I recently experienced the trauma of evacuation alert for one of California’s fires. After racing to dress, pack our bags and load our vehicles, preparing our 95-year-old friend and helping her and her daughter select some can’t-live-without valuables, we were exhausted. For two days after the threat passed, I still felt like I was moving as if under water—not only because we woke up to smoke at 3 am, either. Imagine how the firefighters must feel after so many days and too many fires. How grateful we are for their skill and fierceness, loyalty and hard work. Uplifters are magic makers.

Force For Good’s monthly newsletter, The Inspirer, and blog posts throughout the year, celebrate uplifters and their stories in conjunction with our Passions CD, debuting February 2020. FFG will release one film a month: Each musical composition on Passions has a corresponding film that presents an urgent global need and uplifters who inspire us to take action. You can watch the trailers for Harmony and Ice here! But first, as 2019 goes holiday on us, we’ll introduce our FFG team. This month you’ll discover one of our inspirers, Rodney Whittenberg, and see how he makes magic by paying attention: to the people he meets, to their needs, and then conjuring creative projects that fulfill their dreams—and his.

Let’s give thanks every day, not just on Thanksgiving, for all the uplifters in our life.

Hillary Black, Editor, The Inspirer

“Since the dawn of Western civilization, women have been treated as second class citizens. In America, where our principles are founded on liberty and individual freedoms, it took almost 150 years before women had the right to vote. And still, to this day in the United States, in many ways, women are not treated equally.

Think about the courage it took just a hundred years ago for a woman to risk going to jail, losing her children, and experiencing physical violence just to declare her right to vote. 

The women who risked it all for the simple God-given right to be treated as equal… they are the definition of … courage.”

— Jonathan Sprout, Founder Force For Good

With the film Courage, Force For Good shines a light on the ongoing work toward Women’s Rights by honoring the legacy of those who fought so hard to get us where we are today. Force For Good will release the film Courage, March 2020, to coincide with National Women’s History Month . Check out the Courage song sample and film trailer here! For groups or organizations who would benefit from partnering with FFG and showing the film Courage, contact us here.

Grammy® nominee and children’s music artist, Lori Henriques, wrote a song honoring President Jimmy Carter. When she met to share her music with President and Mrs. Carter, Henriques experienced the compassion and joy Carter exudes. “Last year I wrote a song for Jimmy Carter from his point of view,” she said. “Deep research into his life and philosophies went into every lyric of ‘A Kinder Way.’ When the opportunity to sing for the Carters arose, I got on a plane to Atlanta.” Arriving at The Carter Center from her home in the Pacific Northwest, Henriques felt the Carters’ uplifting spirit and emphasis on human dignity reverberating throughout the halls and in the people working there. “Sitting across from President Carter, looking into his eyes while singing the song, was one of the most emotionally powerful experiences of my life,” Henriques said. She discovered how “he is truly present in the moment.” Henriques confirmed what the thousands of volunteers and people whose lives he has helped must know—and most of us suspected—that the best-selling author, Nobel Laureate and long-time champion for human rights and world peace “has an ability to connect with other humans that is really something.” You can hear Henriques’ tribute to Jimmy Carter here.