9 Ways to Spark a Breakthrough

Sometimes strengths—your ability to speak Spanish or repair gadgets—seem so obvious, they're easy to overlook. After a volunteering trip to a refugee camp in northern Uganda, Hunter Heaney persuaded his friends Anna Gabriel, Chris Holmes and Jay Sweet to join forces for Ugandan women he'd met, many of whom had been widowed and raped, and had children who had been kidnapped and forced to join militia groups. They knew they wanted to help, but their plan really ignited when Gabriel, the daughter of musician Peter Gabriel, realized she could tap her formidable Rolodex. "I've been surrounded by a network of musicians all my life," she says, "and I realized that was something I could give." So they created the Voice Project, in which famous musicians record a cover song on video, then invite the covered musician to do the same and, well, play it forward. The music video chain now includes Andrew Bird, Billy Bragg, Mike Mills of REM, and Gabriel's father, among others.