Chris Waddell was a star varsity skier on his way to becoming a Division One All-American when he first came across Diana Golden at a college race. She had lost one of her legs to cancer, but she still hit the slopes and competed with everyone else.

“I remember watching her and thinking, 'Wow, what is she doing here?'” Chris told the Huffington Post. “But then we all saw her race and were just blown away. Her competition seemed so much bigger than mine.”

One year later, when a skiing accident left Chris paralyzed from the waist down, he couldn’t help but recall Diana (who died of cancer in 2001) and the relentless passion she had for the sport, despite her disability.

"She kept going, which is really the greatest compliment you can pay to an athlete," Chris said. "You don't stop."

After only a few months of rehab, Chris strapped into a wheelchair and began road racing with other paraplegics. And shortly after that, Chris was back on the slopes aboard a brand new “monoski" –- essentially a molded seat atop a steel frame with a shock absorber –- donated to him by Middlebury College alumni.

He spent endless hours training with his new equipment, and in 1990 he masterminded what Skiing Magazine dubbed “The Turn,” a move that had never been completed before. “A single audacious arc proved what coaches had only begun to think possible: monoskis could carve,” the article raved.

Chris became a spokesman for disabled skiers around the world, spearheading an instructional video, “Perfect Turn,” and co-founding a monoski school in Vail.

In 1992, Chris was in Albertville, France, for the 1992 Paralympic Games, where he picked up two silver medals for the U.S. Paralympic Ski Team. Over the next ten years, Chris won a total of twelve Paralympic medals, including five golds, in the winter and summer games (in the summer, Chris does track and field), becoming the most decorated male skier in Paralympic history. Both Outside Magazine and Skiing Magazine referred to him as one of the greatest skiers in North America.

All the while, he continued to travel the globe, talking to others about his unique situation. “What speaking allowed me to do was give me an opportunity to change people’s minds,” he said. “To change the way the world sees people with disabilities.”

With his non-profit, One Revolution, Chris does just that, traversing boundaries for the disabled and spreading his universal message worldwide.

In 2009, he became the first paraplegic to summit the 19,340-foot Mount Kilimanjaro, using upper-body strength alone to climb the treacherous terrain in a custom-designed “handcycle" as hundreds of other climbers looked on in shocked amazement. Porters assisted Chris during the rockier patches, placing flat boards on the ground to even out Chris’ trajectory.

Did he ever think he wouldn’t make it? “I guess that was never an option,” Chris said. “I’d gone there to get to the top.”

A documentary film about Chris’ climb, also titled “One Revolution,” has been playing the festival circuit, winning awards at festivals in Geneva and Memphis. In late June, he’ll head to Puerto Rico to screen the film there.

Chris hopes to continue defying boundaries and eschewing easy labels. And with his "Nametags" program, which he presents at schools across the country, he encourages other young people to do the same.

The program's mantra? "It's not what happens to you; it's what you do with what happens to you."

“People say all the time to me, ‘Hey, you’re better on one ski than I am on two!’ And I’m like, 'I know!'” Chris laughs. “It shouldn’t be this huge surprise or revelation. I’ve skied more during summers than you might have skied ever in your life. It’s not a product of some superhuman thing. It’s about putting your time in. Making something happen.”

Watch the trailer for "One Revolution" below.

If you tuned into ESPN's SportsCenter a few weeks ago, you may have caught this incredible shot featured as the #1 pick on "Top 10 Plays of the Day."

That 60-foot buzzer-beater was just one of many remarkable moments in Indianapolis Metropolitan High School's run to the Class A state championship, one of the year's most improbable sports stories.

When Nick Reich was hired as a social worker at the school in 2007 and decided to take on the basketball coaching position in his spare time, he wasn't expected to lead the Pumas to a state championship.

Met High is a public charter school established in 2004 by Goodwill Education Initiatives and intended to give a second chance to some of the city's most under-served students. Eighty percent are from low-income families and most come to the school at least two grade levels behind. The school has no gym and, up until that year, had no basketball team either.

But Coach Reich and a few players decided to take a chance, practicing after school at public parks, and playing against freshman teams until they were ready to take the next step.

The early results weren't pretty. They lost their first two games in massive blowouts, 74-26 and 102-48, and notched losing seasons every year until this one. Some players gave up and quit the team. Others got into disciplinary problems at school and couldn't play. Last year, two of the team's best players got into legal trouble and the coach agreed they had to be suspended for the whole season.

"I believe in second chances so I didn't want to turn my back on them," says Reich. "Every kid on the team has been able to get where they are because of second chances."

As someone who made mistakes in his youth, Coach Reich used past experiences to guide how he coached his players both on and off the court. He allowed the two players to remain part of the team, although they weren't able to play in games for the entire season. This year, one of those players was the leading scorer and the other led the state of Indiana in assists, helping the team qualify for the state tournament.

"By this year, our team was a family," says Coach Reich. "We got to a point where we didn't care who scored the points but that we won as a team."

The state tournament games took place early on weekend mornings. Most of the players don't have cars and the city buses they take to school don't run regularly on weekends, so before tournament games they stayed with the coach and his wife.

Met High upset team after team in the state tournament. "The Shot" sent them into semi-state and they went on to win the Class A championship at Conseco Fieldhouse -- a long journey from the city park where they practice.

High school basketball is not taken lightly in Indiana and an upstart team like the Pumas winning the state championship is no small feat. But what is even more noteworthy is that all seven seniors are on pace to graduate with their class.

Many of the students at Met High are students who have been given a second chance. At the school, every student receives an individual learning plan and works at his or her own pace, in small classes, getting close instruction.

The approach has already paid dividends. The school's four-year graduation rate is higher than that of any high school in the state that has open enrollment and in which at least 80 percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch. Ninety-six percent of graduates are accepted into post-secondary institutions.

During the season, Coach Reich spent many hours with his players on the road. But they weren't playing basketball; they were visiting colleges. All seven seniors came from single-parent homes and their parents or guardians weren't always able to take time off from work for college visits.

