she's certainly the smartest person in the room she writes she teaches people how to write she's about as creative as she possibly can be and now she continues to help celebrate heroes around the world and absolve glad that you're with us thank you and thank you very much for allowing us into your house to be able to do this interview on this lovely would be island all right giraffe heroes itself if you go to the website and i heard everyone to do that i know it's just draft org what an incredible idea how did you come up with that idea that's a really really long story but it was mainly back reaction against what i saw on the news i just that we were just absorbing too many toxins and the idea that nothing can be done because it's all just so awful you know but every time you see somebody saw a story like that there's usually somebody involved in it who probably has an idea that could fix it or make it at least make it better and i just wanted to move to that part of the stories and you know to attract a sort of a lighter hearted attention idea  using the draft image of stick your neck out because everybody likes giraffes and you sort of get their attention with a smile and then talk about a serious subject but you started this though if you just didn't start this yesterday in the eighty's in the eighty's and so there was bad news then too oh yeah oh yes it was there any one single person that immediately came to you and said that's got to be the first  first story we did and he still calls himself double zero one is a guy named gene and he was a vietnam that a banker do and fine who realized that a lot of the guys in viet from vietnam were not doing so well and he said we had an agreement in vietnam that we left nobody behind we have to continue that series started the vietnam vets leadership program and he paired successful that with guys who were having problems and he would team them up and get them to work together it was just a fabulous program saved a lot of lives on both sides let's talk a little bit about you know you are where you started the show you talk about how  there's not quite the social value factor in that there's the part of be that the activist that needs to use the skill in that direction to the thing i have that i can contribute is i can write and i could write really fast and i can get that website going in the cards and all the materials for schools pretty quickly all right well let's talk about the giraffe heroes itself first off you you came up with a name because of people sticking their necks out but now you're talking about it's a program that goes into schools or it's our program that goes into homes it's definitely it's a program it's online because there's a great website how did this thing did it grow organically or is this all something that came out of your mind or how did this grow it started as a media feed soli we did actualities interviews with your ass i got actors to read a script around that and we sent it on discs to radio stations now to play in public service time then we started just sending them scripts for the on air talent to read and it just kept mutating you know like with every new technology i could bring in i just keep changing it oh so now it's almost all online almost everything is available on the website or on our facebook page or in our emails to our you know our constituents know where paper you know our paper ok so one of the other things that i that i did read is that it's not just talent and it's not just looks it's got to be something else that makes you a giraffe hero so what is are you makes you a giraffe or hero a concern for the common good and taking a risk going past all kinds of obstacles to do something that benefits the common good so there has to be a risk quite often they'll be a lovely story about somebody doing something really nice but if there's no risk involved i can't get it through our jury because they really are looking for risk ok you're just here you're just begging me to ask a question that a jury how does that happen the who so i guess got to decide if this person's a giraffe here on this person is not so how does it come about we have called for volunteers over the years have been different formations and juries right now it's our board of directors because they said we want that you know they they really enjoy it and it is really heartening when you get all of this material together about somebody doing absolutely amazing work it's really fun to be on the jury hey everybody out there who's watching they know ok so what do they weigh and what do they get out of nothing nothing we don't have anything so but what they do get though is the recognition through dr heroes and that they get more and more people actually do get to find out that yeah there are people who are doing great but all we do  tell their story you know we i do send a packet you get a very nice certificate suitable for framing that says you're a giraffe and lapel pin but there's no there's no check involved which i think is an advantage in a way because if i had a budget of x number of dollars to award two giraffes i'd have to limit who the giraffes are and who is named giraffe and i don't like that if you are a giraffe you should be able to be commended as a giraffe i shouldn't have to have a budget to do that so the award is international in nature yeah you have people coming from around the world to how do they find out about you online mostly they find the website that somebody forwards an email to them and they say ah i know somebody and we get a story back it would be unfair of me to ask you your favorite giraffe here now you can't do that but i will ask you first some of your favorites what are some of the ones that stick out when when when somebody if somebody were to call you up to meet you for the first time they'd say and tell us some of your some of the ones that you are brings the most memory out well you know i think everybody adores the story of aseem can these and plus felix did you ever read that one on line you know i probably did is there anybody that they're in the deck by that i just wanted to show everybody there is a deck of cards and this is a growing deck of cards  that has heroes on the back now and we're actually going to show some of these but i wanted to ask you about this before we get into a xen what is this from we have  that you can work with kids after school with materials to train them in seeing the world through giraffe eyes and that's part of the kit oh ok what are some of the other things that go in the kit arrow buttons stickers  big manual on how to work with the kids well if you were a teacher or a parent and you had this kid in front of you what would be your your students