In 1972, a social worker named Sanjit "Bunker " Roy founded Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan. Today the college trains women from villages for six months to build and maintain solar panels and other instruments. Barefoot College also offers education to the younger generation both during the day and at its solar bridge schools that meet by lamp light at night.

    The philosophy of the Barefoot College is largely inspired by the principles of Gandhi, starting with quality beyond social classes, sex or religion. As a matter of fact, women are favorably regarded as an underserved population that is necessary to bringing villages together. Another central principle of the college is self-reliance, teaching students to support and think for themselves.

    After the colleges female students have completed their half a year of training, they return to their villages villages, where they wait for solar panel parts to arrive from the college. Once they have all the pieces they need ,they construct the panels and begin collecting solar energy. For each village, the college also provides solar lamps. Villagers can, in addition, order parts for other solar-powered devices, such as water heaters and cooking stoves. Once assembled(组装）, they and the lamps are powered by the solar panels.

    The effect on the villages is huge. Before the solar panels and lamps arrived, villagers had only candles to light their homes. This prevented adults from doing serious work at night, and it made studying difficult for children as well. As for physicians, they have difficulty treating patients and performing operations at night because they had to rely on flashlights.

    Now there is power for not only the electrical appliances that the college provides but also devices like televisions, radios and computers. For the first time, the villagers can even connect to the world through the Internet.

    It was Mother's Day morning last year and I was doing my shopping at our local supermarket with my five-year-old son, Teayson. As we were leaving, we found that only minutes earlier an elderly woman had fallen over at the entrance and had hit her bead on the concrete. Her husband was with her, but there was blood everywhere and the woman was embarrassed and clearly in shock.

    Walking towards the scene, Tenyson became very upset about what had happened to the couple. Ile said to me. “Mums it's not much fun falling over in front of everyone.”

    At the front of the supermarket a charity group had set up a stand selling cooked sausages and flowers to raise funds. Tenyson suggested that we should boy the lady a flower. “It will make her feel better,” he said. I was amazed that he'd come up such a sweet idea. So we went over to the flower seller and asked her if we could buy a flower for the lady to cheer her up. “Just take it,” she replied. “I can't take your money for such a wonderful gesture.”

    By now paramedics(救援人员) had arrived, and were attending the injured woman. As we walked up to her, my son became intimidated by all the blood and medical equipment. He said he was just too scared to go up to her.

    Instead I gave the flower to the woman's husband and told him. “My son was very upset for your wife and wanted to give her this flower to make her feel better.”

    At that, the old man started crying and said, “Thank you so much, you have a wonderful son, Happy Mother's Day to you.”

The man then bent down and gave his wife the flower, telling her who it was from. Though badly hurt and shaken, the old lady looked up at Tenyson with love in her eyes and gave him a little smile.

    During my elementary school years, I used to compare my mom with my best friend Tiffany's mom.

    Tiffany's mom always gave her lots of money to buy the most fashionable clothes and favorite food. Her mom allowed her to do anything she liked. I really admired Tiffany. My mom didn't give me much pocket money and she always told me that I should behave myself. I was annoyed with her.

Whenever I didn't get what I wanted, I would complain to my mom, Tiffany's mom would give her that! I wish she were my mom. Every time, my mom would calmly say "Poor Tiffany". I couldn't understand her. "She shouldn't be feeling sorry for Tiffany!" I thought. "She should be feeling sorry for me."

One day, I couldn't help saying to Mom, "Poor Tiffany? Lucky Tiffany! She gets everything she wants! Why do you feel sorry for her?" I burst into tears.

My mom sat down next to me and said softly. "Yes, I do feel sorry for her. I have been teaching you a lesson that she will never be taught."

I looked up at her. "What are you talking about?"

Mom said with care, "One day she will really want something. Maybe she'll find out that she can't have it. Her mother won't always be around to give her money, and what's more, money can't buy everything."

She continued, "I have taught you valuable lessons by not giving you everything you want. You'll know how to look for bargains and save money, but she won't. You'll understand that you need to work hard to get the things that you want but she won't. When Tiffany is a grown woman, she'll wake up one day and she will be wishing that she had a mom like the one you've got. Life lessons are more important than modern clothes and delicious food."

    It took some time, but I eventually understood my mom's words. Now I am a happy and successful woman.