"The coaching team here has always had the mentality that we will do what needs to be done," says Coach Reich. "The expectations I have for the players are no different than my two children. I expect my kids to go to college, and I expect nothing less from these players."

Four out of the seven graduating seniors will be playing college basketball and one will be going on a mission trip. Most will be first-generation college students. With debates raging around the country about how much states and localities can afford to provide to education, the unprecedented success of Coach Reich's team -- both on and off the court -- should show that every child can win if they're surrounded by the right resources and people who believe in them.

Next year, Met High will have one more resource to work with. Goodwill Education Initiatives is spearheading a $2.6 million campaign to build the Pumas their very own gym, breaking ground on the new facility last week. It will be ready in time to graduate another class of seniors next spring.

Chris Bley, the son of an engineer and a school psychologist, remembers what his life was like right after he graduated from college -- he sat at his desk, stared out the window and waited for the weekend to come around.

“I worked for a computer company,” Chris said. “We manufactured barcode readers.”

Having grown up and attended school in California, Chris was always an avid mountain climber and environmentalist. Even while working a desk job, climbing remained an important part of his life. But during one climbing trip at Joshua Tree National Park in southeastern California, he met two East German best friends who had actually figured out a way to make their living climbing on ropes.

“They scaled churches and other buildings, and made their money this way,” he said. These guys were also part of a "rope access" team who’d wrapped a German Parliament building, the Reichstag, in fabric, as part of an art project.

Chris was intrigued, and in the early 2000s he visited Germany himself to see how it was done. He trained extensively with his friends, learning the ropes (sorry) and seeing them in action, before heading back home to California, where he came up with the idea of scaling wind turbines.

“I remembered seeing them all start to pop up around me, and in Palm Springs. And I thought, this could be the perfect opportunity.”

So he started attending wind power conferences and shows across the West Coast, getting his name out there, shaking hands, and meeting people. He learned as much as he could about the industry, and eventually companies began to take notice. Chris called his company, "Rope Partner."

“Rope access can save these companies lots of money on cranes and lifts,” Chris said. “It saves them a lot in energy costs.”

Today, Chris and the other team members, many of whom he “recruits” from a local California rock-climbing gym, scale heights of up to 150 feet in order to clean, inspect, or repair wind turbines. Some jobs are as far away as Canada and Mexico, and his climbers live all across the country.

It’s kind of the ideal job, Chris says. His freelancers are able to work on a certain project for a few months and then let loose to climb recreationally on their own time. What started as a one-man operation has quickly expanded to a team of over fifty, and he has plans to expand to “offshore” turbines, where the wind is much more consistent.

Have there been accidents? “Sure, a few pinched fingers, things like that, but nothing too bad," Chris said. "We take all that very seriously.”

Chris insists that once he clung to his plan and made it his primary goal, he was able to fully realize the future success of his business. “I was very confident with this idea,” he said. “I knew it was something that would last. And help the environment. Both of those things were very important to me.”

After finishing high school in Mendham, N.J., Maggie Doyne wasn't sure what she wanted to do. She'd been an ambitious and driven student -- the editor of her school yearbook, a varsity athlete, and the class treasurer -- but as she weighed her options for college, she felt increasingly burnt out, and decided that she should take some time off.

"I took what's called a gap year," Maggie said, speaking to The Huffington Post from her family's home in Mendham. "I was about to make this investment in my life, but I didn't have a strong direction. I wanted to figure that out."

For the first semester of her gap year, Maggie traveled with a backpacking expedition program called LeapNow, which leads students on service missions and cultural projects across the globe for a semester. And when it came time to decide on her Spring plans, Maggie asked a mentor how she could best "have an impact."

"I said I wanted to be of use and I wanted to work with kids," Maggie recalls. "So I headed off to India to work for an organization there."

In Northeast India, she met countless young Nepalese refugees who had fled the country after the recent Maoist uprising and civil war. One teenage girl she met had escaped Nepal six or seven years earlier, and hadn't been returned since. So she and Maggie decided to take a trip together - back to Nepal, to look for the girl's family.

"We sat on a bus for two and a half days," Maggie said. "At the end of the trip, we just came to a stop on the road, and the bus driver was like, 'Alright girls, you can't go any further.'"

The two teenagers then trekked for two more days through the Himalayas, ultimately finding the girl's former village. They received details about her dissipated family and where many of her relatives had ended up.

"The effects on the whole area were very, very raw," Maggie said, remembering the experience. "But I immediately felt attached the region, like I was supposed to be there."

Maggie grew enamored of Nepal's natural beauty, as well as the sense of community and optimism in its people, but she was also deeply affected by the orphans she met in the villages. She often saw one young Nepalese girl breaking rocks on the side of a dry river bed. The girl had no school, no family; she had nothing, but she still smiled and waved every time Maggie walked by. The girl's name was Hema.

"It was really this rude awakening," Maggie said. "I thought, it only takes $5 admission and $5 for a uniform to put her into school. Why can't I do that?"

So Maggie did. And then she put a few other young girls into school, too. And she realized she could do so much more by staying in Nepal and dealing with the refugee problem at its source, rather than waiting for these kids to flee to India, or, worse, get stuck at the border and find themselves victims of human trafficking or domestic servitude. She realized she wanted to give these kids a real, permanent home.

That was when Maggie called her parents from a "rickety phone booth in the middle of nowhere" and asked them to wire her life savings - $5000 she'd earned from babysitting in high school - over to Nepal. After a lengthy conversation ("I don't really remember what I said, exactly," Maggie laughed) her parents agreed to send the money.

Maggie bought a piece of property in Surkhet, Nepal, and assembled a team from the local community to help her dig the initial foundation for an orphanage that would double as a home for herself. But soon, Maggie realized she'd need more resources if she actually wanted to get it built. So she flew back to New Jersey and worked. She babysat, dogsat, house-sat, held garage sales, bake sales, and anything else she could possibly do to raise more money. Local papers eventually picked up Maggie's story, and soon checks from admirers started pouring in. In five months, Maggie raised close to $60,000.