learn what great teachers tell me is that their kids start looking at each other and the world quite differently than they do before doing giraffe a one fabulous teacher in seattle who said she had seventeen languages in her class and most of the kids were homeless and she said they would come in every year just caroming off the walls i mean just totally disassociated and the first thing she would do with them every year was work them through the draft project system and she said they would turn into a community of kids who cared about each other who understood each other and work together which is fabulous yeah it sure is so but again you know there's the question is just begging what is the  how much to do i get to work with the kids about it through it yeah r r we have a three step or it's here the story tell the story be the story so the system tells the kids stories like are in the cards you know these are these lives look how these people live their lives who in your life in your family or in your studies do you see who does that find the story bring it back telling rest of us that story now that you see how these people live their lives they see something they care about they do a bit they do something to work on it what do you care about when you want to work on and they're just off they create a service project of their own they moved to california his son was going through san diego state college and to earn money he was delivering pizzas he delivered one to  address that turned out to be a gang initiation this young man had been ordered to get pizza for the gang and not pay for it and because seems son wouldn't turn over the pizza the boy killed him grandfather of the boy who did the killing is now teamed up with z and they go together into schools to talk about forgiveness and blows the kids away because they're so used to every revenge model they're saying wait a minute your kid killed his kid and you're here together yeah we both lost our boys so we had we both lost something and we're here to tell you it's wrong revenge is wrong you have to forgive each other they're just a powerful powerful team well they're very powerful story for sure i don't think that i could i could be there and let's talk about some of your other heroes and these are some  o are very very recent humans i think from the website let's first talk about isabel and katherine adams tell us about them and girl power they are amazing catherine at six was the youngest person ever to get a giraffe combination the two of them does read that there was a water problem in much of the world that people could get clean water so they decided they should do something about that they're six and nine years old they started folding oregon me christmas decorations and they took them to a coffee shop and asked to sell them their due that they could raise money for to build wealth they sold out so fast and they got so fast it just took off they have now contributed over one hundred thousand dollars to digging wells in africa and the axe in a nine year old a six and a nine year old oh my gosh i got to ask this one of the parents think about all this they thought oh my gosh we've created something here we're not sure what to do with they have it they have extraordinary families almost always when you come upon kids doing like this they've got great families very supportive so at at six  how did they find out about giraffe here i was so no they didn't someone found their story and from a local newspaper in texas they live in texas and send us the story from the texas newspaper so that's a lesson out there if if there is somebody who you think could be a giraffe hero first off go to the web site draft order and then maybe there's a jouret hero that you know of and so the thing to do is just to contact and others right here at the draft i don't write ok let's go to someone else and this is a little bit different eric has it greitens i think it's great and yes ok former navy seal yeah admirable guy i just i am from a military family so i love the stories about these compassionate warriors the guy came back from action and realized that a lot of his fellow vets really have service built into them they really care about being of service so he started the nonprofit to match them up with communities that needed volunteer action and he's gotten hundreds of returning vets involved in public service is this the kind of thing that could be returning vet from another military service perhaps in vietnam or in the middle east because i think he's mostly doing younger vets not the vietnam era you know i guess what i'm saying is that could this example be one that would be followed by a vet in another country oh yeah sure is that the kind of thing then that people from other countries may may learn about they may may learn about a program that someone has started somewhere and then they say well i can do that here too one hopes here we by putting those things on line we get hits from the philippines united arab republic finland colombia and you just hope that they click and somebody else says i can do that so there's likely to be people then from different religions does that ever come up in some of the applications to be a giraffe hero in the applications  lot of people say that they they learned compassion through their really just training but we have always been very clear that it that this isn't one religion i can't think of a religion that doesn't say compassion is a core value how many heroes have you had i think we're at fourteen hundred plus as as  some of them however are for groups it will be like all the volunteer pilots and air lifeline because these guys you know jump up at two in the morning and go fly somebody to a hospital who needs care so i don't have an exact figure but fourteen hundred commendations is there any i mean are they categorized in any way or is there something that you're looking forward to fill in the void or does it just happen just whatever turns up and it's interesting that there are certain trends in the last couple of years we're getting an awful lot of stories about trafficking that's become a really big issue of people being trafficked for the sex industry and the people are fighting that well that's really interesting because in the work that they're we've done here on the show in the past about trafficking it is that people who are trying to stop it can't be public gary yeah how is it that  in this particular instance can you tell us a story if you remember off the top of your head about any of those who were giraffe heroes in the end trafficking as to how their terror trying to get out of there was one of those recent ones nancy revard ok she's next on the list yeah she's a flight