Despite all of the bad things happening on Earth each day, there are lots of good things happening, too. I imagine that those who sit on the Nobel Peace Prize committee face a daunting challenge when trying to decide whom to select as the current year's Nobel Peace Prize winner. There are so many worthy individuals, organizations, and causes from which to choose. And, in a sense, all of the Nobel nominees are winners. Regrettably, they all cannot be selected.

A personal favorite candidate of mine to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize is none other than one of my contemporary idols, Mr. Stevie Wonder, who has been an inspiration to me throughout my lifetime. Another favorite pick of mine is the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the most impressive things about the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is its focus on measurable results, or its insistence on getting the most bang for the buck, so to speak, rather than wasting money on ill-conceived and hastily put together non-crisis types of charitable projects.

Obviously, it is not for me to decide who should win any of these kinds of awards. So, being a committee of one, I have decided to create my own rather subjective selection of an annual award winner. It hereby is called the Annual Bruessard Award. This annual award is only meant for World Wide Web recognition. The Annual Bruessard Award does not contain any type of monetary prize, and there is no trophy or plaque attached to the award. In essence, the Annual Bruessard Award is merely a "bragging rights" type of an award.

You may have heard of Time magazine's now-famous yearly selection of its "Person of the Year." To be sure, possibly following Time magazine's lead in selecting Time's person of the year, each December, it has become something of a USA tradition for popular newspapers, magazines, and television programs to summarize the year's top events or to announce their picks for the year's most notable "movers and shakers" in various fields of endeavor. Continuing with this USA end-of-year tradition, the Annual Bruessard Award recognizes a (some) person(s), place(s), thing(s), idea(s), or event(s) of the year who has (have) made a significant contribution to human progress or who has (have) promoted the betterment of humankind. The announcement of the Annual Bruessard Award winner will be made each year on this website during the month of December.

Had I begun this annual announcement in 2014, I most likely would have selected Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) as my choice for 2014's winner. Doctors Without Borders deeply impressed me. While many others were trying to run away from, escape, or otherwise avoid the Ebola epidemic, Doctors Without Borders courageously, boldly, and heroically was the first of note to step forward and run towards the Ebola epidemic. They put on their protective gear, rolled down their collective sleeves, and went to work eradicating the rather horrific and rather scary Ebola epidemic. Theirs was the ultimate expression of courage, selflessness, and personal sacrifice in the face of adversity and danger. There was no fame or fortune awaiting these doctors and other Ebola workers once they completed their war-on-Ebola missions in Africa. To be sure, some of them were scorned when they returned home.