With this added financial support, Maggie and her team in Surkhet were able to continue the construction and finish Maggie's home. She formed a Nepali board of directors and established her orphanage, which she called the Kopila Valley Children's Project. She registered as an NGO. She was only 22 years old.

Kids started moving in almost immediately and Maggie's vision was realized. "I could see exactly what I wanted," she said. "I had visited orphanages, I could create a model that works based on how I grew up. I want these kids to raise animals, to take care of each other."

But Maggie didn't stop with the orphanage. Last year she also established a school in Surkhet -- the Kopila Valley Primary School -- which currently enrolls 230 students and 14 full-time teachers. The kids eat a full, nutritious lunch every day, sometimes their only daily meal, given that they live in an area where 50% of kids under five are malnourished and malnutrition is the cause of 70% of deaths under the age of five.

Maggie's work is all done under the banner of her non-profit, BlinkNow. Its mission is to "empower young people to become pioneers in developing their own solutions to world poverty."

"I feel there's a big shift going on in the world, and people are not okay with the way kids are living," Maggie said. "I think people are really starving for hope."

Today, Maggie is 24 years old and has formal custody of 40 Nepalese children, all of whom originally came to her with no family, no money, and no education. Many were abused. She has provided all of them with basic medical care and food, and she has taught them to read and write. "The first little girl I took in is a genius," Maggie said. "She learned English in only a couple months and she reads every book I give her. I could see her going to Harvard or something."

When Maggie's own parents visit her in Nepal, her kids refer to them as "grandmother and grandfather." They continue to help her out as much as they can, especially with organizing board meetings and dealing with tax receipts. While Maggie is home in the U.S, her younger sister is back in Nepal, working at the orphanage.

"A lot of people think I grew up in a teepee or some crazy out there family, or I was raised in a hut in Africa," she said. "But I just tell them I'm a regular girl from Jersey."

Watch Maggie speak about her journey below.

Anna Chan's story is proof that one passing thought could have a lasting effect.

Less than three years ago, Anna found herself constantly searching for ways to calm her newborn daughter, Ava, who would often come down with intense bouts of colic.

"Ava would cry all the time," said Anna, who works part-time as an office manager. "But I found out that she just loved her carseat. So I'd strap her in and drive around to help her fall asleep."

During the drives around their Contra Costa County community in the Bay Area, Anna and Ava would pass hundreds of fruit trees standing in their neighbors' yards. "There was fruit falling left and right," Anna said. "And I thought of all the fruit that was just rotting, sitting there on the ground."

Raised in Heyward, Calif., by a single mother, she recalled the days when she and her sister were hungry, finding themselves in food lines, eating only canned goods, and receiving donations from the Salvation Army. That was over 20 years ago, but it still resonated during those drives.

Anna wondered if something could be done to harvest her neighbors' fruit that would otherwise go to waste and give it to needy families.

"Somebody's hungry; somebody else's child is hungry," she thought. "There had to be a way to do something."

So Anna started knocking on doors and introducing herself to families with fruit trees. If people weren't home when she knocked, she left a brief flyer under their door.

"Dear Neighbor, my name is Anna," the flyer began. "I notice you have fruit trees ... I am wondering if you're planning on harvesting all the fruit for your own family...I would be happy to pick the fruit up myself!"

Almost immediately, neighbors began calling Anna back, telling her she could come over and pick up some of their extra fruit.

"It basically just went from there," she said. "I went from one tree to the next, just meeting all these people."

With daughter Ava in tow, Anna would drop by a home armed with pruning shears and a pole, pick up a bunch of grapefruits, oranges, lemons or limes, toss them in her car and haul them over to local food banks and pantries.

"We hear the word 'hunger' in America so often," Anna said. "But we don't realize that our own community has these food pantries, and we don't know they'd accept fresh fruit from a tree - people think they only accept canned food."

Since those early days, Anna has spent over forty hours each week working on her homegrown project. She's donated close to 500 tons and $600,000 worth of food to local organizations, though she doesn't collect a dime for herself. She's also been given a nickname -- the 'Lemon Lady' -- and keeps a blog to document her efforts.

Anna insisted that anyone can do something like this in their own community. "Before I was the Lemon Lady I was just a mom, you know?" Anna said. "I was just a neighbor."

Other communities are catching on -- she's gotten emails from people all across the country asking her for help.

"One little bag of oranges becomes a big bag of oranges," she said. "It's so easy."

Adam Baruchowitz, a 38-year-old New Yorker, had an "aha" moment when he saw a bag full of clothes intended for a charitable organization sitting outside an apartment in the building where he lived. The bag sat there for a week before someone came to pick it up.

"I thought, that doesn't really make sense to pick up one bag at a time. In New York, it's super inefficient with traffic, gas and all these logistical obstacles," Baruchowitz said. "I was thinking ... this building has 250 units, that'd be a whole neighborhood in and of itself."

There, Baruchowitz saw the potential to streamline the clothing donation process for New Yorkers, while helping out various charities. So came the beginnings of Wearable Collections, a company started in 2004 that partners with residential buildings in New York and New Jersey to provide on-site clothing donation bins and pick-up services. The organization has now partnered with 190 area buildings.

"This is pre-Al Gore and 'An Inconvenient Truth,'" Baruchowitz said. "I thought, huh, maybe we're onto something. This is basically green: We're keeping items out of landfills."

Between people moving in and out of apartments and cleaning out their closets, New Yorkers generate tons of clothing, and it's not always donated to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. According to Wearable Collection's website, a recent study showed that 386 million pounds of textiles enter the New York City waste stream per year.

Wearable Collections helps solve that problem by accepting all clothing, linens, towels, shoes and handbags and then selling the items to a sorting facility. That sorting facility might resell the clothes overseas in areas like Latin America, or sell it to other facilities that will repurpose it. Approximately 20 percent of the profits Wearable Collections makes then goes to charitable causes.

"I always connected clothing donations with charity," Baruchowitz said.

