Jim Grenfell, Executive Director, Wyoming Housing Network

Utah is not yet a very diverse state; as of 2013, nearly 90 percent of residents were white. Latinos are a distant second at 13 percent, followed by Asian-Americans, Native Americans, blacks and Pacific Islanders (each less than 3 percent).
 

How do you engage youth in their communities, building character by connecting them to their area’s “roots”? It’s a challenge faced by all neighborhoods, and the Troy Rehabilitation & Improvement Progam (TRIP) has found a successful way to do it by partnering with two other community “anchors”: the local historical society and elementary school.

Imagine you’re in a new country. You’re still learning the language. You’re trying to figure out who runs things. You don’t have a lot of money. Meanwhile, however, you see things that aren’t fair and need to be changed. What do you do?

In Greek mythology, a phoenix is a bird that dies in a “show of flames and combustion,” then arises from the ashes to live anew. And Manfred Reid of Louisville, Kentucky, is a modern-day, human phoenix.

It’s said that tragedy shapes people—overwhelming them with pain or, at the other extreme, inspiring them to overcome the odds to serve as an inspiration for others. When Erika Cooper’s brother—her “best friend”—was murdered in a senseless gun fight when she was just 15, it looked at first like she would be among the defeated.