    After the operation, Peter suffered severe pain, but insisted that he didn't need any treatment. One evening, he found Susan, his wife, crying in the kitchen of their apartment in a rare outburst of frustration. “If you won't help yourself, no one else can,” she said.

    Peter started a list “How to Help Myself”, and on it he wrote, “Keep communicating with the doctors, even if they are dark thoughts.” On October 20th, a few days before his 33 birthday, Peter wrote in a Facebook post, “It's been hard to get along with having an incurable Grade 4 brain cancer; it's been hard not to get angry and sad about it; and it's been hard to accept that modern medicine isn't able to fix me.” But at the same time, he wrote, “Every day I wake up not-dead is a gift.”

    Peter and Susan had other lists, detailing the things that they hoped to accomplish in life, which included a trip to Wimbledon; climbing Mt. Snowdon in Wales; and a list of musical wishes—from learning the Bach sonatas (奏鸣曲) and partitas (变奏曲) to performing the first violin part in a concert.

    Peter started working on Bach's six sonatas and partitas, the most difficult parts, which George Enescu, a world-famous violinist, once described as the Himalayas (喜马拉雅山) for violinists. Peter practiced every day, even if he could manage only fifteen minutes between medical treatments. As he mastered each piece, he posted his performances on Facebook. He finished on November 12th, then turned to the even more difficult Paganini caprices (随想曲), which he had often listened to in a recording by Itzhak Perlman. “It's something I always wanted to play when I grew up, like wanting to be a great baseball player,” he said.

    For most of her life, Suanne Laqueur's passion for storytelling was shown on the dance floor.

    Although Laqueur began writing at a young age, dancing always took center stage. She majored in dance and theater at Alfred University and taught at her mother's dance studio in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, for years. But when her mother was ready to retire and an opportunity opened for Laqueur to take over the studio, she realized she had no interest in taking on the business side of her art: “Owning a studio is a lot of work—financially, logistically. I love the teaching, the choreographing(编舞), the staging, but I didn't want to own it.”

    Yet Laqueur's disinterest in running the studio changed when she became a self-published author. In the fall of 2013, she decided to pursue Self-publishing as a way of sharing her first completed novel with friends and family. During the process, she realized that following her true passion—telling stories through writing—made the business of the art worthwhile, and owning that business meant she could direct her writing career however she chose.

    Starting with her second self-published novel, she began investing more time in marketing and building her audience. Her investment paid off. Since 2014, Laqueur, now 49, has self-published six novels, which collectively have hundreds of ratings and reviews on Good reads. Her 2016 novel An Exaltation of Larks stole the show at the 25th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards, topping more than 2,300 entries to win the grand prize.

    “You have to write the most truthful story to you, and I think self-publishing allows that freedom,' she says. “If you work with traditional publishing, it's more about what's marketable, There are trade-offs, which everyone will tell you, but by self-publishing I have control of the book, I have control of the story, and I'm cool with that.”

A few notable moments from my most recent volunteering at the Children's Hospital never escape me.

After we had 1 with the nurses, Dr. Tiny and I went to our first room, inside which were a mother and a two-year-old boy. This young boy was 2 on the bed, jumping up and down. Mom looked at us with a sense of expectation and curiosity. She was trying to calm her son, but she couldn't. Dr. Tiny 3 his tool and waved it through the air creating bubbles (肥皂泡) in front of the child. I had a 4 with me. I started to play gentle, 5 music. As we did this, the young boy watched the bubbles with his eyes, and began to rock 6 gently to the music. He slowly reached out his hand to 7 the bubbles. We glanced over at the mom and noticed that she, too, had become 8 .

Later, we walked into another room at the Emergency Department. The patient was a teenage boy who had met with a terrible 9 , leaving him unable to sit up. 10 , he could raise his head with 11 to see us as we entered the room. He saw our guitar. "Play me a song," he said, "The Red Nose Reindeer."

I quickly adjusted my guitar, 12 my throat, and began to sing, "Jingle bells, Jingle bells, Jingle all the way…" The patient looked up with a look of 13 . With a smile, he said, "Play The Red Nose Reindeer, please!" Dr. Tiny looked at me and said, "You are starting to embarrass us." I glanced at Dr. Tiny and the patient, 14 for getting it wrong I began to sing again. As Dr. Tiny and I sang the song, the patient sang along and laughed. "That was a good one!" he shouted 15 .