A 45-year-old man from rural Kenya is being hailed a hero by his community after single-handedly digging a one-mile road through a bushy area in oly six days, using only rudimentary tools.

The people of Kaganda, a small village 80km north of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, had long been appealing to local government officials to start work on a short stretch of road that would shorten their daily trips to a nearby shopping center. Although the bushy area on which the road was supposed to be built had been earmarked by authorities, local leaders kept stalling the project. After a shorter footpath that Kaganda villagers used to get to the shopping center was fenced off because it passed through private property, the people were left with no option but to walk 4km every day. That’s when a local hero decided to take matters into his own hand and dig the much-awaited road himself, for free.

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Sebastião Ribeiro Salgado is a world renowned social documentary photographer and photojournalist from Brazil, but few people know that he is also the mastermind behind one of the most amazing environment restoration projects in history. Together with his wife, Salgado has nearly completed the recovery of a single uninterrupted section of the Atlantic Forest, planting millions of saplings over the last two decades.

The story of Instituto Terra, the non-profit organization founded by Sebastião Salgado and his wife, Lélia Deluiz Wanick Salgado, began in 1998. The celebrated photographer had recently returned from Rwanda, where he had documented the tragedies of war. The horrors he witnessed during those troubled wars haunted him long after he left Africa, and at one point he completely lost both his faith in humanity and the desire to shoot photos. It was around this time that Sebastião’s parents offered him and Lélia the old farm he had grown up in, and he took the opportunity to return home thinking that the idyllic paradise he remembered would help him heal. However, he found that his home was nothing like he remembered it.

Salgado grew up on a 1,750-acre farm in the state of Minas Gerais 70 miles inland from Brazil’s Atlantic coast. He recalls that, when he was only a boy, the Atlantic Forest covered half his family’s farm and half the Rio Doce Valley, and that the fauna that called it home created a cacophony of sounds every day. But that wasn’t the sight he came home to in the mid 90’s.

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Ma Sanxiao, a 70-year-old double amputee and army veteran from Jingxing, North China’s Hebei province, has pent the last 19 years of his life planting thousands of trees and turning the once barren hills surrounding his village into a small forest.

Ma was diagnosed with blood poisoning in 1974, while serving in the Chinese Army. His condition got worse after he retired, and eventually had both legs amputated because of it – his right leg in 1985, and the left one in 2005. After seven major operations and constant medical treatments, he could barely afford to take care of his family, and ,because of his disability, finding a job proved very difficult. His veteran subsidy was enough to cover his medicine, but he couldn’t remain idle, so in 2000, after getting inspired by another tree-planting story on TV, the double-amputee started planting parasol trees in the barren hills around his remote village, with the intention of selling them for profit.

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CCTV footage showing a 12-year-old boy from the town of Moche, in Peru, doing his homework on the sidewalk, under a streetlight, because his family can’t afford electricity in their home, has been viewed millions of times on social media after being shared by local police.

Staff at the Moche police department first noticed Víctor Martín Angulo Córdoba late last month, while checking security cameras. They noticed a young boy sitting on the sidewalk by himself at night, which they thought was suspicious. It was only when they zoomed in that they realized he was actually reading and writing something in his notebook, taking advantage of the streetlight overhead. Touched by the boy’s dedication to his studies, the police department shared the CCTV video on their official Facebook account and it quickly went viral.

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Yeon-woo Jhi is an IFBB Pro female bodybuilder with multiple major titles under her belt. The contrast between her cute, feminine face and impressively muscular body have also made her somewhat of an internet celebrity and earned her the nickname “Muscle Barbie”.

Looking at 34-year old Yeon-woo Jhi, it’s hard to imagine that she was once a skinny, frail girl suffering from panic disorder and struggling to overcome social phobia. But everything changed 14 years ago when she started going to a gym near her house, hoping to get stronger. She just wanted to stop feeling weak and never imagined that she would one day compete in major bodybuilding competitions, but as her strength and stamina increased, she got more passionate about fitness and eventually decided to show off her toned up physique on stage. Jhi won the first bodybuilding competition she ever entered, and that only inspired her to work harder. She went on to win the Arnold Classic Europe Amateur in 2013, and became a pro in 2015.

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A group of 75 female volunteers from India’s Odisha state has spent every day of the last 20 years patrolling a 75-hectare forest to protect it from woodcutters and timber smugglers.

In 1999, the eastern state of Odisha was ravaged by a supercyclone. People lost their homes, their crops and had to go without food or clothing for several days. But many in Gundalba, a small village in the Mahanadi delta of Puri district, realized that the only reason they were still alive was thanks to a forest and mangrove area that had shielded them from the brunt of the devastation. They knew they had to protect it at all costs, but with all the men busy rebuilding the village after the supercyclone, the task of watching over the forest fell to the women. They quickly formed a vigilante group and  have been taking turns patrolling the forested area in search of timber smugglers and woodcutters for the last 20 years.

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Vaggelis Chatzis’s life is considered by many the ultimate underdog story. After having his right forearm amputated from below the elbow when he was only a baby, he grew up to become the world’s only one-handed professional boxer.

Chatzis was born with a cancerous tumour in his right hand which would have ultimately killed him if doctors didn’t amputate part of his arm to stop the cells from spreading. He was only three months old at the time, so the young Greek has had to rely on his left hand alone for as long as he can remember. Growing up was tough, as the other kids would often bully him and make fun of his three-fingered prosthetic hand, calling him things like Captain Hook. That caused him to grow up into a very angry young man, and that anger got him in a lot of trouble. He started hanging out with the wrong crowd, spent his nights drinking and partying, and got into fights a lot. But then he discovered boxing and he fell in love.

