Inspiration to Live Your Magic: 75 Inspiring Biographies

Mother Teresa
How did a young girl from Albania, armed only with compassion, 
become world-renowned and a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize?
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Even when Agnes Bojaxhiu was a little girl in Albania, she had a big heart. She longed to 
make things better for people, and she wanted to live in India, where she knew there was 
sickness and poverty.
When she grew up, Agnes decided to become a nun and dedicate her life to helping 
people in need. As a nun, she took a new name, Sister Teresa, and a new job teaching 
near the poorest area of Calcutta, India.
She had made her dream come true but wanted to do much more. So she asked for 
permission to start her own group of nuns. Her group would go right into the slums and 
take care of the very poorest and sickest people.
Sister Teresa started orphanages and schools for children in need, and treated every child 
as her own. She also opened hospitals for people who couldn’t afford medical care. 
People started to call her “Mother Teresa,” and many were inspired to support her or join 
her efforts.
But Sister Teresa’s big heart demanded she do even more. She personally walked the 
slums of Calcutta, comforting the people there. She would sit down next to people, hold 
their hands, or take their faces between her hands and look at them with love.
She even did this with lepers (people suffering from the painful and often contagious skin 
disease called leprosy). Sister Teresa touched the people no one else would touch - the 

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forgotten people, who needed love most. “There are poor people everywhere,” she said, 
“but the deepest poverty is not being loved.”
Her remarkable compassion touched people’s hearts, and word began to spread. 
Newspapers started writing about “The Saint of The Gutters” and, before long, Mother 
Teresa was known all over the world.
She was given the Nobel Peace Prize for her work but always gave credit to other people 
and to God. Her advice was to do little things to help others, with love. “There are many 
people who can do big things,” she said, “but there are very few people who will do the 
small things.”
By doing the small things with love, Mother Teresa changed the world. She died in 1997, 
at age eighty-seven, and many consider her to have been a real-life saint.
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