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hope. I wanted to change hearts and minds, to teach poor people to live with hope and to persuade people with money to invest in them, in their children, homes, and business—not out of charity but enlightened self-interest. I started Operation HOPE out of guilt, pain, and a need to heal myself. I keep doing it because the key to happiness is to stop focusing on me and start focusing on we. My family still has everything we need, and I feel lucky that I made my decision at twenty-six instead of waiting until I was seventy.”

A large portion of Operation HOPE’s success is due to citizen volunteers. Bryant calls them HOPE Heroes. They provide financial literacy education to young people, financial counseling to disaster victims, and economic education in credit, investment, and homeownership to adults. If you have the necessary skills, Operation HOPE can use you.

In almost every community of any size there is a Boys and Girls Club or a Girls Inc. chapter. They depend on local volunteers to support full-time staff in providing a range of skills from tutoring to teamwork to personal and leadership development to community service. In late 2006, I spoke at the annual fund-raising luncheon of the local Girls Inc. chapter in Omaha, Nebraska. More than three thousand people came to support the amazing work the staff and volunteers are doing to help girls and young women overcome obstacles to their success, through a range of after-school, weekend, and summer activities offered at Girls Inc. centers, schools, churches, community centers, and housing projects. I was introduced by a six-year veteran of Girls Inc, a sixteen-year-old African American, Symone Sanders. Her involvement with the program has included a trip to Washington, D.C., helping to film and edit promotional videos for the organization, participating in her club’s media literacy program, and serving as a student representative on the Girls Inc. board of trustees. Symone wants to go to law school and become a judge. She’s come a long way and is going a lot further. There are many kids like her whose lives could be launched by caring adults. Volunteering at Girls Inc. or Boys and Girls Clubs offers you the chance to be one of them.

One skill we often mistakenly assume people already have is the ability to take good care of themselves through proper eating, exercise, and sleep. The percentage of overweight Americans has increased dramatically in the last twenty years, as we eat more and exercise and sleep less. Too many people’s habits are determined by consideration of convenience and immediate cost, and too few children learn how to live healthy lifestyles at home or in school. The United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, and other nations are waging national campaigns against childhood obesity, the alarming rise in diabetes, and other health problems that undermine our physical, psychological, and economic wellbeing. Governments, schools, and large organizations are becoming more involved, but there is still plenty of room and need for citizen action. Danny Abraham is a fitness fanatic who made his fortune in the diet product Slim-Fast. When the Mayo Clinic cured him of a serious lung infection, he realized that many of the employees who were caring for others were not in the best shape themselves, so he built them two health-club facilities. One thousand Mayo employees, medical students, retirees, volunteers, and spouses visit them every day. Of course most people can’t give that much to others, but there’s a lot anyone can do. You can work to improve your local school’s meals and expand its physical education program; to promote exercise programs at senior citizen centers; to educate people with low incomes and busy schedules on how to buy and prepare healthy foods; to lobby local governments for more open space in which people can walk, jog, bike, and play; and much more. Trainers at local health spas can volunteer to go into schools to teach kids that exercise is fun and you’re never too out of shape to start. They can also help people with disabilities use their