subject: Achievers Who Defied Great Handicaps [print this page] It's a big mystery to me why straight people with diverse handicaps fail to achieve their goals despite all their blood-sweating efforts. It makes think why their God allows that to happen. That seems cruelty to me. Imagine all the handicaps ambitious children have to go through when they're in a bad environment with poor and bad parents. Just the lack of educational funds would pressure them to stop schooling or drop out. I have always believed in the right training of children (nurture) as against their inherent traits (nature). When children grow up bad', it was always the parents fault and never the children's. You take away a child of immoral parents and put the child in care of responsible guardians and he grows up responsible and decent. You put a child of responsible and moral parents into a bad environment and the child grows up delinquent. But now something seems to tell me I'm convinced wrong. How about children who grew up with irresponsible parents and yet became decent achievers?
That question occured to me because the wife of a neighbor of mine who were just squatters just got pregnant for the 7th time. Now imagine an almost jobless couple living with seven children in just a one small room with no toilet. If the new child manages to come out alive, all the other siblings will suffer the cost of the scarce food ration and other necessities.
Then suddenly I remembered the rare children who grew up as great achievers despite their parents and environment. Are the achievements of these great children recorded in archives anywhere? Probably, but also probably hard to find. So now I came up with the idea of compiling names of such achievers.
Although it seems weird that the first person in the list is included, I still think he qualifies because he might have had a more handicapped way of surviving -in the wilds then in the city.
Matt Dahm
This published writer was raised by wolves after he was abandoned as a baby. Need I say more?
Efren Penaflorida
This filipino was named CNN's Hero of the Year 2009 out of 9,000 candidates. I grew up really poor.' he said. My father was a driver and my mother was a laundrywoman. When I went to school, I experienced being mocked, bullied, discriminated against.' He pioneered a brand of mobile education, or the "pushcart classroom," for urban poor youth as an alternative to gang membership.
Do you know anyone we could add to the list? Please let me know so I could add the name. That would make this a continuing article.
