Sankar Raman

Ready to Make Something Better

Kapila Narayanan Chandramouli was just a third grader when he travelled to Chennai, India, to learn how to craft a veena, a traditional string instrument,

Sankar Raman

Say Goodbye to All Your Problems

It’s 2010 and Johana Amani is 10 years old. She is speeding through the Congo in the middle of the night on the back of a stranger’s motorcycle. She and […]

Sankar Raman

A Rabbi After All: Fulfilling a Calling

By the time he was seven, Eliezer Schwartz had already learned that if he ran fast enough and threw a lot of stones, he could protect himself from the schoolyard […]

Sankar Raman

There Is a Hopeful Tomorrow

Things were going well for Jenny Munezero in Portland, Oregon. She was working in a rewarding career and engaged to a man she adored.

Sankar Raman

Tending a Garden and Her Dreams

Salsabel Al Masri’s garden was the center of her world. She and her five brothers spent every day after school chasing each other among the olive, orange, apple,

Sankar Raman

When I’m Playing, I’m Just Heat

The first time Denzel Mendoza came out as undocumented he was on stage in front of a crowd of strangers.  That night, he didn’t just play his trombone, 

Sankar Raman

Giving Back to Move Forward

Ferrer has always had a driven mentality that leads him to make the best out of each situation that comes his way. “I can always learn

©2014 Jeffrey Ball

A Doctor with No Cure for His Country

The rigid, highly competitive public education system of Syria sent Hisham Amin Bismar into engineering. Leaving his country and then watching it

Gidu Sriram

A Social Media Post’s Resonance

Three pizzas from Dominos—that’s what Aishwarya Sreenivasan expected to donate to hospital workers fighting Covid-19. In late March, the Portland mother of two

Erin Fortin Photography

A Triumph of Human Resilience

In an isolation cell at the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), 27-year-old Gayathri Ramprasad wondered, “Am I crazy or is the world crazy?”

Sankar Raman

Lighting the Way with Journalism

Super Typhoon Soudelor hit Saipan on Aug. 2, 2015, and the island went dark.  At the time, Rachel Ramirez was studying at the University of Portland in Oregon.

Sankar Raman

From Homeless to a Grammy Award Win

For Denzel Mendoza, music has been what ties his life together. Mendoza was born in Singapore in 1996 and the family moved to the U.S. a few years later for […]

Sankar Raman

From Zim Kid to COVID-19 Advisor

When Bukhosi Dube recently took a big pay cut to work as a physician at the Multnomah County Health Department, his goal was to ultimately find work in public