher moral level today than I ever did before I had a 100 convict friends.

BOB: There isn't one person, poor or rich, that cannot help another person.

You cannot understand how great it is to feel in your heart until you sacrifice that which you have.

YOTAM: When you start this circle or this life of giving, of service, especially with people we thought were our enemies, you get so much out of it.

MICHAEL: Because it speaks to that deep need inside of each and every one of us that maybe there's just that smidgen of hope that uh maybe the world will get a little bit better.

JOSEPH: This is a message the world needs.

There is always, always hope.

SCOTT: I've got more love in my life, I think, than anyone I know.

And what could be more rewarding than that?

GARY: There's a question that we're all born to ask, “What if?” It's a question that's inspired exploration, innovation, change of every kind and we still ask it.

“What if the power of love could be harnessed and shared?” “What if we could stand together, with, rather than apart?” “What if hope could be made more powerful than despair?” Lift is simply the concept of shared strength.

What are we waiting for?

(peaceful orchestral music under production credits).

ANNOUNCER: Funding for this program was provided in part by: The Paul & Kim Willie Family Foundation, The Brent & Bonnie Jean Beesley Foundation, Steven Anderson.

The Sorensen Legacy Foundation, Bill and Roceil Low, Mike Erickson, Jack Wheatley.

And also: Esperanza Foundation, Clayton and Marla Foulger, Tom and Kelly Olds, Bill Child, The Larry H. and Gail Miller Family Foundation, Richard and Nancy Marriott, Jeanne Quinton, Joe and Barbara Christensen.

With additional support by: Lifetime Products.

(energetic music).

Lifetime is a proud supporter of Lift: Connecting Humanity.

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