Brilliance

In a world of Darkness, Be The Light
Agencies are created to help but soon enough bureaucracy reigns. The CEO's receive million dollar salaries, the staff and headquarters have a larger budget than the one allocated to those who are supposed to be served. Individuals have always been and will always be the answer. Normal people can be extraordinary. Everyday people can make all the difference. The stories below illustrate this. We can make a difference; all we have to do is care. 





The Nine Nana's

Somewhere in West Tennessee, not far from Graceland, nine women — or “The 9 Nanas,” as they prefer to be called — gather in the darkness of night. At 4am they begin their daily routine — a ritual that no one, not even their husbands, knew about for 30 years. They have one mission and one mission only: to create happiness. And it all begins with baked goods.

“One of us starts sifting the flour and another washing the eggs,” explained Nana Mary Ellen, the appointed spokesperson for their secret society. “And someone else makes sure the pans are all ready. We switch off, depending on what we feel like doing that day. “But you make sure to say Nana Pearl is in charge because she’s the oldest!” she added with a wink and a smile.

Over the next three hours, The 9 Nanas (who all consider themselves sisters, despite what some of their birth certificates say) will whip up hundreds of pound cakes, as part of a grand scheme to help those in need. And then, before anyone gets as much as a glimpse of them, they’ll disappear back into their daily lives. The only hint that may remain is the heavenly scent of vanilla, lemon, and lime, lingering in the air.

Even the UPS driver, who picks up hundreds of packages at a time, has no clue what these women, who range in age from 54 to 72, are doing. He’s just happy to get a hug and a bag filled with special treats. What he doesn’t know is that he’s part of their master plan. A plan that began 35 years ago — when the “sisters” got together for their weekly card game — something their husbands referred to as “Broads and Bridge.”

“Pearl says it was all her idea,” Mary Ellen teased, “but as I remember it, we were sitting around reminiscing about MaMaw and PaPaw and all the different ways they would lend a hand in the community.” MaMaw and PaPaw are the grandparents who raised four of the women, Mary Ellen included when their mother passed away; and they took in Pearl as their own, when her parents needed some help.

“MaMaw Ruth would read in the paper that someone had died,” Mary Ellen remembered, “and she’d send off one of her special pound cakes. She didn’t have to know the family. She just wanted to put a little smile on their faces. And we started thinking about what we could do to make a difference like that. What if we had a million dollars? How would we spend it? So the ladies began brainstorming.

“One of the sisters suggested that we should all start doing our own laundry and put the money we saved to good use. I admit I protested at first. There’s just something about laundering that I don’t like. But I was outnumbered! So among the nine of us, we’d put aside about $400 a month and our husbands never noticed a thing. Their shirts looked just fine.”

And then the women started listening. They’d eavesdrop — all with good intentions, of course — at the local beauty shop or when they were picking up groceries. And when they heard about a widow or a single mom who needed a little help, they’d step in and anonymously pay a utility bill or buy some new clothes for the children.  “We wanted to help as much as we could,” Mary Ellen said, “without taking away from our own families, so we became coupon clippers. And we’d use green stamps. Remember those? We’d use green stamps and we’d make sure to go to Goldsmith’s department store on Wednesdays. Every week they’d have a big sale and you could spend $100 and walk away with $700 worth of merchandise.”

The Nanas would find out where the person lived and send a package with a note that simply said, “Somebody loves you” — and they’d be sure to include one of MaMaw Ruth’s special pound cakes.

The more people they helped, the bolder they became. “We gave new meaning to the term drive-by,” Mary Ellen said with delight. “We’d drive through low-income neighborhoods and look for homes that had fans in the window. That told us that the people who lived there didn’t have air-conditioning. Or we’d see that there were no lights on at night, which meant there was a good chance their utilities had been turned off. Then we’d return before the sun came up, like cat burglars, and drop off a little care package.”

For three decades, the ladies’ good deeds went undetected — that is, until five years ago, when Mary Ellen’s husband, whom she lovingly calls “Southern Charmer,” started noticing extra mileage on the car and large amounts of cash being withdrawn from their savings account. “He brought out bank statements and they were highlighted!” Mary Ellen said, recalling the horror she felt. “I tried to explain that I had bought some things, but he had this look on his face that I’d never seen before — and I realized what he must have been thinking. I called the sisters and said, ‘You all need to get over here right away.’”

So 30 years into their secret mission, the 9 Nanas and their husbands gathered in Mary Ellen’s living room and the sisters came clean. They told the husbands about the laundry and the eavesdropping — even the drive-bys. And that’s where their story gets even better — because the husbands offered to help.

“They were amazed that we were doing this and even more amazed that they never knew. We can keep a good secret! All but three of them are retired now, so sometimes they come with us on our drive-bys. In our area, all you need is an address to pay someone’s utility bill, so we keep the men busy jotting down numbers.”

It wasn’t long before the couples decided it was also time to tell their grown children. And that’s when happiness began to happen in an even bigger way. The children encouraged their mothers to start selling MaMaw Ruth’s pound cakes online so they could raise money to help even more people. And it wasn’t long before they were receiving more than 100 orders in a day. “The first time we saw those orders roll in, we were jumping up and down,” Mary Ellen said with a laugh. “We were so excited that we did a ring-around-the-rosie! Then we called all the children and said, ‘What do we do next?’”

