CNN is currently holding voting for heroes. They have created a panel which has selected ten people who have distinguished themselves.

You go here to vote and assess the candidates.

This is part of the story of one of the candidates –

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow was enjoying a pint at his local pub in the Scottish Highlands when he got an idea that would change his life — and the lives of thousands of others.

It was 1992, and MacFarlane-Barrow and his brother Fergus had just seen a news report about refugee camps in Bosnia. The images of people suffering in the war-torn country shocked the two salmon farmers, who’d visited there as teenagers and remembered the warmth of the Bosnian people.

“We began saying ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just do one small thing to help?’ ” MacFarlane-Barrow says.

After talking it over, the two men took a week off work and collected food, clothing, medicine and blankets. They loaded everything into an old Land Rover, drove to Bosnia to deliver it and returned to Scotland.

“I came back here thinking that I did my one good deed and it would be back to work, but it [didn’t work] out like that, ” he says.

When they arrived home, the brothers found an avalanche of goods that people had continued to donate while they were away.

I won’t spoil the rest of it by giving away too much. Go see the kind of people we can be when we’re not trying to live by money values.

James Pilant