TIME Magazine
Voices of the Volunteers
Four volunteers, and the founder of Teach for America, talk about what motivates them, and what they have learned
Making a Difference at Home
Inspired by their work abroad, Peace Corps volunteers return to the U.S. as teachers, bringing the lessons they learned to the kids who need them most
How Others Serve
Abroad, civilian service ranges from diplomacy to firefighting
Teach for America
Top college graduates spend two years teaching at the worst American schools through Teach For America. Here's a look at other groups and organizations that were inspired by TFA
Harlem Children's Zone Project
Harlem Children's Zone Project links social-service programs together tightly to prevent at-risk children from falling through the cracks. Here's a look at other organizations inspired by this program
Ashoka
Ashoka developed the concept of "social entrepreneurship" or investing in social change like a business and demanding measurable results. Here's a look at organizations inspired by Ashoka
VolunteerMatch
VolunteerMatch has made more than 3 million referrals to socially responsible Web surfers. Some 52,000 nonprofit organizations recruit help through the site. Here's a look at organizations inspired by VolunteerMatch
Saving One Life At a Time
Six million children—and even more adults—die unnecessarily every year. Good people all over the world are doing their best to save them. You can too
In Case of Emergency...
While his New Orleans emergency room took on water, a doctor set up a refuge elsewhere for about 50 critically ill Katrina patients
The Voice of Compassion
Offstage, opera legend Placido Domingo is a one-man charity band
A Shoe That Fits So Many Souls
For each pair of Toms sold, the company gives one away to a child in need
Certain Charity
Former lawyer Cameron Gray gets food to the poor and personally documents delivery for the donors
The Good Samaritans
Melinda Gates, Bono and Bill Gates: three people on a global mission to end poverty, disease—and indifference
Dynamic Duo
United in outrage, Bob Geldof and Richard Curtis organized the Live 8 concerts to get the world to heed their calls for action on African poverty
Here's What You Do
Four leaders whose communities were devastated by natural disasters share their experiences and counsel with their counterparts on the Gulf Coast
Exceptional Healing
Pediatrician Leena Kaartinen has made a career of helping people in dangerous locales
Secret Sharers
A duty-free-shopping mogul gave away more than $2 billion to educational and human-rights causes over almost two decades—all of it anonymously
Learning the Art of Giving
How a Bangalore-based social activist and journalist became a self-taught philanthropist, building two foundations from the ground up
It's Raining Pencils
A rookie teacher in New York City has created an online charity that allows donors to search teacher requests and fund the projects they like best
Run for their lives
Serge and nicole roetheli traveled around the world enduring snakebites and toothache — all for charity
Givers Who Mean Business
It's being called "private equity for the poor" and "a market-based approach to giving"—the Acumen Fund is a nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs in developing countries build businesses
To the Rescue
A businessman turned professional samaritan risks his life to save victims of terror and tragedy
In Case of Emergency...
By CATHY BOOTH THOMAS/NEW ORLEANS
Sunday, Dec. 18, 2005 Emergency-room doctors and nurses thrive on pressure. But the day after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, the situation inside Charity Hospital was getting dire. Five feet of water ringed the nearly 70-year-old building. The power was gone and the backup generators had flooded. There was no running water. It was dark and insufferably hot. With the first-floor emergency room taking on water, Dr. Peter DeBlieux, 45, worked in the predawn darkness to set up a refuge in a second-floor auditorium for about 50 critically ill patients. Then the doctor joined emergency-room staff in carrying the sick up the stairs. Everyone was game to pitch in. "It's part of what we do," says DeBlieux, who directs development of young residents and faculty. "Emergency medical people crave this kind of thing, in a sick way."
Three days after the storm, however, with more than 800 people—including 250 patients—still stranded in the hospital and hope of rescue fading, morale plummeted. Toilets were overflowing with waste, people were relieving themselves in the stairwells and the stench was overwhelming. Residents were siphoning diesel fuel from a lone ambulance to run the seven portable generators keeping patients alive. "At 72 hours, it was pretty apparent that no one was going to come rescue us," says DeBlieux. He and the staff watched in increasing desperation as National Guard trucks, sent out on other missions, passed them by. Finally agents from Louisiana's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, and their counterparts from Texas and Arkansas, started showing up in small boats. At the hospital dock, DeBlieux directed the evacuation all day—patients on stretchers from the emergency room as well as infectious cases, exhausted nurses and residents, staff members and family. Four days after Katrina struck, the hospital was finally evacuated.
Today DeBlieux and a contingent from Charity Hospital run a makeshift health care facility out of a convention hall—one of only three emergency rooms in all of New Orleans. The hospital itself—which cared for the city's poor—remains closed and may never be rebuilt. DeBlieux is so heartsick about the unraveling of emergency health care in the city that he took his concerns to a doctors' rally on Capitol Hill in Washington only weeks after Katrina. Since then, the lack of federal and state response, he says, has been "alarming and disheartening."
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