That’s when the 9 Nanas moved their covert baking operation out of their homes and into the commercial kitchen of a restaurant owned by one of their sons, where they can sneak in before sunrise and sneak out before the staff comes in. They even hired a “happiness coordinator” (whose code name is “Sunny,” of course). Her identity needs to be a secret, too, so she can help out with the eavesdropping. “We swore her to secrecy — her parents think she works in marketing. And, really, if you think about it, she is doing public relations and spends a lot of time looking for people to help at the supermarket!”

These days, The 9 Nanas are able to take on even bigger projects, given their online success. Recently they donated more than $5,000 of pillows and linens and personal care products to a shelter for survivors of domestic violence. And this August, they’ll celebrate their second consecutive “Happiness Happens Month” by sending tokens of their appreciation to one person in every state who has made a difference in their own community.

And that million dollars they once wished for? They’re almost there. In the last 35 years, the 9 Nanas have contributed nearly $900,000 of happiness to their local community.

But that doesn’t mean they’re too busy to continue doing the little things that make life a bit happier. Sometimes they just pull out the phone book and send off pound cakes to complete strangers. And if the Nanas spot someone at the grocery store who appears to need a little help, it’s not unusual for them to start filling a stranger’s cart.

“Not everyone is as lucky as we were to have MaMaw and PaPaw to take care of them, to fix all those things that are wrong. “So this is our way of giving back,” Mary Ellen said. “We want people to know that someone out there cares enough to do something. We want to make sure that happiness happens.”
Lori Weiss

Broad Street Ministries

In 2005, Broad Street Ministry was formed as an alternative church community. BSM seeks to be dynamic in its
expression of worship, embracing those both on the margins of faith and those who have enjoyed the embrace of
the church.

BSM also welcomes into its body not just those who are on the margins of faith but those who are on the margins of society. Here, a member of a prestigious private club worships alongside a person experiencing homelessness. The gay and lesbian activist passes the peace with the Pentecostal lay preacher. The possessor of a PhD. in theology prays alongside the summa cum laude graduate of the School of Hard Knocks. Churches should regularly feature this kind of diversity but in our experience—they seldom do. We believe that diversity of belief, skin tone and life circumstance strengthens our witness as a Christian community—and we work hard to extend it. We worship weekly at 4pm.

BSM tries to be faithful to Christ’s call to gather together all who can hear his voice.
To worship and pray and explore faith
To extend lavish hospitality to each and all
To work for a more compassionate and just city and world
Radical Hospitality

Time and Place:

Until May of 2005, the century-old Chambers-Wylie church building loomed quietly and uninvitingly amid a bustling and vibrant Broad Street in the heart of Center City Philadelphia along a section known as the Avenue of the Arts. It stood solemnly alongside some intriguing and impressive neighbors.

• The Kimmel Center for Performing Arts—home to the city’s first-rate orchestra and host to world-renowned performers and,
• The University of the Arts—packed to overflowing with the next generation of visual and performing artists.
• There are many other performing arts venues in the area including The Wilma Theater—a daring and heralded theater venue and…
• Just a few short blocks to the north is City Hall—where decisions are made daily about how our city should establish and live out its priorities.
• Catty-cornered to the Symphony House—home to the Philadelphia Theatre Company is some of the newest, most expensive real estate in the city.

In addition to proximity to these landmark institutions, the areas surrounding the church are a collection of special neighborhoods. To those who visit Broad Street to do business by day or patronize the arts scene by night, they find that an exciting mix of every kind of diverse neighborhood has grown up around the church building.

While this section of Broad Street continues to welcome patrons most nights of the week from the city and suburbs, people of every age, class and hue now live and work in the blocks surrounding the church building. And this is a trend that is ticking upward—illustrated poignantly by the expansive residential development in every direction which even a few short years ago was nearly unthinkable.

The Chambers-Wylie Memorial Presbyterian Church church building and facilities—which for years were shut up and closed down to this vital community—is now home to the Broad Street Ministry.

BSM seized upon an unparalleled opportunity in this location to form a new kind of Christian community that serves as ground for:

• Expressive and soulful worship services
• Bold faith exploration
• Opportunities for compassionate discipleship

http://www.broadstreetministry.org

Rooster Soup Company

Something unusual is happening in the City of Brotherly Love. A new restaurant called Rooster Soup Company opened earlier this year, and it has a lot to crow about already. It's been named one of America's "top ten new restaurants" by both Food & Wine and GQ magazines.

Rooster Soup is also doing well in another way -- it gives away every penny of its profits.

Giles said, "Someone might say that you guys are just doing this for good press." "I think that there are probably easier ways to get press," said chef Mike Solomonov. "Opening a restaurant with 100% of the profit going to somebody else is, like, a crazy thing."

