Change agent: Elizabeth Johnson<\/h2>\n![\"Group](\"https:\/\/wvusstatic.com\/email\/met3\/spacer.gif\")
Elizabeth Johnson, right, and her friends raised money for disaster relief and Gift Catalog animals. (Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Johnson)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHometown: <\/strong>Ithaca, New York
\nProgram: <\/strong>Gift Catalog, disaster relief
\nPublished Nov. 15, 2015<\/em><\/p>\nShortly after Elizabeth Johnson turned 13 in 2009, the World Vision Gift Catalog<\/a> arrived at her house in Ithaca, New York, and she started leafing through it. Her father suggested she and her friends pool their money and purchase some items.<\/p>\n“I brought the catalog to church and said, ‘If you have a few dollars or your allowance to help out, that would be great,’” Elizabeth says. “I was not expecting to collect $136, but we did.”<\/p>\n
With the funds, they bought a goat, two chickens, a mosquito net, and three ducks. Elizabeth says the livestock caught her eye first. “The farm animals can multiply,” she says. “It’s a good investment for the family because it will help them for years.”<\/p>\n
After the group’s success, she thought they could make it an annual tradition.<\/p>\n
But just a few weeks later, the massive 2010 earthquake rocked Haiti<\/a>. Elizabeth and her friends dedicated themselves to raising relief funds. They held a bake sale and raised $550. Then at a yard sale that summer they raised more than $1,000.<\/p>\nAt that point, Elizabeth knew they were on to something.<\/p>\n
Since then, she and about 15 friends, ranging in age from 8 to 17, have held bake sales and yard sales each year, along with other fundraisers. “We encourage each other to keep doing it,” she says. Collectively, they’ve raised $7,000 for disaster relief and World Vision Gift Catalog<\/a> items.<\/p>\n“I’ve learned to trust in [God], however the fundraising efforts go,” she says. “He knows where the money is going. Whenever we make a donation, we’re just trusting in him for the money to be used to the maximum it can be and [that] everything will fall into place when we’re organizing the events.”<\/p>\n
Now 17 and about to start her senior year, Elizabeth is looking at colleges and anticipating that her fundraising experience will apply when she studies accounting. Before she goes, she plans to pass the torch to her three younger siblings and the kids at her church, encouraging all young people to get involved.<\/p>\n
“Any amount makes a difference,” she says. “You don’t have to work alone. You can work as a team, and that’s one thing that’s really helped us. Don’t get discouraged, even if you don’t meet your goal on a specific fundraising event, because you’re still making a difference with every single penny you raise.”<\/p>\n
BACK TO TOP<\/a><\/p>\nChange agent: Nathan VanHoudnos<\/h2>\nBecause Nathan’s team worked in remote locations across Nepal, they hiked with their equipment to sites not reachable by road. (©2002 photo courtesy of Nathan VanHoudnos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHometown: <\/strong>Evanston, Illinois
\nProgram: <\/strong>Fundraise for Nepal
\nPublished June 15, 2015<\/em><\/p>\nIn 2002, Nathan VanHoudnos was a physics major at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when he packed his bags and flew to Nepal<\/a>. Hired as a research assistant to a geology professor, Nathan and a group of American and Nepali scientists spent three months installing seismometers — devices that measure tremors across the earthquake-prone country.<\/p>\nAs his team worked with farmers to place equipment on their land, “I got to see a lot of Nepal that people don’t normally get to see — the more rural areas, where people are doing their best to be farmers and live,” says Nathan, 32, who returned to the country in 2004 for another three months. “It was a transformative experience for me, because I’d never really met someone who was living in a-dollar-a-day kind of poverty.”<\/p>\nNathan’s team members played soccer with local children outside of Hetauda, Nepal. (©2002 photo courtesy of Nathan VanHoudnos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nWhen the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal in April, Nathan, now a statistician at Northwestern University, knew he wanted to help. “My first reaction was, ‘Oh no, this is going to be terrible,’ and my second reaction was, ‘Let’s pray and let’s help.’”<\/p>\n