When he started the company, Baruchowitz was particularly concerned with raising money for a cause very close to his heart: spinal cord research. One of his best friends had been hit by a car in 2000 and was paralyzed from the chest down.

"All I could think about those days was how I could make my friend's life better," Baruchowitz recalled. He and several other friends were already trying to raise money for spinal cord research through various channels like running races or holding fundraisers. Using the company as a vehicle to raise more money seemed like a natural fit.

As a result, Wearable Collection's first partnership was with the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis. Today, Wearable Collections isn't limited in scope to any one charity or to just residential buildings: They've hosted clothing drives in partnership with elementary schools, churches and local sports clubs like the New York Road Runners (during the marathon Baruchowitz chased after runners as they discarded their additional layers of clothing).

Wearable Collections also has weekly collection booths at nine area greenmarkets, including Union Square and Tompkins Square Park. They've just helped the markets, all of which are part of GrowNYC, hit the mark of 1 million pounds of clothing collected.

The company's staff is small (Baruchowitz still sometimes helps unload the trucks of clothes) but they're growing every month. Like any start-up, they've face their share of challenges, but for Baruchowitz it's been well worth it.

"I've sacrificed a lot to keep this thing going," Baruchowitz said. "I'm a socially conscious person by nature. I think that this company totally suits who I am."

Odunola “Ola” Ojewumi, quite possibly the most optimistic college junior in America, was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart defect, at a young age.

“Do you want me to spell it for you?” Ola asked, politely, in an interview with HuffPost on Monday. “They taught me how to do that in the hospital.”

Ola remembers being flown by helicopter at age 12 from her home in Prince George’s County, Md., to a hospital in Washington, D.C. As they flew, she and her parents prayed that she’d make it through the ride.

“I was fading in and out of consciousness,” she said. “When I woke up in the hospital I had a million tubes down my throat. I didn’t know where I was; I just saw this nurse shining a flashlight in my eyes. It was like that show, 'ER,' or something.”

The helicopter ride came after months of difficult treatments for Ola’s heart condition, which had begun to affect the rest of her body, as well.

“The doctors thought I’d be able to be treated, but those treatments were actually causing my kidneys to fail, too,” she said. “So then I needed two transplants.”

After that helicopter ride and subsequent hospitalization, Ola and her family knew she needed the transplants or she wouldn’t make it much longer. Thankfully, in December, the donors came through. She received both transplants and was in and out of the hospital in barely two and a half weeks.

“I broke a record!” Ola said. “Because I was out of that hospital so fast.”

The years following the procedure were trying -- Ola had to use a wheelchair sometimes, and had trouble walking "more than a block." And in 2009, when Ola was a freshman at the University of Maryland, doctors found complications with her transplant, and she was diagnosed with a rare form of transplant cancer.

“I got really emotional after that diagnosis,” Ola remembers. “And I started talking to a lot of people about what I really wanted to do with my life.”

Always ambitious, Ola took matters into her own hands. Working with Prince George’s County councilman Tom Dernoga, she founded Sacred Heart Children’s Transplant Foundation, an organization dedicated to increasing awareness for transplants and donor registration. Through Sacred Heart, Ola raised money for teddy bear and book drives and even started a separate mentoring program for inner-city pre-teenagers -- a summer camp, which was recently recognized by Michelle Obama.

“When you’re 12, you’re kind of in between things.” Ola said. “Too old for camp, but too young to get a job. A lot of other girls, where I’m from, they don’t have a lot of options for themselves.”

The girls at Ola’s camp recently participated in a clothing drive, donating more than 400 pairs of jeans to local, homeless teenagers.

And Ola’s showing no signs of slowing down. She’s also digging deep into her politics studies at the University of Maryland., trying to make a few changes. “I’m trying to make public transportation free for all low-income students,” she said. “If they were able to afford transportation then they could take part in mentoring programs and keep themselves off the streets.”

And thanks to a recent grant from MTVU, Ola is working toward establishing a scholarship program for Sacred Heart, providing money to recent transplant recipients and their families.

“When I was in the hospital I received a grant from a family with a child who’d had a transplant,” Ola said. “That money helped my family so much. They were basically working just to pay for my insurance at the time. And I’d love to be able to assist families with children with medical needs; low-income students coming from my neighborhood.”

As if she didn’t have enough on her plate, Ola, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, also found time to travel to Guatemala with the United Nations Population Fund last year, visiting girls who participate in mentoring programs abroad.

Though her health isn’t perfect, Ola has found solace in planning for her future.

“I still take about 15 pills a day, and one injection a week, and there’s a bunch of projects I want to do,” she said, laughing. “It’s hard managing it, but having some type of organization gives me the drive to be able to juggle both. Luckily I have my motivation in Sacred Heart.”

In these ADD-riddled days of inattention and idleness, getting a group of 3-year-olds to focus their energy on a shared objective is about as easy as lion taming.

But somehow, one Missoula, Mont., teacher has not only inspired the kids in her pre-K classroom to focus, she’s given them a tangible way to spread human kindness on a daily basis.

She's also given them capes.

“The capes are very important,” Kristal Burns, the creator of Superheroes of Kindness and teacher at the Missoula Community School, told the Huffington Post. “Without the capes, I don’t think this would have worked.”

Kristal's mission began when she was introduced to Secret Agent L, the pseudonym of a Pittsburgh-based, 33-year-old administrative assistant named Laura Miller whose “anonymous acts of kindness” have spread nationwide. She immediately thought Miller’s message could have a profound effect on her class.

“My passion in education is using mindfulness to create a base of empathy and understanding,” Kristal said. “And, after meeting Laura Miller and seeing all the things she was doing, it seemed so perfect."

She tried to think of the best way to sell this idea to her kids, who range from 3 to 5 years old. “Well, they loved superheroes,” Kristal said. So, she thought, what if we created a group of superheroes whose powers were based around spreading kindness? Could it be that easy?

Surprsingly, yes.

