Cloud Covered Streets Provides a Ray of Sunshine for People Experiencing Homelessness Robert Thornton grew up wanting to be a baseball player, but thanks to injury, his dream didn’t pan out. So he ended up, as he puts it, “stuck in a rut for about seven to 10 years, just bartending and thinking, ‘This isn’t […]

Kidney transplant brings family closer together This is a story of giving part of oneself to others. Literally. Brad Nagel is a mortgage banker in Phoenix with a large extended family. About 20 years ago, he was diagnosed with a rare kidney disease. It was a fluke — he had just had a daughter and wanted […]

Valley of the Sun YMCA Print Studio Provides Work Training for Underprivileged Children You know all those signs and posters and stickers promoting social distancing? Those things are expensive! For a nonprofit organization, they can be downright cost-prohibitive — especially if your nonprofit has multiple locations Valleywide, all large facilities with hundreds of employees, volunteers […]

notMYkid helps young people battle addiction and the effects of the pandemic It was just one pill. But it created one of the most heartbreaking tragedies imaginable.  Megan Macintosh’s 18-year-old son Chase went to see friends one night in January 2021. She didn’t fully understand the ramifications at the time, but Chase had started experimenting […]

GPEC and partners focus on expanding Arizona’s economic base When we think about economic development, we tend to think in terms of home runs. Landing a big new industry for the state. Luring a company from another market. Opening a new manufacturing facility or tech lab. The kind of stuff that makes for good headlines.  […]

Habitat for Humanity Central Arizona builds its first 3D-printed house in the U.S. In or around the year 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. It was one of the tickets out of the Dark Ages for humanity, allowing for the mass production of books for the first time and enabling people to expand their […]

Creative aging programs help older adults engage and connect Youth is wasted on the young. It’s a quip with a variety of origin stories. Some have attributed it to George Bernard Shaw, some to Oscar Wilde. The gist of the saying, of course, is the notion that the best and most productive years of one’s […]

One year ago, I wrote a column about the work that the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) was doing to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Everything was big and scary at the time. But here we are today, with hopefully some light at the end of the tunnel. So, I thought it would be a good […]

Sheriff Paul Penzone wants to create a safe haven for animals while helping to reduce recidivism Here’s something you might have never thought about before — if someone commits a crime, what happens to their pets? It might seem like a random concern, but the answer might surprise you. In many cases, pets are part […]

Backpack Buddies project provides critical items for students in need It’s a school year like no other. Believe me, I know, as a parent of a freshman and a fourth-grader. But we don’t need to go into all that. There are some things that never change, and the need for students to be properly equipped […]