After a bit of research, Nathan and his wife, Kara, decided to donate to World Vision’s earthquake response<\/a> in Nepal. They’d given to World Vision in the past, and “it was good to know that [World Vision] has a long-standing presence in Nepal,” says Nathan. “The day of the quake 200 people were already on the ground. To me, that means a lot.”<\/p>\nNepali porters helped the team carry equipment to one of the remote stations near the Tibet border. (©2002 photo courtesy of Nathan VanHoudnos)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nBut he wanted to do more. “The easiest way for me to give more and have more impact was to do the [peer-to-peer] fundraising,” says Nathan. He created a page with his story at mycause.worldvision.org<\/a> and shared it with friends and family. To date, he’s raised more than $1,300 of his $5,000 goal.<\/p>\n“There’s no way my wife and I could have given that gift out of our pockets,” he says. “So the idea that we could do this sort of fundraising in this way has been a very positive thing. There’s no way we could have had this impact otherwise.”<\/p>\n
Nathan’s time in Nepal had a lasting effect, helping him realize how blessed and comparatively wealthy he and most Americans are. He says, “A little bit of our material wealth can make a big difference in places where people are poor.”<\/p>\n
BACK TO TOP<\/a><\/p>\nChange agents: Salina and Michael Dayton<\/h2>\nMichael and Salina Dayton began with two sponsored children and created a domino effect that has touched the lives of children around the world. (©2015 photo courtesy of Salina and Michael Dayton)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHome: <\/strong>Raleigh, North Carolina
\nProgram: <\/strong>Child Ambassadors<\/a>
\n<\/a>Published May 15, 2015<\/em><\/p>\nWhen Michael and Salina Dayton began sponsoring two children with World Vision in 2009, it triggered a domino effect. A year later, when their first daughter was born in December, they sponsored another child born the same month, in part so they had a way to teach their daughter about poverty as she and their sponsored girls grew older.<\/p>\n
In 2014, Salina met a World Vision Child Ambassador who spoke passionately about not just sponsoring children but engaging with them. Wanting to build a stronger relationship with her sponsored children, Salina went to myworldvision.org<\/a> and read The Hole in Our Gospel<\/em> <\/em><\/a>to learn more. In the process, a photo of another little girl captured her heart, and they sponsored this child as well.<\/p>\nThe family now writes bi-monthly letters, and Salina is equipped to share more about their sponsored children with her own children. Her two daughters already ask for donations at birthday parties, sell artwork to buy goats, and share their allowance money to provide chickens.<\/p>\n
We talk about money not in terms of actual dollars but in terms of how much support we could provide for our ‘World Vision girls.—Salina Dayton<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n“We talk about money not in terms of actual dollars but in terms of how much support we could provide for our ‘World Vision girls’ — instead of buying that one toy,” Salina says.<\/p>\n
As her passion for sponsorship grew, Salina began sharing her enthusiasm for sponsorship on social media and soon volunteered as a child ambassador to encourage others to sponsor children. In this role, Salina says she’s able to “help sponsors experience the joy of truly making a difference in the life of one child at a time.”<\/p>\n
Among those Salina’s message has reached is Joelle Howland, who also sponsored a child. “What intrigued me most was [World Vision’s] approach in supporting communities as a whole and helping them sustain and become self-sufficient,” Joelle says.<\/p>\n
Now, during the holidays, Joelle and her husband, Craig, use the World Vision Gift Catalog<\/a> to talk with their daughters about poverty. Together, they select items from the catalog to further help children living in poverty.<\/p>\nJoelle says, “It’s been very rewarding for them to see that they’ve had the ability to make a difference, and their commitment to giving continues to grow.”<\/p>\n
BACK TO TOP<\/a><\/p>\nChange agents: Villers family<\/h2>\nTracy, Mackenzie, and Jeff Villers. (©2015 photo courtesy of the Villers family)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHometown: <\/strong>Chagrin Falls, Ohio
\nProgram: <\/strong>Gift Catalog<\/a>
\nPublished Oct. 15, 2015<\/em><\/p>\nTracy Villers has a heart for giving. “My husband, Jeff, often chides me that I would give away the kitchen sink if he let me, and he might be right,” she says.<\/p>\n