The kids loved the idea and so did their parents, who helped construct capes for their children to wear out on missions. The newly-crowned Superheroes of Kindness soon took to the streets, dispensing over 300 pounds of food to a local food bank. “It was a food drive run by three and four year olds,” Kristal laughed.

She and her students delivered goods to a senior center, landscaped local gardens, and passed off handmade, recycled flowers to random people on the street.

Immediately, Kristal said, the kids began to feel the impact they were having. "I remember one girl gave her flower to a stranger and then just started crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said, 'My heart just feels so good right now.'"

When Kristal asked the kids to pose for a photo after one Superheroes event, she asked them to say the classic, "Cheese.” But the kids weren’t having any of that. “Can we just say, 'Go Kindness,' please?” the kids asked.

“I was like…OK! Whatever you want," Kristal said, finding herself rather speechless.

Best of all, the Superheroes of Kindness philosophy has manifested itself in other ways. Kids hold the doors for each other, help classmates up when they fall and act nicer in the hallways.

“They’re getting out of their ego-centric selves a little bit, pointing out what other kids do good instead of just what they do good," Kristal said. "They’re taking care of each other, and they’re doing it without reminders from us."

Teachers from nearby Montana communities are also taking notice, e-mailing Kristal for advice on starting their own Superhero club. And more capes, for more students at Missoula Community School, are being made.

This summer, Kristal and the superheroes won’t put a stop to their outreach. They plan to work with Imagine Missoula, a non-profit dedicated to providing small acts of kindness and support within the local community.

"And then, next year," Kristal said, "we’re hoping to make Superheroes a school-wide thing."

Saving the world, one step at a time.

Follow the Superheroes of Kindness and their Missions of Good by clicking here.

Mick Foley is missing part of an ear and a few front teeth. Known to some as "Cactus Jack" or "Mankind," the pro-wrestler’s weapons of choice in the ring have included barbed wire bats, the mandible claw and a sock puppet aptly named "Mr. Socko," which often found its way down his opponents’ throats. This bearded face, framed by haphazard curls, is not one that you would expect to proudly represent the movement to end rape and sexual violence.

But when Foley, 46, talks about sexual assault, which occurs approximately every two minutes in the US, he leans forward and his eyes ignite. As he makes his points, eloquently -- he has written New York Times best sellers without ghostwriters, after all -- the plaid-wearing wrestler makes sure that everyone in the room is listening.

"I remember being in seventh grade when I learned the definition of paradox," Foley told The Huffington Post. "It doesn’t seem like a pro-wrestler would be able to lend much when it comes to a campaign against sexual violence, but for some reason I kept telling myself that it made perfect sense."

Since April, Foley has raised over $140,000 (and counting) for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) by auctioning off personal goods (yes, even Mr. Socko). He has also donated personal services, offering to mow the lawns of people who donate over $5,000.

"A fan asked me if I was hard up on money, and I told him that RAINN was important to me, so I wanted to put my important stuff out there," Foley said.

Foley's interest in the cause began after what he calls "the best moment of [his] life" -- when he met his unlikely idol, Tori Amos, at Comic Con in 2008. After they met, Foley ventured onto the internet for the first time (a big heart and technological savvy do not always go hand in hand) to find a picture of the two of them on Amos' website. While perusing her page, Foley discovered that she was a co-founder of RAINN, which educates the public about sexual assault and prevention. It also maintains a phone hotline that partners with over 1,100 local rape treatment hotlines and online support networks.

"I was aware of the problems [RAINN] addressed, but until reading about it I assumed it was a problem that I couldn't help with," Foley said. "I had a really good friend who told me about her sexual assault about 25 years ago, and I didn't know what to say. I always thought that that was seen as not caring instead of not knowing what to do."

Foley decided to donate half of the advance he received for his book "Countdown to Lockdown" to RAINN. He then joined the organization's National Leadership Council. After that, in January 2010, he signed on to be an online volunteer. In his first year, he has clocked over 500 hours of counseling and has spoken to about 700 survivors of sexual assault.

"In some cases, the assault people have suffered is very recent, and sometimes it has been with the survivor for months or years or decades," Foley said. "In most cases, I am the first person that they are able to tell their story to."

The father of four is no stranger to community service. Foley has made monthly visits to wounded soldiers at Washington, D.C. military hospitals, and he famously appeared on "The Daily Show" threatening to beat up the bullies who threatened an elementary school student campaigning for marriage equality. Jon Stewart awarded Foley a Medal of Reasonableness for the hilarious public service announcement at October's Rally To Restore Sanity. Foley was even tempted to auction off his medal, along with other prized possessions, to raise money for RAINN, but his wife convinced him that some things were worth holding onto.

Foley volunteers because he sees sexual assault as an unaddressed but overwhelmingly prevalent -- and preventable -- issue. "When I look at an issue like bullying or sexual violence, they are 100% avoidable," he said. "So when I try to look at the larger puzzle and figure out where I can put my couple of pieces, I think putting it in a subject where conversation and education can lead to so much prevention, that it seems to me to be the perfect place for me to try to make a difference."

His fundraising efforts have even raised awareness and fostered unity within the wrestling world. Wrestlers have opened up about childhood abuse to Foley and both his current employer, Impact Wrestling, and former employer, WWE, have donated $10,000 to the cause.

"I was asked, does this mean you have to show up and mow Vince McMahon's lawn, and I said I certainly hope not," Foley said.

Foley has become fluent in the issues surrounding sexual assault. He has testified before Congress about the importance of eliminating the backlog of untested rape kits and spoken out against Fox News when the network criticized SlutWalks. At 6'2" and about 287 lbs, some survivors refer to him as their "own personal Hagrid."

While rape education has traditionally been geared toward teaching women about rape prevention, Foley believes the education of men is also critical. "Every father should talk to his son," he said.

Foley is hopeful that if he can spread the message that "this thing that you think of as a drunken exploit that you might brag to your friends about is shattering a life and the lives of people around [the survivor]," then maybe men will listen. "Everyone knows a survivor, whether you [are aware of it] or not, and I'm hoping that others, both unlikely figures and likely figures, will join the cause."

