May 4, 2026
The Pulte Family Charitable Foundation is pleased to announce the category finalists for the Inspired By Their Stories Award.
Category finalists will be announced April 27–30, with one category announced each day:
Five finalists have been selected in each category. Public engagement and voting over the next week will help inform the winning story in each category.
Empowering Independence Through Opportunity
When Alex moved to Michigan in 2024, his family was not simply changing addresses; they were searching for belonging and long-awaited hope.
Living & Learning Enrichment Center (LLEC) was founded by a mother who once lay awake worrying about her own son’s future. Each day, families like Alex’s arrive carrying the burden of this very same concern.
Alex is an honors college graduate. He is also autistic, has cerebral palsy, and is hard of hearing. After aging out of services in other states, he had a degree but no pathway, talent but no traction. Meaningful employment felt ever out of reach. Confidence had eroded.
The day he toured LLEC, his mother, Dawn, watched something profoundly shift. “I saw a calmness spread over him,” she recalls.
His shoulders visibly relaxed. There was a spark of possibility.
Alex began cautiously in programs that felt safe, then bravely stepped into ceramics, something he had not previously explored. Clay became his voice, sharing emotions when he struggled to find the words.
Alex shares, “My pieces are imperfect like me, and I like that.”
Through Cooking Club, he learned budgeting and meal planning. Through retail-based employment training and coaching, he developed customer service and problem-solving skills. He has exhibited his artwork publicly, (selling out his work on display,) and launched his own online ceramics storefront. In 2025, he proudly secured paid employment at a local pottery studio, where managers praise his reliability and attention to detail.
At home, the transformation was even more profound. The young man who once preferred solitude now initiates family dinners and calls meetings to share new goals like driving himself to appointments and cooking healthy meals. “His goal,” Dawn shares, “is to live independently.” For a mother managing her own chronic health condition, that beautiful dream now finally feels possible.
Alex’s story is powerful, but it is not rare here.
Amita came to LLEC after surviving a brain tumor that resulted in a late-acquired disability. Uncertain of her direction, she rebuilt confidence through various programs. Today, she is a paid LLEC employee and Member Advisory Board leader, shaping programs and accessibility for others facing their own unique challenges.
This is the heart of our work: individuals who once needed higher levels of support growing into mentors, employees, leaders, and versions of themselves they are so very proud to have become.
Each year, LLEC serves nearly 600 individuals and families across more than 12 Michigan counties, helping navigate fragmented services, complex benefits systems, transit barriers, and the quiet strain of aging caregivers.
Through 150+ community-based job training and employment partners, we have proven that inclusive workforce development is possible. It stabilizes families. It strengthens businesses. It restores dignity. It creates very real empowerment and independence.
Alex and Amita are not simply stories. They are adults with talent, intelligence, and potential who deserve to belong, and to contribute fully.
When communities replace bias with belief and compassionate support, life- and systems-changing transformation inevitably follows.
And when that happens, everyone moves forward.
Delivering Life-Saving Care to Children
Jay is a joyful 4-year-old boy from Rwanda who was born with a life-threatening congenital heart defect that was discovered when he was a toddler. His parents worried that without access to expert medical care, their firstborn would suffer from his heart condition and die prematurely. Jay was referred to Save a Child’s Heart for treatment in March 2025, and during a medical mission to Rwanda, our Senior Pediatric Cardiologist, Dr. Sagi Assa, along with a Rwandan medical team-in-training, healed Jay’s heart with a specialized catheterization procedure that closed the holes in his heart. His parents are overjoyed that their child now has a chance to grow up healthy and reach his full potential.
Congenital heart disease, as Jay had, is the most prevalent birth defect worldwide, affecting eight out of every 1,000 children, or about 1.3 million children each year. More than 90% of the world’s children do not have access to pediatric cardiac care at home, and, as a result, 15 million children suffer or die from complications annually. Yet when children like Jay are screened, diagnosed, and treated, they have a remarkable 95% chance of survival to adulthood.