The couple sponsored their first child through World Vision in 2009. Since then, their family of sponsored children has grown to include two girls, from Bolivia and Honduras, and two boys — one in Zambia and another in Mali, “who shares a birthday and a love of soccer” with their 8-year-old daughter, Mackenzie.<\/p>\n
Last Christmas, the Villers decided to give in an even bigger way than usual. The women in their extended family traditionally exchange small gifts on Christmas Day, and “every year, I would inwardly groan at the prospect of having to add this task to my to-do list, because I didn’t feel that the gifts expressed what they were originally intended to express,” says Tracy.<\/p>\n
At Thanksgiving, she proposed an alternative: Instead of giving among themselves, the women would use their time and money to give to others through the World Vision Gift Catalog<\/a>.<\/p>\nThey collected $851, several times what Tracy expected. After sharing the news with family on Christmas Day, other family members also contributed to the total.<\/p>\n
Together they purchased the “Dairy Trio” from the Gift Catalog — a goat, a cow, and a sheep. “It was especially meaningful to us because we are a farm family,” says Tracy. “Grandma and Grandpa’s dairy farm still stands, even though they have passed on. It’s a blessing to know that somewhere, another family’s life will be changed because of the Lord’s generosity in our own family.”<\/p>\n
BACK TO TOP<\/a><\/p>\nChange agents: Ferretti family<\/h2>\nThe Ferretti family in their garden, where they grow their hot sauce ingredients. (Photo courtesy of the Ferretti family)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHome: <\/strong>New York City
\nProgram:<\/strong> Economic empowerment<\/a>
\nPublished August 18, 2014<\/em><\/p>\nWhen it comes to creative fundraising, the Ferretti family has discovered a sizzling commodity. Eight years ago, the New York City family made three bottles of hot sauce from a kit their sons, Andrew and Luke, received as a gift. The next year, they grew enough hot peppers to make 12 bottles. The tiny business continued to grow, and Hot Sauce 4 Good<\/a> produced more than 1,000 bottles in 2013.<\/p>\nBob was elated as his homemade sauce grew in popularity, but he had no intention of keeping the profits. He and his wife, Laurie, sponsor two children through World Vision, so they decided to use the funds to also support budding entrepreneurs in developing countries.<\/p>\n
![\"Group](\"https:\/\/wvusstatic.com\/www\/uploads\/2017\/09\/IMG_2429-copy-3x800.jpg\")
Hometown: <\/strong>Ithaca, New York Shortly after Elizabeth Johnson turned 13 in 2009, the World Vision Gift Catalog<\/a> arrived at her house in Ithaca, New York, and she started leafing through it. Her father suggested she and her friends pool their money and purchase some items.<\/p>\n “I brought the catalog to church and said, ‘If you have a few dollars or your allowance to help out, that would be great,’” Elizabeth says. “I was not expecting to collect $136, but we did.”<\/p>\n With the funds, they bought a goat, two chickens, a mosquito net, and three ducks. Elizabeth says the livestock caught her eye first. “The farm animals can multiply,” she says. “It’s a good investment for the family because it will help them for years.”<\/p>\n After the group’s success, she thought they could make it an annual tradition.<\/p>\n But just a few weeks later, the massive 2010 earthquake rocked Haiti<\/a>. Elizabeth and her friends dedicated themselves to raising relief funds. They held a bake sale and raised $550. Then at a yard sale that summer they raised more than $1,000.<\/p>\n At that point, Elizabeth knew they were on to something.<\/p>\n Since then, she and about 15 friends, ranging in age from 8 to 17, have held bake sales and yard sales each year, along with other fundraisers. “We encourage each other to keep doing it,” she says. Collectively, they’ve raised $7,000 for disaster relief and World Vision Gift Catalog<\/a> items.<\/p>\n “I’ve learned to trust in [God], however the fundraising efforts go,” she says. “He knows where the money is going. Whenever we make a donation, we’re just trusting in him for the money to be used to the maximum it can be and [that] everything will fall into place when we’re organizing the events.”<\/p>\n Now 17 and about to start her senior year, Elizabeth is looking at colleges and anticipating that her fundraising experience will apply when she studies accounting. Before she goes, she plans to pass the torch to her three younger siblings and the kids at her church, encouraging all young people to get involved.