"This is such an impoverished area," says single mother Loquater Atkins. Some families live behind boarded-up windows. Drugs and crime fester. But for Atkins, 30, the last straw was the paint chipping off a merry-go-round in a rundown park.

Atkins already had begun to change her life: She's enrolled in an AmeriCorps program that helps welfare mothers acquire job skills. Soon, she and others in that program began organizing to change the neighborhood.

Here's what happened: 2,500 books were given away; information on health, housing and jobs was handed out; vacant lots were cleared of trash;and Atkins personally made sure that merry-go-round got new paint. "When our work was done," she says, "we saw we really made a difference."

$10,000 award from Paul Newman benefits Colvin Elementary School.