Did you hear about CNN’s Top Ten Heroes of 2009? Every year, CNN hosts a global search for everyday individuals who are changing the world. More than 9,000 nominations were submitted this year from 100 countries. The heroes range from an Army veteran who distributes pediatric wheelchairs to kids in need to a breast cancer survivor who drives mobile mammography vans to help uninsured women. The categories include Championing Children, Community Crusaders, Defending the Planet, Medical Marvels, Protecting the Powerless, and Young Wonders.
Three Young Wonders were chosen this year as finalists for outstanding achievement from a person 25 years old or younger; Jordan Thomas was named a Top Ten Hero. Jordan, 20, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, lost both of his legs in a boating accident when he was 16. While in the hospital, Jordan visited other amputees and remembers seeing so many kids who didn’t have parents or family to support them nor health care to pay for very expensive prosthetics. Jordan launched into planning ways to help these kids. Since then, his Jordan Thomas Foundation has raised more than $400,000 to provide prosthetics for children in need. Now a full-time college student in Charleston, South Carolina, Jordan spends his summers at home working at a prosthetics and orthotics company. He’s taken it upon himself to be the voice for the amputee community and help many more children live normal and happy, productive lives: “When you’re thrown into the situation, you just kind of adapt and you make the best of it,” Thomas said. “There’s nothing that I really cannot do.”
In what situation has God placed you that you can make a difference? “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). Look for a need around you or a talent or skill you have to offer. Start small, and see where God leads you. He’s called us to be the salt and light, the heroes, of this world. Be inspired!
Read more about the other young wonders at
http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cnn.heroes/archive09/index.html. As a college student, Shin Fujiyama witnessed extreme poverty while volunteering in Honduras; today, his organization Students Helping Honduras has grown to 25 campuses nationwide and raised $750,000 for education and community projects. Alex Griffith, now 16, was adopted as a baby from a Russian hospital; he’s now raised more than $60,000 to design and build a playground for that hospital.