What if beauty contests were about REAL beauty?

Meet Mikayla Holmgren of Stillwater, Minnesota. She's a 22-year-old student at Bethel University, who has loved dancing and gymnastics for many years. On November 25, she competed in the Miss Minnesota USA pageant. She didn't win, but she should have been named "Miss Congeniality" because, as her dad says, "she never has a bad day." Did I mention that she has Down syndrome?

Denise Wallace, the Miss Minnesota executive director, said, "Anybody that even spends five minutes with Mikayla knows that she is the right person to be the first to represent a community of people that need to see themselves doing something like this." By the way, this is not Mikayla's first beauty pageant. And hopefully not her last.

Maybe sports stadiums should be near children's hospitals

Everyone knows about the traditional sports stadium "wave," but the Iowa Hawkeyes have put a new spin on it. During a football game against the Wyoming Cowboys recently, everyone in the sold-out Kinnnick Stadium was asked to turn towards the U. of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital across the street and wave to sick kids on the top floors.

                                                                                                                                   Youtube
The heartwarming gesture is just one of many initiatives the Hawkeyes have taken to assist the hospital. A "Touchdown for Kids" campaign has asked Hawkeye fans to pledge $1 to the hospital for every touchdown the team scores. Last year alone, the team raised $40,000 for the hospital.

This isn't babysitting. It's education.

As reported in The Christian Science Monitor, Tulsa, Oklahoma is becoming an incubator for the power of philanthropy to overcome poverty. That's partly because of George Kaiser, a billionaire benefactor funding preschools for the poorest children in town. His preschools are not just babysitters. They're about education. His classrooms include cozy nooks, fairy lights, play kitchens, lots of books, and two (count 'em, two) certified early education teachers per room.

                                                                                                                              Ann Hermes
Does his program really help preschoolers succeed? One mother thinks so. Cheryl Remache wept at a preschool board meeting a few years ago, because one of Kaiser's schools had accepted both of her autistic sons. Today her younger son Jayden is in sixth grade and a member of his school's debating team.

Two days after Trump's inauguration

Rosalynd Harris, 25, is a professional dancer in Washington, DC, but she took a part-time job as a waitress to earn money to move to a new apartment. She still wasn't sure if she had enough money to pay the up-front costs of moving. She waitressed last winter in a cafe called Busboys and Poets, a liberal restaurant with African-American art on the walls. Then three Texans walked in and sat at one of her tables. One was a dentist named Jason White. He was wearing a signature "Make America Great Again" red cap, which he quickly put away. Harris had just participated in the Women's March, so even though she was sure the three Texans were Trump supporters in town for the inauguration, she was in good spirits and happily greeted them and took their order.

                                                                                                         Courtesy  Rosalynd Harris
When the men finished their meals, White decided to leave a personal note on the receipt. The meals totaled $72.60. He wrote, "We may come from different cultures and may disagree on certain issues, but if everyone would share their smile and kindness like your beautiful smile, our country would come together as one people. Not race. Not gender. Just Americans." Then he added a tip of $450. The men were gone before Harris saw the receipt. "This definitely reshaped my perspective," she said later. "Republican, Democrat, liberal are all subcategories to what we are experiencing. It instills a lot of hope."

Yes, Virginia

If the title of this post rings a bell, you already may know about the most famous editorial ever written in an English-language newspaper. But you may not know the backstory.

Virginia O'Hanlon

In September, 1897, classmates teased 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon because she still believed in Santa Claus. They told her there was no Santa, so she asked her dad. Instead of answering her, he urged her to write to a local newspaper called the Sun, because "if you see it in the Sun, it's so." When her note arrived in the newsroom, it simply asked, "Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus?" The editor passed it off to a sardonic veteran Sun editorial writer named Frank Church. A former Civil War correspondent who'd seen lots of suffering in the war, Church reportedly "bristled and pooh-poohed" at first, but under deadline and in fewer than 500 words he composed an editorial which would later be translated 20 languages and even set to music. Since editorials are not signed, Church's authorship was not revealed until his death is 1906.

Raised on New York City's upper east side, Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas was the daughter of a doctor. She pursued a career in education, earning a PhD from Fordham University. Throughout her life, she often received inquiries about her letter, and invitations to read Church's editorial. She died in 1971 at age 81. In 2006, Virginia's great-granddaughter brought the original letter to Antiques Roadshow, where it was appraised at $20,000. To read her letter and Frank Church's famous reply, visit http://www.newseum.org/exhibits/online/yes-virginia/

Kindness makes the impossible possible

During World War II when she was a little girl, Hilde Back lived in Nazi Germany. Both her parents died in concentration camps, but a stranger's kindness helped her escape to Sweden. She grew up to be a school teacher, but never forgot her girlhood in Germany where she was denied an opportunity to attend school under Nazi Nuremberg Laws. So she decided to pay for the education of a child who could not otherwise go to school.

The child she sponsored was Chris Mburu. He lived in Kenya, and his family could not afford to pay for his education beyond elementary school. Hilde paid his way through secondary school, and he went on to earn degrees from the University of Nairobi and Harvard Law School. In 2001 he created a foundation to help other children from poor families continue their education. He even tracked down his benefactor, and named the foundation in her honor. It has now helped over 650 poor children continue their studies. In 2012, Hilde traveled with Chris to Kenya, where she celebrated her 90th birthday and met many child helped by the foundation that bears her name.

Not living on the street this Christmas

One night last October, Kate McClure, 27, pulled off an exit ramp of I-95 near Philadelphia because she was running out of gas. A homeless man approached her parked car. It was former Marine Johnny Bobbitt, 34, who sits on the side of the roadside every day holding a sign. "He told me to get back in the car and lock the doors," McClure remembers. A few minutes later he returned with a red gas can. He had spent his last $20 to buy her gas.

                                                                            Elizabeth Robertson, The Philadelphia Inquirer
She wanted to repay him for his kindness, so McClure and her boyfriend Mark D'Amico, who both live in New Jersey, started a GoFundMe page telling what Bobbitt did for her. They were not sure if anyone would donate, but hoped to raise $10,000 to help Bobbitt get off the street. The story ran in the local paper and, so far, the fund has received over $300,000. McClure says, "The second we told Johnny about this, his first thought was to pay it forward. He is fully aware of the worldwide interest. It will be his decision on what organizations or private parties he decides to help." Meanwhile, Bobbitt has moved from the streets to a comfortable hotel room.