NBC Nightly News
anchor Brian Williams wrote this essay about making a difference for USA WEEKEND:
My wife, Jane, actually gave our "Making A Difference" segment its name and its purpose. She is the national chair of a student enrichment charity called Horizons and has devoted her life to helping others after all the years we spent raising our two children. Jane's theory is: Everyone knows someone who is helping someone, in ways great and small. We both feel that acts of kindness are highly contagious. I'm convinced that the feeling you get volunteering, giving a gift, making a donation, triggers a kind of "joy endorphin" in the brain. By highlighting those doing good works, it's our hope at Nightly News that we can cause good works to break out across the country like a prairie fire across the land.
The truth is: if there's anything currently missing from my adult life, it's regular volunteer service. I so enjoyed my years spent as a volunteer firefighter and as an ambulance technician. There is nothing more satisfying than helping someone else. These days, until I can re-enter the world of volunteerism, my wife and I have decided on a finite number of causes that we help financially. But I promise to get back in the game and volunteer!
The good news about broadcasting good news is: We have a powerful megaphone. Our company calls Nightly News "the most-watched regularly scheduled daily broadcast in television" — and I have no reason to doubt that claim. Whatever the size of our audience from day to day, it gives us a tremendous reach — across this country and overseas. Because I'm the one our customers see on television, I'm constantly hearing from them — and more often than not, they thank me for finding the time at the end of the broadcast to spread some good news. The news we report on at the top of the broadcast each night is often grim and deadly serious. That's our job. But just as newspapers have style sections, features and sometimes a humorous column ... we feel we are allowed to step back every so often and say, "Here is something good. Here is a good person doing good things."
On television we so often use the phrase "Don't try this at home!" — most often after airing video of someone doing something ridiculous. But in the case of volunteerism and doing good deeds, our message is loud and clear and quite the opposite: "Please try this at home!"
For more stories about people supporting their communities, visit NBC News' Making A Difference page.
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE, TOO!
USA WEEKEND and NBC are joining together for Make A Difference Day on Oct. 25. USA WEEKEND launched Make a Difference Day in 1992 as a day for Americans to set aside some time to improve the lives of others.
Over the years, millions of volunteers across the country have organized or joined projects, big and small, in the nation's largest day of community service. The event is presented in collaboration with Points of Light. Newman's Own, a longtime supporter, provides financial support for the Make A Difference Day Awards, which will showcase several of the projects at a luncheon in Washington, D.C., in April.
Find out how you can participate in a project, or start your own, at makeadifferenceday.com.
