Most families spend their summer vacation at the beach – not traveling across the country to help families in need. Meet the Mursets. Gregg, 40, his wife Kami, 37, and their six kids ranging in age from 7 to 16, left Phoenix in their motor home on June 29 to spend 20 days on the road volunteering their time to help 25 families in need. “I told the kids and my wife over breakfast that I wanted to do this,” Gregg Murset, 40, tells PEOPLE. “They all looked at me like I was crazy,” he says, “but when we started to read the stories of people we were going to help, their attitudes completely changed.” Gregg is the founder of My Job Chart, a company with 725,000 users that teaches children about work ethics and money management. The company partners with Autism Speaks, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and three more organizations that helped to connect the Mursets with families who have children with cancer, genetic disorders and other illnesses. “When you have a kid who is struggling, the last thing you’re thinking of is pulling weeds, vacuuming or dusting,” says Gregg. “It’s been amazing to watch my own children open their eyes and see that the world is bigger than they are,” he says. “Even the little kids are learning from this experience.” So far, they have stopped in Albuquerque, Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, Detroit and Buffalo on their 6,500-mile journey. One family in Warren, Michigan, says it was a blessing to have the family stop by their home. “They showed up at 8 a.m. and we had a list of things we needed help with,” says Jim Spencer, 61, whose 12-year-old daughter Lexi has Down syndrome and was diagnosed with leukemia a couple years ago. “I was very impressed with how professional the kids were,” he says. “They just wanted to help.” They were on ladders, cleaning windows and in the yard doing manual labor. As the Mursets make their way around the country, the kids are visiting places they’ve never seen. They stopped at Niagara Falls already, and will see the Statue of Liberty when they’re in New York City. “There is nothing wrong with your kid getting off the couch, doing some work and sweating,” says Gregg. “It’s good for the kid and it’s good for the soul.”
When life gives you lemons, you can do much more than make lemonade, says Zack Francom. The 11-year-old Utah boy has turned several hundred quarts of the drink into Zack’s Shack, a philanthropy that has changed the lives of more than 300 people in need of wheelchairs in developing countries. Zack got the idea for a lemonade stand in the spring of 2010 when his school held a fundraiser to purchase a wheelchair for LDS Philanthropies, a Mormon church charity. “I decided that I wanted to raise enough to buy one all by myself,” says Zack. “I thought, ‘What if I couldn’t walk or run or ride my bike? What would that be like?’ ” he says. “I wanted to help make life easier for somebody who couldn’t walk or run and didn’t have money for a wheelchair to help them get around.” Since then – selling lemonade at 50 cents a cup and two cookies for $1 – his Zack’s Shack has become an annual event in his hometown of Provo, Utah. Hundreds of people line up in front of his house every April during spring break to help fund his charity. “When people visit Zack’s lemonade stand they see a great example of a little boy with a big heart,” says Tanise Chung-Hoon, managing director for LDS Philanthropies. “When you see the genuine fun he has in the work, you immediately realize that he feels just as happy and lucky as the wheelchair recipients,” she says. “Zack is the perfect example of how philanthropy changes the giver as well as the receiver.” This past April, Zack sold 350 dozen cookies baked by his mom, Nancy Bird, and 80 quarts of lemonade, earning $5,300 – enough to buy another 37 wheelchairs (basic models now cost $143), which are shipped to Guatemala, Guam and 53 other countries, where a wheelchair can often cost more than a year’s wages. “There was one lady in Guatemala who crawled for 10 miles with her baby on her back to pick up her wheelchair,” says Bird, 32, who spends several weeks helping her son bake cookies for the sale every year. “What a dramatic change it has made in her life,” she says. “Stories like this are what keep Zack going.”
He also has bigger dreams. He says he’d love to see other kids start similar efforts in other states. “Imagine if there were hundreds of Zack’s Shacks,” he says. “Nobody who needs a wheelchair should have to go without one just because they can’t afford it.” And he’d love to take a more active role himself. “My goal is to fly around the world someday and hand out the wheelchairs,” he says.