Douglas will be heading back to India next week, her 23rd trip. "It's the most expensive thing I've ever done in my life," she says. Like everyone in the organization except a paid executive director, Douglas volunteers her time and pays for her airfare and other expenses.

She's had invitations to expand her program to other parts of India, as well as South America and Pakistan. And just this week she met with the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, which wants to study how her program lifts depression.

Douglas has story after story of changed lives, including the one about the depressed woman in one of the colonies who sat in the corner of her hut all day with a gunnysack over her head. When a volunteer offered her a baby turkey to raise, she shooed it away. But the baby turkey persisted, pecking away at her sari until the woman picked it up. Today, the woman is a successful turkey farmer and has been voted leader of the colony.

"Madam, I am so happy," said the woman who had once been waiting to die. And she just bought herself two gold earrings, Douglas reports.

For more information: www.risingstaroutreach.org.

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E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com