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Vishweshwar Dutt Saklani took his last breath on January 18, 2019, but he will live on in the memory of his countrymen as the “Tree Man of Uttarakhan”, a dedicated conservationist who planted over 50 lakh (5 million) trees and turned his once barren homeland into a lush forest.

Saklani had been fond of trees all his life. He planted his first sapling when he was eight years old under his uncle’s guidance, and kept at it for the next seven decades of his life, until he lost his sight and succumbed to the hardships of old age. However, by that time, the once barren hills in and around his native village of Pujargaon had already become home to a lush forest. Vishweshwar Dutt Saklani’s love for trees is well known, as he often used to call them his children or his closest companions, but few know that the legendary conservationist planted millions of trees to cope with the tragedies in his life.

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At just 12-years-old, Leonardo Nicanor Quinteros is still in secondary school, but he already runs his own free private school to help other children, and even some adults, with their studies.

Leonardo loves to study, but he also wants to transfer his passion for education to his peers. After seeing some of his colleagues struggling to keep up at school, and other children spending too much time playing on the streets and completely neglecting their studies, he decided to do something about it. Last year, he told his grandmother, Ramona, that he wanted to operate his own school and asked her to help him build it next to her house, in the Argentinian town of Las Piedritas, near San Juan. She obliged, and today’s Nico’s free private school caters to nearly 40 young students. The 12-year-old acts both as teacher and principal and is proud that his initiative has already made a big difference for many of the children attending there.

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An amazing community in Seal Beach, California, have been helping the owner of their local donut shop spend more time with his ailing wife by buying all of his products so he can close hours earlier than usual.

John and Stella Chhan have been running the modest Donut City donut shop on Pacific Coast Highway for almost three decades, but a few weeks ago some of their regular customers noticed that part of the duo was missing. John was still boxing and bagging donuts behind the counter, but Stella was nowhere to be found. She had suffered a debilitating aneurysm at the end of September which had left her unable to communicate or move for several weeks. Even though she had started to speak again, the woman was still recovering in a rehabilitation facility, and John went to be with her every day after selling out. But their local community decided to help them spend more time together.

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Edgardo “Perros” Zuniga has been travelling all around Mexico on a tricycle, looking for abandoned and injured dogs to rescue and put up for adoption. He has rescued over 400 dogs in the last 5 years.

When he left his home in Jalisco in 2013, 48-year-old Edgardo set a very clear goal for himself – to help as many stray dogs as he possible could. Over the last five years, he has travelled through 14 Mexican states and rescued over 400 abandoned dogs, by nursing them back to health and later placing them in the hands of staff at various adoption centers. He also helped dogs that weren’t eligible for adoption, by treating their illnesses, feeding them and doing everything in his power to improve their lives before continuing his journey. He travels with a pack of loyal dogs that make up his ‘rescue team’ and that he claims make his job a lot easier by showing the strays he encounters that they can trust him.

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33-year-old Cai Yanqiu has spent the last three years of his life traveling through his home country in China with the sole purpose of helping homeless people in any way he can.

Cai Yanqiu’s decided to dedicate his life to helping homeless people three years ago. He had set up a small stall in Zhanjiang, China’s Guangdong, and he was waiting for customers when he saw a barefooted homeless man pass him by. That man reminded him of the devastation caused by the loss of his brother, over two decades ago. In 1994, Cai’s brother who suffered from epilepsy, disappeared from the family home, and when he was finally found, 3 days later, he was in such a bad condition that he passed away in his family’s arms. Cai remembered his mother lying in bed for days morning the loss of his brother, and after doing some crying of his own after seeing the homeless man, he decided that he couldn’t just stand by and allow other families to go through what his did.

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Many children dream of becoming entrepreneurs when they grow up, but very few start as early as, Jose Adolfo Quisocala Condori, a Peruvian boy who started a children’s savings bank when he was only 7 years old. Today, his bank serves over 2,000 clients and offers various financial services.

Jose got the idea for a children’s savings bank six years ago, after noticing that many of his peers were spending their money on sweets and toys, instead of saving it for more meaningful purchases. Despite his young age, he understood that saving money and accessing the financial system were two ways that adults – like his parents – solved many of their financial and social problems, so he decided to make them available to kids as well. He then started thinking of ways that children could generate money without the help of their parents, and recycling seemed like the obvious answer. Jose was sure that he was on to something, but when he pitched his idea for a children’s bank to his teachers, he was told that a 7-year-old couldn’t handle such a project. But he proved them all wrong.

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A 6-year-old girl from China’s Ningxia autonomous region managed to melt the hearts of millions with her dedication to her disabled father who she has been taking care of ever since her mother left them.

Tian Haicheng, a 38-year-old man from Haiyuan County, in Ningxia, had his entire world turned upside down four years ago, when he was involved in a serious car accident. He lost his ability to walk, and was left with use of arms, which made him unable to work and support his family. His wife took their son and abandoned him and their 6-year-old daughter. But instead of Tian having to somehow take care of his girl, she was the one who took up most of the responsibilities, including cooking, cleaning, and making sure that Tian was well taken care of.

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This month, Kyle Messier, a 31-year-old bike mechanic, won the Big Red Gravel Run, a 100 kilometer bike race that takes place in Harrington, Quebec. While this is an impressive achievement on its own, what makes Kyle’s win truly exceptional is that he had already pedaled more than 650 kilometers to the race site, and a few hours after winning he got back on his bike and pedealed back home to Waterloo.

Messier’s journey from Waterloo to Harrington took him 3.5 days to complete. After winning first place in the rural cycling race,he celebrated with some pizza, slept for a few hours in his tent, and then got started on the 3.5-day journey back home. And it gets even more remarkable still; Kyle was not only completely new to bicycle racing, but he also managed to win the 100-kilometer Big Red Gravel Run while suffering from an abscessed tooth.

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