Save a Child’s Heart’s mission is to help children with correctable heart conditions access the care they need, regardless of their circumstances or the healthcare system around them. Through medical screening and treatment missions, bringing children to Israel to receive advanced heart procedures, and building up the medical infrastructure of developing countries by training doctors to treat more patients locally and helping them secure necessary medical supplies, Save a Child’s Heart has saved thousands of children like Jay from premature death and suffering.
Jay’s heart procedure is the outcome of many years of investment in Africa. In 2023, Save a Child’s Heart created a groundbreaking collaboration among our partner hospitals in Tanzania, Zambia, and Rwanda to advance the skills of cardiac specialists and care teams trained by our medical staff. This collaboration helps more children with a variety of heart conditions receive the care they need in their home countries and will help build and mentor the next generation of pediatric cardiac doctors and nurses across the region.
This work matters because millions of children with correctable heart conditions worldwide lack access to healing cardiac care. In fact, about 75% of the world’s pediatric cardiac surgeons live in high- and upper-middle-income countries that account for only 16% of the world’s population. For 30 years and counting, Save a Child’s Heart’s global network of doctors, volunteers, and supporters has worked to change that by providing lifesaving cardiac care to more than 8,000 children living in 75 different countries and training local teams to treat more children at home. We are honored to be saving children’s lives, like Jay’s, one heart at a time.
Supporting Youth Toward Stable Futures
The commotion of my bus dimmed as I glimpsed the heap of items scattered across my lawn. Classmates looked at me like, “Girl, what is going on with your house?” I discovered that when deputies vacate a foreclosed home, they remove your belongings haphazardly. As a 9th grader, I felt confusion, embarrassment, and fear. I felt violated and discarded, no longer having a home. The man who claimed to manage our property was scamming us. He collected monthly rent and disappeared with our money. We had enough to stay in a hotel for a week before we ended up couch-hopping.
Without a degree, my mom worked dead-end jobs that resulted in being laid-off frequently and required us to move from one section-8 development to the next. I attended 5 schools by 6th grade. Instability was a normal part of life. At times we had a roof over our heads but no water, electricity or food. School lunch and food pantries became our safe haven.”
During her sophomore year, Shanquell found Starting Right, Now (SRN). We serve unaccompanied homeless youth (UHY) — high school students, like Shanquell, ages 15–19, who are unhoused and living without a parent or guardian, often after being forced to leave unstable or unsafe home environments. UHY are ineligible for foster care because they are not removed by DCF; rather they choose to leave dangerous circumstances.
“I was connected to SRN. I received stable housing. I also received SAT preparation, a mentor, healthcare, life-skills training, and guidance through the college/scholarship application process, which enabled me to attend Florida State University, on a premedical track.
At FSU, peers had resumes sprinkled with experiences in the medical field. I had no access to such resources; I didn’t even have a primary care physician growing up, so I did the only thing I knew – I called SRN for advice. SRN connected me to a doctor-shadowing opportunity, and later, an internship at the Norman Parathyroid Surgical Center.
I never thought homelessness would be a blessing in disguise, but I’m grateful to have been a part of SRN. My path to medicine has been unique – I obtained a master’s degree in biomedical sciences, my Medical Doctorate from FSU’s College of Medicine and matched into a General Surgery Residency Program. I am currently completing a Pediatric Surgery Research Fellowship and my Master of Public Health at UAB, with my goal of becoming a Pediatric Surgeon. SRN’s stability supported 15-year-old Shanquell with resources to succeed, so now, 30-year-old Shanquell can pursue her dream career. I am married to the love of my life, and we raise our son in an environment filled with love and security. My journey would not have unfolded this way without the support of SRN.”
SRN alumni like Shanquell are proof of our impact – young people who once faced homelessness alone are now building stable, independent lives. They are contributing community members, breaking the generational cycle of homelessness.
Providing Care That Transforms Lives
Ali’s first visit to Hope Clinic was as a teenager. He was new to the country, uninsured, and had a visible cavity in a front tooth that made him want to hide. “I was embarrassed to even speak,” Ali said.
