Author: Candice Dyer

Organizations: Achieve Kids Tri Camp

Bryce Lawson’s legs ache, but he keeps swimming, stroke after stroke, four laps around the 10-lane pool.   “It’s a good kind of tired I feel right now,” he says, after toweling off young limbs that are growing increasingly toned.…

Organizations: The Manna Fund

When she was a teenager, Grace Hicks resigned herself to a foreshortened lifetime of “staying sick.” She had received treatment for a six-year bout with anorexia but still struggled with the eating disorder, and her medical bills had depleted her…

Organizations: Watch D.O.G.S

Six years ago, a teacher’s aide told Keith Schumacher that when he showed up at his daughter Gracie’s kindergarten classroom, the students sat up straighter. “She observed that there was a difference in the air when I was there,” says…

Organizations: Dream Weavers

Signs of the Dream Weavers’ colorful generosity can be seen far away and close to home: a water buffalo in the Philippines; therapy for an injured zebra; a steady stream of clothes and toys for 10 children in Mexico. And…

Organizations: Atlanta Music Project

Kailah Corney glides her bow across the cello’s strings with lip-biting concentration, creating a startlingly deep and resonant sound. Hooked on Symphonics: Kailah, a nine-year-old from southwest Atlanta, had never heard of the instrument until a few months ago when,…

Organizations: Georgia Meth Project

Speed Trap: The graphic ads jolt and revolt with their images, which usually include close-ups of fresh, young faces ravaged, after a couple of hits on a drug pipe, with lesions, rotting teeth and desperation. “Not Even Once” is the…

Organizations:The Fugees Academy

A YouTube video for the Fugees Academy went viral on the power of its message and the charisma of its young pitchman, Mohamud. The Somali refugee overcomes a fit of camera-shy giggling to explain with great dignity how he struggled…

Organizations: Fernbank Museum

Nature’s Child: When Emily Harrison was a little girl in the late 1800s, she so loved to explore the mossy creek banks around her home in Druid Hills that she dreamed of a “school in the woods for nature study.”…

Organizations: Guitars Not Guns

This Organization relies on that “aha!” moment the first time a kid strums the strings. Then when fans applaud and swoon, the sounds of a guitar can drown out the other noise – taunts at school, gang violence, smooth-talking drug…

Organizations: Camp Twin Lakes

Until this camp began blazing trails, children with disabilities usually waited until the off-season at state parks to paddle a canoe, ride a horse, or shoot with a bow and arrow. Even then, though, much of the terrain was unsafe.…