Melissa Arlio is an upbeat, healthy 26-year-old from a big Italian family in Wayne, NJ. She grew up playing sports and ran her first marathon in 2009. With nothing to gain and a good deal to lose (namely, her job) Arlio elected to undergo surgery and donate one of her kidneys to a complete stranger last March. She did so in order to start an altruistic kidney chain through the National Kidney Registry.

"I've always been probably overly empathetic to a fault," Arlio said the other day, now a little over two months into her recovery. "God gave me a healthy body, how could I not share that with someone who needs it, at very little detriment to myself?"

Family and friends aren't always a perfect match for the sick loved ones they want to help, so these chains incentivize strangers to help one another.

A chain might go like this: an altruistic donor gives a kidney to a stranger, and in exchange for that kidney, a healthy friend or family member of the recipient agrees to donate his or her kidney to another person in need. The chain goes on and on, with people paying the donation forward to others they match up with.

Arlio didn't even know anyone suffering from kidney failure before she considered starting a chain. She simply donated out of the goodness of her heart, after feeling inspired by an article in Glamour about another altruistic donor.

"I had no idea you could donate to a stranger and it was such an easy recovery," she said, noting that people typically start feeling better after about two weeks after surgery. "Considering you're saving someone's life, it doesn't seem like a lot to give up two weeks."

While Arlio's family members were eventually supportive of her decision, they initially had a hard time understanding why she'd be willing to have unnecessary surgery. But she did her research and came up with an answer for just about everything, like how living with one kidney might affect her health long-term.

"The only thing you have to avoid is activity where you might get hit in the kidney," she said. "So I could never do UFC cage fighting, but that's not going to affect my life anyway."

But what if she got sick down the road and needed a kidney?

"If I ever need a kidney, my chances are better than the average person," she said. "If you need a kidney [and you were a donor] you get moved to the top of the kidney list."

On March 8th, Arlio underwent the surgery. At the time, she had been working as a copywriter at a design agency in Manhattan. She had secured the time off from her bosses, arranging to take one week of paid leave and spend the next working from home. A week before her surgery though, she was laid off.

"They framed it to be that they didn't have enough work for me anymore but that's not true," she said, adding that while her company was in financial trouble, she is convinced she was fired as a result of her decision to donate.

Still, Arlio is trying to turn that situation into a positive one by working with the National Kidney Registry to lobby for the protection of donors' rights.

"I feel like my mission hasn't really ended," she said.

As a result of Arlio's surgery, a 56-year-old woman from New Jersey she has never met now has her kidney. Two other people have already received new kidneys because of the chain, and she's keeping tabs to find out how many more transplants occur. In March, it was reported that a similar chain netted 16 transplants.

"A lot of people have said to me 'You ended up losing your job, would you do it again?'" she said.

There have been drawbacks, Arlio acknowledged, but she considers them minimal. She gets tired now at 9:30pm instead of 11:30pm and probably will for the next 6 months. She's running slower, and she'll have to find a new job, of course. Still, she has no regrets.

"Whether I never hear from my recipient, whether I lost my job, I feel like everything happens for a reason," she said. "If had an extra kidney, I'd do it again."

This article has been updated to include a link to the Glamour article that helped inspire Melissa to donate a kidney.

Maria Citino Sfreddo has a voicemail greeting that's over a minute long. "Please speak slowly and clearly and I'll get back to you as soon as I can," she instructs in English and then follows with lengthier instructions in Spanish.

"I give people options," Maria, the creator of the Head Start Legal Clinic in Chicago, told HuffPost. "That's what I'm there for."

Maria, who grew up outside Columbus, Ohio, is not a native Spanish-speaker. "I'm the Italian Maria," she said. "Not a Latina one."

But she fell in love with the language in high school. She built houses in poor communities in Mexico and taught English as a second language at a local after-school program.

For her high school senior thesis, she created a unique ESL tool kit. "It sounds like a bigger deal than it was," she laughed.

While studying social work at Miami University, Maria worked in Hamilton, Ohio, with Help Me Grow, an organization that aims to provide families with health care and other services within the state. It was there that she was first introduced to the deep and often impenetrable communication gap that existed between the Spanish-speaking community and government services.

"This was a town where the sheriff had put an 'Illegals Enter Here' sign at the entrance to the jail," Maria said. "People were scared to apply for public benefits because they didn't think anyone spoke the language or wanted to help them. Some women thought that if their kids played outside, President Bush would send them to the Middle East. They were completely unaware."

With the goal of working specifically within the Spanish-speaking community, Maria's path continued through law school in Denver, where she took "Lawyering in Spanish" classes and learned the complex terminology unique to the language.

After school she headed back to the Midwest and soon, with support from Greenberg Traurig and an Equal Justice Works Fellowship, developed the Head Start Legal Clinic, with a focus is on domestic abuse cases within the Spanish-speaking community.

"I'd always been interested in women's issues, but I didn't know if I could stomach these cases or understand them," she said. "But once I got more involved and learned more about domestic violence and how things play out the way they do, I couldn't imagine working in any other area."

According to a study by the UIC Center for Urban Economic Development, 34 percent of Latina women in Chicago have experienced domestic violence. To complicate matters further, Maria explained, Latina women are specifically threatened with much more than physical abuse.

"There's a perceived risk of deportation if these women seek help," she explained. "The abuser says: 'I'm not going to help you get a green card or a visa if you don't do what I say, I'm going to take your kids from you, you'll be deported."

Biding her time between 10 different pre-schools on a weekly basis ("That's the best way to reach people," Maria said, "since they're able to tell their abusers that they're just 'dropping their kids off at school,") Maria leads "Know Your Rights" presentations and attempts to forge unique legal options for families.

"I'm there to empower these women," she said. "A domestic violence survivor doesn't need some attorney coming in and saying what they should or shouldn't be doing. She needs someone saying, 'Here are ways I can help you, but its your choice, it's your decision.' "

She lets undocumented clients know about the Violence Against Women Act and U visa, both of which provide residency options and support for victims of domestic violence.

