“The New Heroes,” a PBS series (Channel 9) which will be aired June 28 and July 5, profiles the lives of more than 13 social entrepreneurs who have for at least 20 years each provided constituencies throughout the world, including the San Francisco Bay Area, with opportunities to make better lives for themselves.

Whether their assistance was providing education for poor children on train platforms 300 miles south of Calcutta, India, or helping Kenyan subsistence farmers increase yields through a foot-operated water pump; freeing enslaved families in India or giving former convicts an opportunity for redemption – true correction – as seen in Mimi Silbert’s “Delancy Street Foundation,” all of these entrepreneurs have one thing in common: each is quietly making a difference, one person, one community at a time.

Each of the four segments focuses on several entrepreneurs. One project is located in the urban slum or favela Coopa Roca. Maria Teresa Leal, from a middle class Brazilian backgound, stated she would never have noticed the cottage industry in the favela had not her college class brought her there.

The handwork of the women made her think back in 1981 about business possibilities for the women, whose lives are so poor. Then in 1987, Leal helped the women turn their crafts into a profitable cooperative with goods sold in the boutiquettes near the beaches and other tourist areas.

In this episode, the women are preparing for a fashion show in Sao Paulo, with the hope that such exposure will increase their accounts, and it does.

What is so inspiring about these stories is how applicable what they are doing is to each of our lives – we can do it too! Indeed we do it all the time anyway in small ways. So it’s time, Christopher Hedge, composer, stated at the series CD-release party Tuesday evening, June 14, “for us to inspire each other and (expand the reach of our service).”

Hedge’s call was one echoed by Titos Sompe, a percussionist and kalimba or thumb pianist from Congo (Brazaville). Sompe opened the program with libations, song, stories and dance, joined by Mampouya Jean Armel and his son on drums and percussions. His is the welcoming voice you hear when the series opens instructing all to “Listen. Our mission in the world is to learn from one another.”

“Life always changes chairs. The daughters and sons become mother and father, so we have to honor this and treat each other well.”

What Hedge and his artistic collaborators – percussionist Titos Sompe, flutist Paul Horn, violinist Julian Smedley, sarodist Alam Khan and tabla expert Debopriyo – did was create an audio tapestry for the lives and people the filmmakers capture on screen. This other dimension gives voice to the rhythms of lives words cannot convey even in translation.

Taken together, the two mediums make the program so much richer. However, the work stands alone too. “The New Heroes” – Christopher Hedge provides great flight music for fantasies realized and those to become, the terrain uneven just as the human condition is we encounter on film.

Tuesday evening a tsunami warning cleared the Delancy Street Theatre located on San Francisco’s Embarcadero Street, quickly, everyone heading for higher altitudes. Lucky for us, the alert was lifted shortly thereafter. If it’s all one story, and indeed it is, then we really are more alike than we differ.

Narrated by Robert Redford, “The New Heroes” four-part series cites atypical philanthropy stories, men and women who have been at it for decades – self-starters and self-motivators: educators, engineers, physicians, bankers – kind people with open hearts. There is no glamour here, and often the work is dangerous, the population affected poor and unwanted. No one, least of all their governments, care whether these families, men, women or children succeed or fail.

Visit www.pbs.org/theheroes for more information or www.theheroes.org to see how you can make a contribution to one or more of these projects.

-Wanda Sabir