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Clarissa Barton, called Clara, was born in 1821 in Oxford, Massachusetts. At a time when relatively few women worked outside the home, Barton built a career helping others. One of her greatest accomplishments was founding the American Red Cross. This organization helps victims of war and disasters.

Clara Barton taught school for many years. In 1854, she moved to Washington, D.C., and took a job in the government patent office. She was probably the first woman to hold a government job!

When the Civil War began in 1861, Barton volunteered. She gathered supplies to help feed and care for wounded soldiers. She also served as a nurse. Barton possessed excellent organizing skills and knew how to get things done. After the Civil War ended in 1865, Barton took on the job of locating soldiers who were missing. She ran an office tracked down information on nearly 22,000 men and contacted their families.

Barton took her organizational skills to Europe in 1869. She worked with the International Red Cross to set up hospitals during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) between France and Germany. Barton returned to the United States in 1873.

The Red Cross was founded in Switzerland in the 1860s to care for wounded soldiers during wartime. Nations agreed to follow its policies on the treatment of wounded soldiers by signing a treaty. Barton spent years pushing the United States Congress to approve the International Red Cross treaty. In 1881, she finally won support for creating the American Red Cross. Barton served as president of the organization until 1904.

In 1884, Barton attended an International Red Cross conference in Switzerland. As a result of her efforts, the Red Cross expanded its activities. From helping only victims of war, it began also to help victims of peacetime disasters, such as earthquakes and floods.

Barton's efforts comforted people around the world. Red Cross aid helped people in need during epidemics (outbreaks of disease), floods, famines, and war. Barton became famous for her work.

Clara Barton died in Maryland at the age of 91. She had spent her life helping others.

 

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Each country has many good people who take care of others. For example, some of students in the United States often spend many hours as volunteers in hospitals, orphanages or homes for the elderly. They read books to the people in these places, or they just visit them and play games with them or listen to their problems.

Other young volunteers go and work in the homes of people who are sick or old. They paint, clean up, or repair their houses, do the shopping. For boys who don’t have fathers,

there is an organization called Big Brothers. College students and other men take these boys to basketball games or on fishing trips and help them to get to know things those boys usually learn from their fathers.

Each city has a number of clubs where boys and girls can go and play games. Some of these clubs show movies or hold short trip to the mountains, the beaches, museums, or other places of interest. Most of these clubs use a lot of students as volunteers because they are young enough to understand the problems of younger boys and girls.

What do volunteers usually do to help those who are sick or old in their homes?

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The grantees of the Community Food Projects Competitive Grants Program showed their strength by providing education, skills, food and resources to a diverse group of residents and food insecure communities across the nation.

Ten thousand farmers, many disadvantaged, were trained on sustainable agriculture and business management. Thousands of jobs and micro-businesses supporting the local food system were created, and customer bases for local agriculture were increased (3,000 + new buyers). Farm-to-cafeteria programs were created throughout the country providing markets for local farmers.

Nearly 19 million pounds of local, healthy food was distributed to over 2.5 million people, mostly in low-income neighborhoods across 39 states. With fast food available easily and cheaply for many Americans, the impact of providing healthy, fresh fruits and vegetables cannot be underestimated. Over 1.8 million children and youth in schools or summer programs ate fresh fruits and vegetables because of farm-to-cafeteria programs. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants, and Children Program (WIC) recipients purchased local produce at farmers markets, and elder food recipients received seasonal fruit and vegetable shipments from local CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture). These healthy foods provide recipients with not only the nutrition to stay well, but also instill healthy eating habits that can last a lifetime. This becomes especially important for young children who may be at risk for obesity through the bad habits learned from a sedentary lifestyle.

Farmland depletion was delayed and local food production enhanced by the CFPs (Community Food Project) where almost 60,000 acres of land was farmed or preserved. Youth and urban gardeners learned to grow and prepare their own food through 2,500 community gardens and more than 9,000 garden plots.

Community food system capacity and infrastructure was enhanced through community food assessments, the formation of food policy councils and networks and the implementation of new policies. More than 50 million residents lived in the communities where these community-wide changes were made.

Results from the first five years of this food security program could be just a taste of the opportunities to come for improving the health, environment and economy of this country, when residents of almost every age are taught about healthy food supply and when they have access to delicious, abundant locally produced fruits, vegetables and meat.

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