Society

The Immigrant & Refugee Women’s Program’s (IRWP) clients come from Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and dozens of other countries. While each of the women served has a different story and faces her own challenges, they all share a desire to learn. “One of our first questions when we meet them is, Why do you want to learn English?” says executive director Pat Joshu. “I’ve had several look at me and say that nobody has ever asked them that before: What do they want?”

If you were among the record 7.24 million viewers who tuned in to last weekend’s Tony Awards, you know that Kinky Boots was one of the evening’s biggest winners, giving Webster University alum JERRY MITCHELL his second Tony (the first was for his choreography work in La Cage Aux Folles in 2005). Bravo!

“We serve some of the most frail and fragile people in the whole world,” says Sue Hockensmith, co-founder of Pony Bird Inc., a care provider for non-ambulatory individuals with profound mental and physical disabilities.

In 2009, Gateway Children’s Charity was founded by a group of eight people who wanted to make a tangible difference in the lives of local kids. “In our opinion, there was a void or gap that existed in funding projects that were on the smaller side, which maybe didn’t qualify for or were overlooked by bigger charity groups. We wanted to help fill that void,” says Michael Todorovich II, the nonprofit’s president and one of the founding board members.