"I try to come at this from a legal standpoint," Maria said. "I have to make it clear that there's something they can do to change this."

To nominate a Greatest Person of the Day, email impact@huffingtonpost.com

Along with his two best friends, Kohl Crecelius is expanding the boundaries of digital connection, philanthropy and retail with a business rooted in a very personal experience -- and a talent for crocheting.

"This may sound weird," Kohl, 25, told HuffPost from his office in Costa Mesa, Calif., on Monday, "but there was never really a doubt that this would help or that we would be able to accomplish our mission."

Kohl is the CEO of Krochet Kids, a nonprofit he cofounded along with his two childhood best friends, Travis and Stewart. Their mission: to combat poverty and sustain communities worldwide. Their motto: "Buy A Hat. Change a Life."

The whole "crochet thing" started as a lark in high school, when Kohl's older brother taught him how to rock the hook and yarn. "We were big skiers and snowboarders back then and started making beanies and headgear for the slopes," Kohl said, without a hint of irony. "But I really like crocheting. We all did; it was fun."

Setting off an entrepreneurial drive that now seems inherent to his being, Kohl took his hobby further, selling hats to friends and family, and soon a "mini-fad" kicked in around his hometown in Spokane, Wash. A local newspaper dubbed Kohl and his friends the "Crochet Kids," and the trio started to make some money, though they spent most of the cash on a particularly epic senior prom, complete with a hot air balloon ride for them and their dates.

When Kohl and his friends branched off to different colleges across the Northwest, they stayed in touch constantly, traveling around the world, and keeping each other updated on what they were seeing. Kohl worked one summer with Haitian refugees in the Dominican Republic and felt inspired. The three friends wanted to tangibly impact the communities they were coming across, but weren't sure how to do it.

Then someone suggested digging up their old high school hobby.

"This idea of crocheting came up, but I was pretty skeptical," Kohl said. "I didn't think it was something the world needed. I wanted something bigger, something more broad."

But when Stewart returned from a trip to Uganda, he brought with him stories that deeply affected the three best friends. They sat around a campfire and caught up.

"He told us that these people living in government-run camps, completely dependant on other organizations and the government for their every need," Kohl remembered. "One man felt like a baby 'waiting for mother's milk,' you know, he didn't even feel dignified enough to provide for his family or himself."

The more they thought about it, they realized a very basic opportunity they had. So through late night, extracurricular cram sessions on Skype, the three friends, who were midway through college, planted the seeds for Krochet Kids. They began crocheting again, selling hats at night on campus, and they brainstormed comprehensive business plans.

"We used school to our advantage," Kohl said. "We'd turn in projects for our business, marketing or anthropology classes surrounding Krochet Kids. We turned to our teachers and asked for real feedback. We said, 'We're really doing this. Can you help?'"

In the summer of 2007, the three friends took their first trip to Uganda. They sat in a small hut and taught 10 local women to crochet. "We brought over all the yarn, the scissors, everything we needed," Kohl said. "They were receptive because we had a good product, but we were also providing a real job."

After a year, that initial group of 10 women expanded to 80, and today stands at over 100. "This is a model of empowerment for communities," Kohl said. "They earn a fair, consistent income, which provides all their immediate needs -- they send their kids to school, get them medicine and eat healthy meals."

The crew also makes a point to walk their employees through an "education cycle," teaching them about finance and budgeting. For many of their employees, this is their first real job; Kohl and Krochet Kids help them look toward the future and inspire genuine self-reliance.

"Our employees have saved up and started community stores, they've bought their own cattle," Kohl said. "One woman started a goat-rearing business."

And the hats are great, too. Kohl thinks this is the prime ingredient; this isn't just some philanthropic "donation" they're providing. Rather, Krochet Kids is able to provide a solid product that fits nicely in with the retail cycle and industry "fashion standards." Today, they sell their hats at Nordstrom, as well as their other products (crochet laptop case, anyone?) online.

Plus, every hat is signed by the crochet-artist who made it. You can even head to the Krochet Kids website and meet your seamstress. This is key, Kohl said, because this way you know your hat is made by a real person with a unique story. People who buy the hats often send personal thank-you notes.

Krochet Kids is planning to expand to Peru, and they hope to bring their model of sustainable local production to other countries in the coming years. For now, Kohl is genuinely excited about what he's accomplished with his two best friends.

"I work 3 feet away from a guy I've known since pre-school," Kohl said. "We feel pretty lucky that this is the realization of our friendship."

Darell Hammond (not to be confused with the similarly named "SNL" alum) is very serious about playing around. He's spent more than 15 years establishing KaBOOM!, the nonprofit he founded in 1996, as a national leader in civic development, building playgrounds from the ground up for communities in need, and encouraging kids, and adults, to play as much as they can.

"This work has given me a sense of purpose," Darell told The Huffington Post, in an interview on Thursday. "Playgrounds are an example of what's possible in these desperate times."

Without the possibility of hope in desperate times, Darell might have had a very different life. He was only two-years-old when his father, a cross-country commercial truck driver, left his mother to take care of him and his seven brothers and sisters in Jerome, Ill. His mother was deemed mentally unfit to take care of her children, so he and his siblings were left with a choice: individual foster care, or a group home.

"What we got was Mooseheart, the facility where I lived from four to eighteen-years-old," Darell said. "There was a 1200-acre campus, a pool; when I look at the circumstances we could have been facing, I feel so fortunate. It was a strict upbringing, but I'm grateful."

When Darell left Mooseheart, he headed to community college for a few years, and Ripon College in Wisconsin for another few, before finally settling in Chicago, inspired by President Clinton's call for national service and outreach.

There, he helped initiate City Year Chicago, an Americorps program devoted to encouraging community service among teens. A short time after, City Year asked Darell to plan a project for their national conference in Columbus, Ohio. Many ideas were passed around among the volunteers, but Darell suggested building a playground. He'd built one in Evanston, Ill, during his freshman year at Ripon and remembered the effect it had on the community.

