POWELL - When California writer Catherine Ryan Hyde wrote her critically acclaimed book "Pay It Forward," which was followed by a successful movie with the same title, she couldn't have possibly predicted what 10 Northwest College photography students would do this fall, but she certainly gave it an apt description.

The students worked most of the fall semester to set up a Dec. 10 Holiday Hope silent auction of photography to benefit a family in Idaho. Only two of the students had ever met the family, but five of them knew what an incredible and humbling sensation it was to feel overwhelming community support after they lost most of their possessions in the Bridger Hall fire last March. They wanted others to enjoy that same cared-about feeling and decided they could make it happen. Their hard work and their passion raised $3,500 through a Dec. 10 silent auction and other activities, just in time to provide a Christmas gift for a family that desperately needs some "holiday hope."

That's what author Hyde would call "paying it forward." In her book, a social studies teacher instructs his elementary students to develop a plan to change the world for the better, and then do it. The main character, a 12-year-old boy, begins by doing something good for three people. Instead of paying him back, he asks them to "pay it forward" by doing a favor for three more people, who in turn would help three others, and so on, each act a link in a chain of human kindness.