Summer camp was my escape, my first taste of freedom, my safe haven. Without going into too many details of my past, I will simply say my childhood wasn’t princesses and fairytales. My dad had many demons…

As a child, I would attend camp for a couple weeks at a time. When I was in high school, I would literally travel across the country to work at camp. Even during college, I would spend my summers as a…

When she was just fifteen, Terri escaped from a violently abusive household. Because of her pain and trauma, she became addicted to drugs and found herself living in her car in an abandoned lot when an…

“At age ten, I was an alcoholic. When I was fifteen I got alcohol poisoning and that’s when I started using drugs. It went for years with the drug abuse and it scaled from marijuana to various narcotics.…

“When I got to The Salvation Army, I was broken.” As she recalls a more difficult time, Anita’s face shows that she is experiencing a whirlwind of emotion. “I was broken spiritually, emotionally, financially,…

Marvin knows that he was not the sort of person that could be trusted. He had an incredibly dark past. For 30 years he was a drug dealer, an addict and worse. He would stay high for days at a time and…

Now a medical doctor with a successful practice, David doesn’t actually remember the first time The Salvation Army impacted his life and the lives of his three older brothers. His mother recalls that when…

For most of his life, Jim just wanted to make a difference in the world. As a child, Jim’s parents took time to explain how giving to The Salvation Army’s Red Kettles meant that people who needed help…

Throughout this year we met some of the people who were incredibly willing to give back. Marvin turned from a life of selling drugs to mentoring young people within The Salvation Army. Melani's addictions…

Like most parents, April’s one wish for the holidays was to be able to provide for her children – warm food on the table and a few presents under the tree. Many of us take this for granted. Finding herself…

The origin of The Salvation Army red kettle.

At eight years of age, Dontae and his mother were homeless and living at a local shelter. Despite their circumstances, Dontae’s mother tried to remain positive and do what she could to help her son excel.…

On Sunday, Joey Logano, current points leader in the Sprint Cup, was taking the checkered flag at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. Today, he was in Columbia, SC surveying the devastation related to the recent…

The Salvation Army has been busy serving thousands of disaster survivors and first responders throughout flood ravaged areas of South Carolina. At the peak of relief service 20 mobile feeding teams and…

There was a man who rode to The Salvation Army canteen in the pouring rain on his scooter to pick up food for his family. He was wearing a jump suit with a reflective vest on and plastic grocery bags over…