The New Heroes

On Tuesday night, Andy and I watched The New Heroes on PBS. It's about "social entrepreneurs" who "identify and solve social problems on a large scale." I only saw one episode. Andy watched two and there are 2 more on next Tuesday (at least on our station.)

At Worship in the Spirit of Justice last Sunday, one of the speakers from the International Justice Mission spoke about the power of personal stories. The day was aimed at the press so the speaker's point was that hearing about the millions of people enslaved around the world today doesn't affect much emotion, passion or call to action in our hearts but hearing the story of a particular slave and what their life is like and/or how they were saved from slavery is powerful. This is what was so great about the PBS show.

The episode I watched told the stories of Kailash Satyarthi, who rescues slaves in India and helps them gain a new life; Mimi Silbert, who provides work and life training to substance abusers, former felons and other "marginal" citizens; Moses Zulu, who helps orphans in Africa by providing them homes, schooling and training; and Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy & David Green who provide free and low-cost cataract surgery to the people in India.

The stories were so inspiring. I wanted to call up each person and ask if I would work for them for free. It made me feel like one person matters and one person can make a difference.

I wondered about the title of the series, "The New Heroes" - is it really a new idea that people like that are heroes or maybe we just find it more socially acceptable now to not live solely for the almighty dollar?

You can go to http://www.pbs.org/opb/thenewheroes/about/schedule.html to find out when your local PBS station is airing the series. I encourage you to watch whichever episodes you can.