Jane Addams always knew that she wanted to help others. When her attempts at becoming a doctor failed due to health reasons, she was at a loss. She began traveling the world to seek inspiration and learn about other cultures. She eventually came upon a house in London geared toward helping its poverty- stricken parts of town. This made her realize that she didn't need a special degree to help others -- she just needed the courage and motivation.

Addams returned to the U.S. and started the first woman-run settlement house in America. She knew the best way to help those suffering around her was to live with them and learn what would truly change their lives for the better.

Addams became a worldwide role model and through her work became a social and political activist, an author and lecturer, a public intellectual, and more. She emphasized that women have a special responsibility to help uplift their communities through volunteerism in order to make them better places to live. Her life-long journey to help others in need led to her being the first American female recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Jane Addams was co-founder and head resident of Chicago's Hull House from 1889 and continued her selfless work until her death in 1935. Its mission was to improve lives of the poor in Chicago neighborhoods. This led her to study and fulfill many roles. From nurse to housekeeper, no job was too small or large for Addams. She also worked on social reform issues including promoting women's rights, ending child labor, and mediating during workers' strikes.

The Hull House helped neighborhoods in a variety of ways: it established the city's first public playground, bathhouse, and public gym. It pursued educational and political reform, and investigated housing, working, and sanitation issues. It created a neighborhood kindergarten for young children whose mothers worked in factories and an adult night school.

The Hull House also opened an art gallery to inspire and educate Chicago's residents. Among the other projects that the members of the Hull House created were the Immigrants' Protective League, the Juvenile Protective Association, the first juvenile court in the United States, and a psychiatric clinic for children.

Because of its innovative social, educational, and charitable programs, the Hull House became a model for over 500 settlement houses across the country. These houses were built in poor urban areas that middle-class volunteer workers lived in an attempt to help their low-income neighbors through education, meals, shelter, and many more necessities.

While the original building is now a museum chronicalling the Hull House's impact on society, Addams' need to help her community still lives through the Jane Addams Hull House Association, which is one of Chicago's largest non-profit organizations.

Some claim that Addams and her work in the Hull House deeply influenced the philosophy of social work and changed the field into what it is today. In her book, Twenty Years at Hull House, Addams wrote of the importance of helping others, "social advance depends quite as much upon an increase in moral sensibility as it does upon a sense of duty."