<\/p>\n “Any amount makes a difference,” she says. “You don’t have to work alone. You can work as a team, and that’s one thing that’s really helped us. Don’t get discouraged, even if you don’t meet your goal on a specific fundraising event, because you’re still making a difference with every single penny you raise.”<\/p>\n BACK TO TOP<\/a><\/p>\n Hometown: <\/strong>Evanston, Illinois In 2002, Nathan VanHoudnos was a physics major at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when he packed his bags and flew to Nepal<\/a>. Hired as a research assistant to a geology professor, Nathan and a group of American and Nepali scientists spent three months installing seismometers — devices that measure tremors across the earthquake-prone country.<\/p>\n As his team worked with farmers to place equipment on their land, “I got to see a lot of Nepal that people don’t normally get to see — the more rural areas, where people are doing their best to be farmers and live,” says Nathan, 32, who returned to the country in 2004 for another three months. “It was a transformative experience for me, because I’d never really met someone who was living in a-dollar-a-day kind of poverty.”<\/p>\n When the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Nepal in April, Nathan, now a statistician at Northwestern University, knew he wanted to help. “My first reaction was, ‘Oh no, this is going to be terrible,’ and my second reaction was, ‘Let’s pray and let’s help.’”<\/p>\n After a bit of research, Nathan and his wife, Kara, decided to donate to World Vision’s earthquake response<\/a> in Nepal. They’d given to World Vision in the past, and “it was good to know that [World Vision] has a long-standing presence in Nepal,” says Nathan. “The day of the quake 200 people were already on the ground. To me, that means a lot.”<\/p>\n But he wanted to do more. “The easiest way for me to give more and have more impact was to do the [peer-to-peer] fundraising,” says Nathan. He created a page with his story at mycause.worldvision.org<\/a> and shared it with friends and family. To date, he’s raised more than $1,300 of his $5,000 goal.<\/p>\n “There’s no way my wife and I could have given that gift out of our pockets,” he says. “So the idea that we could do this sort of fundraising in this way has been a very positive thing. There’s no way we could have had this impact otherwise.”<\/p>\n Nathan’s time in Nepal had a lasting effect, helping him realize how blessed and comparatively wealthy he and most Americans are. He says, “A little bit of our material wealth can make a big difference in places where people are poor.”<\/p>\n BACK TO TOP<\/a><\/p>\n Home: <\/strong>Raleigh, North Carolina When Michael and Salina Dayton began sponsoring two children with World Vision in 2009, it triggered a domino effect. A year later, when their first daughter was born in December, they sponsored another child born the same month, in part so they had a way to teach their daughter about poverty as she and their sponsored girls grew older.<\/p>\n In 2014, Salina met a World Vision Child Ambassador who spoke passionately about not just sponsoring children but engaging with them. Wanting to build a stronger relationship with her sponsored children, Salina went to myworldvision.org<\/a> and read The Hole in Our Gospel<\/em> <\/em><\/a>to learn more. In the process, a photo of another little girl captured her heart, and they sponsored this child as well.<\/p>\n The family now writes bi-monthly letters, and Salina is equipped to share more about their sponsored children with her own children. Her two daughters already ask for donations at birthday parties, sell artwork to buy goats, and share their allowance money to provide chickens.<\/p>\n “We talk about money not in terms of actual dollars but in terms of how much support we could provide for our ‘World Vision girls’ — instead of buying that one toy,” Salina says.<\/p>\n As her passion for sponsorship grew, Salina began sharing her enthusiasm for sponsorship on social media and soon volunteered as a child ambassador to encourage others to sponsor children. In this role, Salina says she’s able to “help sponsors experience the joy of truly making a difference in the life of one child at a time.”<\/p>\n Among those Salina’s message has reached is Joelle Howland, who also sponsored a child. “What intrigued me most was [World Vision’s] approach in supporting communities as a whole and helping them sustain and become self-sufficient,” Joelle says.