attendant and she's started this effort to organize people who travel a lot to do live or needed supplies to people all over the world and she has recently moved into training flight crews to recognize trafficking when it's happening on the plane it happens on planes well you've got captured people being transported on airplanes and she's training  people to know what the signs are that that's what's happening they can call the cops yeah what are some of the sides i don't know but she does know it's probably the kind of thing that you probably don't want to put out there yeah ok i've got it so that was nancy regardless also talk about tomorrow lead taylor the experience of attending a tour of federally funded drug preet treatment programs and changing the life of a woman that's sounds pretty scary she's going into high danger prisons regularly and training other people to go in and working with people on how to turn their lives around so when they get out they don't become repeat offenders and they were sort of this rate is very very high so wow how did she get started doing by her own experience of going in as a volunteer and just being blown away by what was happening to the people inside there weren't getting any that we don't have any reformation going on in our system it's just incarceration so of course people come out not having skills not having any change in what put them in there in the first place and then marley taylor organizes people to go in and help change then and goes in with them yeah i mean it would seem that you would have to have something inside you that would say you know i want to go help these these people does she do this online and then gets in and people online will come to her and say yes i want to help and then they will go into whatever prison that they're close to is and how that where i bet you she talks to every single person she meets about why they should help her let's go to some other heroes and i'm not sure i'm pronouncing one of the name correctly for  goo yeah the miners in the diamond fields of zimbabwe yeah we've all seen that blood diamond satori with you know leonarda dicaprio as it you know and it's real it's a real thing happening in zimbabwe and he has stood against it he is talking about abuses of the miners and the extraction of the profits you know it keeps happening in extractive situation and that the money doesn't go to the people of that nation it leaves and he's standing against it one of the things in fighting the drug trade in the world especially here in the united states is trying to find out the ones who are the purchasers  to find out the ones who are the purchasers in the diamond bismillah diamonds and there's a lot of labeling starting saying that this stone is cleared it's it's not a blood diamond so that's a good move you know i think people who buy stones have a chance to know how was this money and what happens to the heroes after they've been named a hero that let's say they get their award what happens to them how do they use this designation some of them right really charming letters back which i didn't really expect i will get messages saying all i got was people tell him i was crazy or  and you're telling me i'm my hero really thank you so i think it is and courage ing they're already courageous but they can get pretty down by not being recognized for what they do and even being criticized or ostracized or fired a lot of people get fired for doing what they do because there's we honor a lot of whistleblowers now with all of the people that that we have get to see the people doing fantastic things around the world all the time how's this for content for your work i mean to be constantly reading about people who are doing these extraordinary things a lot of the journalists we've worked with have said god you're saving my life because i get so sick of the really horrible things i have to deal with constantly and this is just life saving let's talk about fifth grader commish johnson actually right here is her card but she stood up to school bullies and it's not just defending asian classmates and it's not just in the united states it's all over the world where more bullying goes on what we can and should and why is she a hero this is an african american girl in a predominantly black school in los angeles where the asian kids coming in were just treated horrible they foreigners and chinks and you know every rude dame imagine a bold weren't allowed in any of the games just ostracized and she just be friend of them stood up for them kept telling her the other kids in the class that these are good kids stop it let them play let them in the games involve them she got in all sorts of peer pressure problems with the other kids but she prevailed she got those kids integrated but here's another one right here and let me ask this before i get into this your your giraffe heroes come from all walks of life they may not necessarily be people who are doing like what kony should do but they may be doing something different like phil borderless tother for and here or here is his right here and phil as he left a comfortable career as an orthodontist to help young people around the world see each other through photography actually with both my daughters they had they have had braces but he's decided to leave that life though and help people through photography yeah and is that something that i mean if i were an ngo worker in the in the wilds of africa this is not what would first jump out at me but maybe it should have yeah well what he did was take his skill as a very good amateur photographer and train kids all over the world take them cameras and get them to photograph the life that they were leading put it online for other kids to see and exchange pictures of their lives so he was doing some very nice international peace building by having these kids photograph their lives if you could change anything about the giraffe heroes project what would it be could i have fifty thousand members that would be good how does one become a member just you know it's loose just hang in on our heads up the e mails come to the facebook page come to the website i just want more people seeing this stuff so the one question that a lot of people ask is that if you look if you look ten years down the road i know we talked about this at  picture in a story all our materials for teaching our online they'll go to any teacher in the world in any language any language with that i'll be looking forward to coming back in ten years and talking with you about that that's for sure has been and met a lot of giraffe heroes giraffe dot org be sure to go to the web site and maybe just maybe a world want to become part of the first fifty thousand members