Making Friends 19

This photograph depicts two children playing. One child has multiple disabilities and the other child does not.

With only one wing, the little bird cannot fly to the raspberry patch with her brothers. As luck would have it, she meets a little dog, a chipmunk, and a frog who work together to get them all across the street to the raspberry patch.

Toby and Clemmie love each other very much. Sometimes Clemmie has to go to the hospital though, and it can be scary. Luckily, Toby and Clemmie know how to make the best out of every situation—even ones that involve a trip to the hospital.

Meet Kennedy, of Mombasa, Kenya. His wheelchair doesn’t stop him from making the world a more beautiful place.

“Every brain is a little bit different...”

“I felt alone and tried to hide it...”

“People will make fun of her in school...”

Felipe Morales' telling account of an encounter with a blind woman on the streets of Washington, D.C. was recorded for This I Believe. The NPR project features brief personal essays in which people from diverse backgrounds discuss how their values affect their daily lives.

“What do you miss most about not having a hand?”

This is the story of Kitty Lunn, who had an accident that left her a paraplegic. She went on to open her own dance company, and dance in the 1996 Olympics.

Michael and Cathy Hoffman recount how their son with Down syndrome is included on the middle school soccer team and how his teammates and opponents show support in a way that leads to his first goal.

This short film portrays a man in need, seated on the edge of a busy street with a sign reading: "I'm blind. Please help." When a woman stops to rewrite the message on his sign, she shifts the perception of passersby.

“Marine Corporal Jeremy Dobbins returned to Dayton, Ohio, from duty in Afghanistan with an 80% disability rating and issues with anger. Trained in service to others, veterans often resist the idea that they themselves need help and they have difficulty with sharing their war experiences with family and friends. An oral history project at Wright State University is giving Jeremy and other young veterans a chance to help older veterans recover their stories of war, and to come to terms with their own.”

Line dance leader Kit Cheung teaches her class of Chinese-American women in an unlikely place: the parking lot of a local library. No other public location offers both the outdoor space and sun cover the group requires for their twist on the traditional Chinese exercise of tai chi. The relationship that forms between the initially reluctant library and Kit’s dance group has created some unexpected opportunities.

“Ava is an ambitious teenager who owes much of her inner strength to a dance studio in South L.A. Founder Lula Washington and her daughter Tamica are professional dancers — and they are role models as well as teachers. At their dance school, African American children learn to respect themselves, their bodies, and their cultural traditions. The young dancers also defy stereotypes by mastering ballet. The dance program cultivates self-discipline and mutual support that enables girls like Ava to flourish even when their families are facing hard times.”