Mary Anitha gave up a comfortable career and risked her health to assist disabled children in Kerala, India.

Armed with a Master’s in Business and a Doctorate in Management, Anitha was enjoying a successful career in business when she contracted tuberculosis.

She quickly discovered that Indian society—the government as well as the culture—does very little to support people with tuberculosis. She remembered a similar lack of support for disabled children, a cause she had worked on when she was a student.

When her health improved enough, she took 65 disabled kids on a field trip—which wasn’t quite legal—risking arrest if any of the children had been injured. It mattered to get the kids out into the world, Anitha felt, in a society that preferred they be invisible.

Anitha quit her job to devote all her time to repairing that situation, despite the strain on her health and the occasional stretching of laws. She sold all her jewelry to finance the creation of a nonprofit, CEFEE—the Centre for Empowerment and Enrichment—which now helps hundreds of thousands of people throughout Kerala.

As she says on CEFEE's website, “Our first and basic aim is to enable the disabled.”

And that she does.