Share and bookmark this page
Success Stories
With their farmland in the background, the Petermanns – daughter Emily, mom Stephanie, baby Silas and dad Michael – snuggle on a blanket.
On March 21, Stephanie Petermann was enjoying a healthy pregnancy and looking forward to meeting her baby face-to-face sometime around his July 7 due date. But on March 22, without warning, contractions woke her up.
Holyrood, the small Central Kansas town that the Petermann family calls home, doesn’t have a hospital, so Michael Petermann...
A woman from western Kansas calls the Alzheimer’s Association hotline saying that she’d like to come to an informational meeting in her town about the disease, but her husband doesn’t want her to attend because he’s afraid that if she does, someone might take away his farm.
Kathy Sikes has been on the receiving end of many similar phone calls from rural areas across the state. As the program director for the Alzheimer's Association in Central and Western Kansas, she wants to reduce...
Weeds are not welcome in the gardens at Newton’s Sunset Elementary School.
As the classes learn to identify weeds, some of the children even spend time at recess plucking the invaders from the soil. “They take their jobs as weed pickers very seriously,” says Amber Celestin, who teaches 4th grade at the school. “Woe to the bindweed that dares show its face here at Sunset!”
The garden project also serves as a valuable teaching tool for a wide variety of lessons. “It provides an...
Jason Wesco used to stare at the state map on his office wall and wonder how to get dental care to poor people all across Kansas.
This shortage of oral health care is complex and widespread. Ten Kansas counties have no dentist at all. Several areas of our state lack dentists who will accept Medicaid or Health Wave. And many of the Kansans who need help the most cannot afford to travel to other counties for dental services.
Over time, Wesco came up with an idea to create a...
A young mom in Kansas City was feeding her newborn bottles filled with water because she ran out of formula and didn't understand how crucial it is for babies to eat frequently.
On another visit to a family's home, nurse Colleen Kahn found a tiny boy on the floor with the air conditioner running full blast. There were no blankets or crib in the house, and the baby was almost blue. The nurse ran out to her car to get donated baby blankets and warm the infant up.
The new mother...