<\/p>\n Now, during the holidays, Joelle and her husband, Craig, use the World Vision Gift Catalog<\/a> to talk with their daughters about poverty. Together, they select items from the catalog to further help children living in poverty.<\/p>\n Joelle says, “It’s been very rewarding for them to see that they’ve had the ability to make a difference, and their commitment to giving continues to grow.”<\/p>\n BACK TO TOP<\/a><\/p>\n Hometown: <\/strong>Chagrin Falls, Ohio Tracy Villers has a heart for giving. “My husband, Jeff, often chides me that I would give away the kitchen sink if he let me, and he might be right,” she says.<\/p>\n The couple sponsored their first child through World Vision in 2009. Since then, their family of sponsored children has grown to include two girls, from Bolivia and Honduras, and two boys — one in Zambia and another in Mali, “who shares a birthday and a love of soccer” with their 8-year-old daughter, Mackenzie.<\/p>\n Last Christmas, the Villers decided to give in an even bigger way than usual. The women in their extended family traditionally exchange small gifts on Christmas Day, and “every year, I would inwardly groan at the prospect of having to add this task to my to-do list, because I didn’t feel that the gifts expressed what they were originally intended to express,” says Tracy.<\/p>\n At Thanksgiving, she proposed an alternative: Instead of giving among themselves, the women would use their time and money to give to others through the World Vision Gift Catalog<\/a>.<\/p>\n They collected $851, several times what Tracy expected. After sharing the news with family on Christmas Day, other family members also contributed to the total.<\/p>\n Together they purchased the “Dairy Trio” from the Gift Catalog — a goat, a cow, and a sheep. “It was especially meaningful to us because we are a farm family,” says Tracy. “Grandma and Grandpa’s dairy farm still stands, even though they have passed on. It’s a blessing to know that somewhere, another family’s life will be changed because of the Lord’s generosity in our own family.”<\/p>\n BACK TO TOP<\/a><\/p>\n Home: <\/strong>New York City When it comes to creative fundraising, the Ferretti family has discovered a sizzling commodity. Eight years ago, the New York City family made three bottles of hot sauce from a kit their sons, Andrew and Luke, received as a gift. The next year, they grew enough hot peppers to make 12 bottles. The tiny business continued to grow, and Hot Sauce 4 Good<\/a> produced more than 1,000 bottles in 2013.<\/p>\n Bob was elated as his homemade sauce grew in popularity, but he had no intention of keeping the profits. He and his wife, Laurie, sponsor two children through World Vision, so they decided to use the funds to also support budding entrepreneurs in developing countries.<\/p>\n
\nProgram: <\/strong>Gift Catalog, disaster relief
\nPublished Nov. 15, 2015<\/em><\/p>\nChange agent: Nathan VanHoudnos<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wvusstatic.com\/www\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Change-Agent-Nathan-Vanhoudnos-1.jpg\")
\nProgram: <\/strong>Fundraise for Nepal
\nPublished June 15, 2015<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wvusstatic.com\/www\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Change-Agent-Nathan-Vanhoudnos-2.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wvusstatic.com\/www\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Change-Agent-Nathan-Vanhoudnos-3.jpg\")
Change agents: Salina and Michael Dayton<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wvusstatic.com\/www\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Change-Agent-Salina-and-Michael-Dayton.jpg\")
\nProgram: <\/strong>Child Ambassadors<\/a>
\n<\/a>Published May 15, 2015<\/em><\/p>\n We talk about money not in terms of actual dollars but in terms of how much support we could provide for our ‘World Vision girls.—Salina Dayton<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n
Change agents: Villers family<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wvusstatic.com\/www\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Change-Agent_Villers-Family.jpg\")
\nProgram: <\/strong>Gift Catalog<\/a>
\nPublished Oct. 15, 2015<\/em><\/p>\nChange agents: Ferretti family<\/h2>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/wvusstatic.com\/www\/uploads\/2017\/09\/DSCN1828-Version-2-2x400.jpg\")
\nProgram:<\/strong> Economic empowerment<\/a>
\nPublished August 18, 2014<\/em><\/p>\n