This book is about understanding the roots of children, adults, and groups of people helping and harming others. It is about ways to create more caring for others' welfare and less harmful, aggressive, violent behavior. It is about how children, adults, small groups, and nations can become “active bystanders” who respond to others' suffering and help those in need, rather than remaining passive observers, even closing their eyes and hearts to others' fate.

There is much goodness in the world. A mother paying loving attention to a child. A father taking time off work to take his child to the first day of kindergarten – an act that saved the life of the president of a major bond-trading firm at the time of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. A grown son taking care of a sick old father. A popular girl spending time with a new, somewhat awkward girl in class, saving her from unkind behavior by classmates. A young Canadian boy, Craig Kielberger, hearing about child labor and with the help of an older brother and parents creating an international organization, of children and led by children with the help of adults, to eliminate child labor, to protect children, to promote their welfare. Another child, seeing homeless people on the streets, organizing a movement to bring blankets to homeless people.