Solomonov and his business partner, Steve Cook, run Rooster Soup and a small empire of restaurants in Philadelphia. Their kind of crazy fit right in with the radical mission of Broad Street Ministry, located in a 100-year-old Presbyterian church in the heart of Philadelphia, where all that money is going.

"We like to say that we exercise radical hospitality," said Mike Dahl, the executive director of Broad Street Ministry.

In one of the poorest big cities in America, Broad Street has delivered "radical hospitality" to thousands of Philly's most needy since 2008, by providing shelter when it's cold, and hot meals for the hungry. "Seven times a week, we open our doors to the most vulnerable populations in Philadelphia," he told Giles. "And we welcome them in, and provide them with a warm and nutritious meal. And it's served at the table with linen and with china by volunteers who are gonna treat the guests just like you'd want to be treated -- with dignity, with respect, with care."

The "guests," as they're called at Broad Street, may be homeless, drug-addicted, or just lonely. It doesn't matter. "No judgment," said one guest named Deborah. "Like they say. 'If you're here, you belong here.' They got a sign outside"

Another guest, John Khalil Moody, said, "They don't care how bad you look, how bad you smell. Everybody gets treated the same." "You don't feel like you're going to a soup kitchen,"  said James Tarone. "You almost feel like you're going to a restaurant. They serve you. The food is absolutely outstanding. Their services here are ridiculously good."

"Ridiculously good service"? That may be because many of the waiters and waitresses doing the serving are professionals, so inspired by Broad Street's radical hospitality that they're working for free.

Just like Rooster Soup's Steve Cook did, when he first volunteered at Broad Street four years ago, and got inspired himself. "And so I came back pretty charged up from that first experience,' Cook said, "and Mike and I talked about it. I said, 'We really ought to bring our staff here.'"

Charging up the staff wasn't very hard -- the crew at Zahav, Solomonov and Cook's four-star Israeli-American restaurant, often start their shift with dancing and splits. And when he's not doing splits, Solomonov mans the oven, making all the bread, including laffa, an Iraqi-style pita.

Solomonov's laffa bread and hummus, and the rest of his menu, have earned him four prestigious James Beard Awards. He was named "Outstanding Chef in America" just this May.

He explained: "After my younger brother was killed in action in the Israeli military, the way that I coped with it -- or thought I was coping -- was to use and abuse substances."The restaurant is an amazing success. But it could have very easily gone a different way. As Solomonov has said, "Nobody expects someone like me to be a recovering crackhead."

Solomonov was using not just crack, but heroin, when Cook found out about it back in 2008, Zahav's first year of business."So it was a really difficult year," Solomonov said. "I leaned on Steve tremendously. Steve, I feel like, is at this point a drug counselor. And the first thing that Steve said was that, 'We know that you have a problem. And we wanna help you. And we wanna take you to detox.'"

"Some of the people that are benefiting from Broad Street aren't as lucky as you were," Giles said.

"There are people that are just like me, right? That didn't have support, that are now living on the street. And unfortunately, none of us are really immune to that."

These two give Philly's "brotherly love" nickname some real meaning.

And all that money they're raising at Rooster Soup is changing lives at Broad Street. "The first week that we were open, Steve cut a check to Broad Street Ministry which was probably enough to serve hundreds of people," Solomonov said. "So it's that sort of tangible." "They basically saved my life," said Tarone. "Like, for real. I was thinking of just ending it."

Mike Dahl said, "I've had so many times where people have said, you know, 'This place saved my life.' Look, we're so grateful for the money that's gonna come across to help our mission. But I think the promise of Rooster Soup is so much more than that."

"It's a model -- I feel like that should be all over the country," said Giles. "That would be a great thing," Dahl said.

Nancy Giles, CBS News

Alex's Lemonade Stand

When Alex, who was diagnosed with childhood cancer just before her first birthday, was four, she told her parents she wanted to set up a front-yard lemonade stand. Her plan: to give the money to doctors to help them find a cure. Her first “Alex’s Lemonade Stand”, held with the help of her older brother Patrick, raised an astonishing $2,000 in one day. While bravely fighting her own cancer, Alex continued to set up lemonade stands every year. As news spread of the remarkable girl so dedicated to helping other sick children, people everywhere were inspired to start their own lemonade stands—donating the proceeds to her cause.

In 2004 when Alex passed away at the age of eight—her stand and inspiration had raised more than $1 million towards finding a cure for the disease that took her life. Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation was started by her parents in 2005 to continue the work that Alex began. Our mission is simple: to change the lives of children with cancer through funding impactful research, raising awareness, supporting families, and empowering everyone to help cure childhood cancer.

Since Alex set up her first lemonade stand in 2000—truly exemplifying the saying “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade”—we have raised more than $150 million. That money has helped to:

• Fund more than 800 cutting-edge research projects
 at 135 institutions.
• Create a travel program to help support families of children receiving treatment and develop resources, such as our SuperSibs! program to help people everywhere affected by childhood cancer.

Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation is the living embodiment of Alex’s spirit of determination and hope. Like Alex, we believe that every person can make a difference. Together, we can bring about a cure. Please join us in “making lemons into lemonade” today! 

https://www.alexslemonade.org/about/our-mission-history