He needed dental care but had no way to afford it. “I was shocked [by the prices],” Ali told us, “and scared that I wouldn’t be able to fix my tooth.” Desperate, he Googled “free dental clinic,” and found Hope Clinic.
Hope Clinic is proud to be a haven for people in need. By partnering with you, we seek to make lives better through integrated and free medical, dental, food, and behavioral health care, all in Jesus’ name. At Hope, Ali received the dental care he needed, all for free. What’s more, he got his confidence back!
But that’s not all. Ali also walked out with a vision for serving others. “That’s when I knew it had to be dentistry,” Ali said. “I want to be like these heroes.” Years later and inspired by the care he received, Ali is now on his way to becoming a dentist. After shadowing alongside the very professionals that provided his treatment at Hope Clinic, he gained enough experience to apply to the University of Detroit Mercy dental school, where he is now a D-2 student.
Ali continues to volunteer in the very dental clinic that first welcomed him. Ali’s goals for his education are to continue paying it forward, ensuring that others like him can have their needs met for years to come.
Hope Clinic relies on the support of our community partners to offer the dignified, whole-person care that Ali and other vulnerable neighbors receive. Thanks to Hope Clinic supporters and partners a decade ago, Ali had a place to receive the care he needed. Because of Hope Clinic supporters and partners today, Ali — or should we say Dr. Kurmasha—will have a place to sit on the other side of the chair, providing dignified and free care to the patients of tomorrow.
Restoring Hope for Vulnerable Children
Adams Sunday was 13 when his village tried to kill him. He’s spent every year since proving God had other plans.
As a child in Kwall, Nigeria, he carried water to the fields, played with the neighborhood children, and loved soccer. Childhood was, as Adams remembered it, happy.
His father fell ill when he was 10. His illness stretched past months, into years, without explanation. And so, when a witch doctor offered one, people listened: Adams was the cause.
The accusation moved through the village fast. Neighbors kept their children away. They attacked him with sticks and burning charcoal. He slept in the market and shops to escape the blame. “I was giving up hope,” he said, “Struggling to survive.”
July 18th, 2008 is a day that Adams will never forget. Men in the village, at his grandfather’s request, tried to murder him. They took him to a house, hung him from the rafters, and left him to die. Adams was only 13.
It was only by God’s grace that a woman in the house heard him, cut him down, and helped him escape to Jos.
That evening, Adams arrived at King’s Kids, the orphanage supported by Throwing Seeds. When Adams arrived, the orphanage was full. Yet, when the director saw Adams, he said: “We have to take him.”
Since opening, King’s Kids has moved 10,000 vulnerable children, like Adams, through a continuum of care: an assessment center, a care center, and a transition house. Adams entered the assessment center terrified, always looking for a place to hide.
A mentor at King’s Kids, Joseph, paid particular attention to Adams because of what he’d survived. For Adams it was like having a father again, someone who cared for him spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically. Adams says he was like the lost sheep…and Joseph, like Jesus, left his flock of 99 to save him. He said, “I was able to experience my childhood again and the love that I hadn’t had in a long time.”
At King’s Kids, Adams grew. He moved through secondary school, as have 4,000 other children at King’s Kids, and earned a diploma in communications. He started university to complete his bachelor’s degree, walking a path that 210 other children have. After leaving King’s Kids, he became the sports director at the ministry, one of 500 children that Kings Kids has helped find meaningful employment. He nurtures lost sheep, just as Joseph had with him.
When Adams went back to Kwall, a young man recognized him. The community gathered, shocked and afraid that Adams was still alive. Adams connected the way he always has. He played soccer with the village kids.
Following reconciliation with his village, Adams wanted to find a way to give back. He knew that the women had to walk long distances for water, so he organized the team at Throwing Seeds to dig a borehole well. King’s Kids rescued the lost sheep, and the lost sheep brought living water back to his flock.
Inspired By Their Stories Podcast