Two playgrounds were built in Columbus that year, and, at 24 years old, Darell was asked to spearhead similar projects in Washington DC. He was certainly establishing a pattern, but it wasn't until 1996 that he understood the direction in which his life was headed. That was the year he read an article in The Washington Post with the headline: "No Place to Play."

"It was about two young kids who had crawled into this abandoned car during a heat wave and died," he said. "They couldn't find a playground, park, basketball court, anything within 3 miles of where they lived, so they were playing in this car."

Along with a small crew, Darell set out on a mission to create great playspaces in communities across the country, in walking distance of every child. By 1999, KaBOOM! was building more than 50 playgrounds a year, utilizing thousands of local community volunteers.

After Hurricane Katrina, KaBOOM! started Operation Playground in the Gulf States. "A hundred days after the storm we built a single playground in Mississippi where the eye of the storm came ashore," Darell said. "It was the first structure rebuilt in the area. You could go down there any hour a day and there were hundreds of people hanging out at this park."

Playgrounds become a center for communities to congregate, a safe place for families to interact, he says. Since Katrina, KaBOOM! has built 152 playgrounds in the ravaged gulf states.

Darell's other recent mission is based on eliminating the "play deficit" inherent in our country today. He mentioned a study, which found that 52 percent of schools nationwide had eliminated recess since 2000. Decreasing playtime outside, Darell says, only forces kids indoors and back to computers, video games, and other idle activities, as well as stunting their creative development overall.

"This is a big deal, you know?" he said, passionately. "We need to build and improve places to play, so people stay longer and come back more frequently. We need to play ourselves and be outside and bring other kids with us. We need to show up at meetings when parks and rec budgets may be cut. Play is important!"

Watch a video about Operation Playground below:

Sunday, May 8 is Mother's Day this year. It is also graduation day at Northern Kentucky University.

I'll be at Northern, watching my nephew, Nick McNay, go through the graduation procession.

His grandmother, Ollie, and mother, Theresa, will be watching from a perch up in the heavens.

Graduating from college was something that Nick did to honor them. Going on to live an educated and productive life is something he will do for himself and his children.

His journey is one of inspiration and perseverance.

Few things in Nick's early environment predicted that someday he would be on the Dean's List and walking down a college graduation line.

He was the son of a single mother and has met his father once. College is not a family tradition. He and I, exactly 30 years apart, are the only McNays ever to graduate from college.

His high school did not produce many college graduates. Nick spent most of high school playing basketball and soccer and chasing girls.

Although he excelled at all three, they were not predictors of future academic success.

He had some things going for him. With a charming personality, strong work ethic and very street smart, he has always been a natural leader.

After high school, he bounced through a series of manual labor jobs and didn't have a plan or direction.

That all changed on April 2, 2006. The day his grandmother, Ollie, died.

Ollie came back from a party, complained of a headache and suddenly died right in front of Nick and his mother. She had an aneurysm.

Nick wrote in a college paper, "My grandma was more to me than just a grandma. She was my father, best friend, biggest supporter, lifeline; words can't express what she was to me. All she ever asked me to do was to go to college."

He decided that day to get his college degree. He came to Richmond, Kentucky to attend my alma mater, Eastern Kentucky University.

He went at his classes with intensity and enthusiasm. He didn't have a major but he was motivated to fulfill the college dreams his grandmother had for him.

Then the second blow struck. Six months after his grandmother died, his mother, who had just found a great job at Proctor and Gamble, fell down a flight of steps and died at age 46. Both of his parental figures were gone.

It would have been easy to give up and quit.

Instead, he "doubled down," to use a gambling expression.

Nick became even more focused on school to help block out his grief. He also went to weekly counseling sessions, found an army of tutors, and used every support resource that EKU had to offer.

The person who really helped to pull him through was his math teacher. The teacher spent many after class hours helping him understand math and also counseling him with his problems.

I found out two years later that the math teacher was Robert Blythe, who is also a minister and Richmond City Commissioner.

Nick made it through the year and studied in Brazil that summer.

That fall, he fathered a child in Cincinnati -- another reason to drop out of school. Instead, Nick doubled down again.

He transferred to Northern Kentucky University to be near the first of his two daughters, working at cutting down trees and delivering pizzas while he attended class.

At Northern, he found his calling. The school has an excellent program in Electronic Media Broadcasting in the College of Informatics. Once Nick took an introductory class, he was hooked. The formerly indifferent student started showing up on the Dean's list with a passion and enthusiasm for cinematography.

Nick did an internship for Above the Line Media in Cincinnati and worked directly with its president, award winning filmmaker Mark Turner. (In an ironic twist, Turner was the editor of my college newspaper.) Turner had just finished work on 4192, a documentary about Pete Rose.

Turner said, "Nick has a very good eye for framing a shot. I trusted him with shots that are going to show up at film festivals and on DVD. As good as his instincts are now; they are only going to get better. He has a bright future in this business."

In days when college tuition is spiraling and people like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are making billions without a diploma, some argue that a college degree may not be worth the expense.

When I ponder the cost versus the benefit, I look at the situations of people like Nick. College gave Nick a framework to utilize his intellect and to discover gifts that he never knew he had. Instead of a lifetime of going from one manual labor job to another, he has a start at a high-powered career that he absolutely loves.

Pressure is what turns a piece of coal into a diamond. The pressures Nick had to overcome allowed his talents, work ethic, and character to flourish.

His grandmother and mother knew that Nick was a "diamond in the rough' and that college would smooth out the rough edges.

On this Mother's Day, they get to see their dreams and wishes come true.

From a perch above the clouds.

Don McNay, CLU, ChFC, MSFS, CSSC is an award winning, syndicated, financial columnist and Huffington Post Contributor.

McNay has written two books. Most recent is Son of a Son of a Gambler: Winners, Losers and What to Do When You Win The Lottery

McNay is a lifetime member of the Million Dollar Round Table and has four professional designations in the financial services field.