Her neighbors just learned that the former first grade teacher who lived up the street in Simsbury, Connecticut and died recently at 87, amassed a fortune of nearly $10 million.
Now being called a “secret millionaires”, Kathleen Magowan bequeathed nearly a half million dollars to the public school system where she taught for 35 years, and was equally generous to her local church and the nursing home where she lived her final years.
(READ the article from Yahoo)
Many people don’t know about the enormous progress most countries have made in recent decades – or maybe the media hasn’t told them.
Extreme poverty has become rarer, people are much healthier, girls are being educated more, and — a largely untold story — population growth is slowing significantly.
Gradually, steadily the demographic forces that drove the global population growth in the 20th Century have shifted. Fifty years ago the world average fertility rate – the number of babies born per woman – was five. Since then, this most important number in demography has dropped to 2.5 – something unprecedented in human history – and fertility is still trending downwards. It’s all thanks to a powerful combination of female education, access to contraceptives and abortion, and increased child survival.
(READ the article from the BBC)
The decade that gave us the counter-culture revolution is when our ideas about health, wellness and happiness began radically changing.
In some ways, the spirit of the 1960s has made a resurgence today: We’ve arguably returned to a time when many are questioning the value of our relentless pursuit of consumerism.
Interest in yoga, meditation and Eastern spirituality — which were all originally popularized in the West during the 60s — have also peaked in recent years, becoming ingrained in our cultural lexicon and American lifestyles.
(READ the article from GetUpAndDoSomething)
Grandmas, by their very nature, don’t want trouble. But 81-year-old SuEllen Fried of Prairie Village, Kansas, has defied that stereotype and brought her sweet, soft touch to prisoners behind the razor-wire walls for over 30 years.
“I am addicted to personal transformation,” she told CBS’s Steve Hartman.
Fried started coming to Lansing Correctional around 1980 for what she thought would be a little volunteer work, but ended up committed to these guys — for life.
Her program “Reaching Out From Within” has been so successful at reforming convicts, it has now spread to every prison in Kansas.
(WATCH the video from Steve Hartman or READ the story from CBS)
In the knowledge that laughter is the best medicine, late night talk show host Jimmy Fallon spent a heartwarming day with some patients at the St. Jude Children’s hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
He donned a chicken costume, sang songs and played a game of Russian Roulette with a dozen eggs, two of them raw.
(WATCH the video from TODAY)
It was a big day for Dee Faught when a team of Rice University students gave him a helping hand. In fact, they gave him a whole arm.
The bioengineering students won Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering Design Competition last April for their R-ARM, a robotic device for Faught that fits on his motorized chair and uses a video game controller for manipulating the movements. The eager teen finally tried out the robotic arm two months ago when students had finished their main work on the project after two years of labor. (See the video bleow)
The arm allows Faught, who lives with osteogenesis imperfecta, a genetic condition that makes his bones especially brittle, to perform tasks most people take for granted.
“It will help him reach into the cabinets and get a cup,” said his mom, Stacy Faught, who added, “One of the things I’m excited about is that he’ll be able to pick up his laundry off the floor.”
Members of Team Brittle Bones — Rice juniors Matthew Nojoomi, Nimish Mittal and Sergio Gonzalez – designed the robotic arm after Faught’s doctor, Gloria Gogola, had suggested that some students consider designing a device to help her patient.
“I expected a high level of engineering talent,” said Gogola, an orthopedic surgeon at Shriners Hospital for Children in Houston who has advised several design teams at Rice. “But I was astounded at the amount of sensitivity they had toward Dee. It gives me hope that there are young engineers out there who are so sensitive to people with special needs who are fantastic in their own right.”
The students, who did the bulk of their work at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, hope to commercialize the product, which they see themselves working on even after graduation. They are applying for grants to further develop R-ARM and hope to work with advisers at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business to devise a business plan.
Gonzalez said he is aware of commercial robotic arms that cost upward of $25,000. The students made theirs for $800 and the cost could come down even further.
“We’ll set up a repair manual for his parents and for students at Rice so that even when we’re gone, they can bring the arm back and fix it up,” Gonzalez said.
“Not many kids I know get to have a robotic arm,” said Faught, who lives with his parents and siblings in Friendswood, Texas, and plans to attend Houston Community College for the next two years and then transfer to a school in New York to pursue a career in music.
“He’s an incredible kid,” Mittal said. “I think that’s part of the reason we stuck with it. If it was just an abstract kind of project, we would have been less motivated. But the fact that we were building it for Dee drove us. We didn’t want to disappoint him.”
(WATCH the video below)
After Sarah Mervosh’s grandpa died at the age of 90, she was amazed to see 500 people crowd in to his memorial service.
He always had made her feel good, but what did he do that made all these people adore him.
It was simple friendliness and thoughtfulness, in the end, that mattered.
“I hadn’t known about the phone calls, or about what Pap Pap meant to people like Justin and Claudia,” she writes in a feature for the Dallas News. “I was still getting to know him even after his death… (learning) a retrospective lesson on how one man had managed to make a difference over the course of his lifetime.”
(READ the Op-Ed from the Dallas Morning News)
The YouTube collaboration known as Whatever, while in New York City handing out sweatshirts, hats and gloves to the homeless before winter, happened to meet a middle-aged man from the Czech Republic who really needed a friend.
The man had come to the United States to work in a hotel in Florida. After losing his job, he traveled to New York with a thousand dollars to look for work there. He was robbed of everything he owned while sleeping in a bus station. After that, he slept in homeless shelters and lived on the streets for months — all while not speaking a word of English.
The YouTube crew had a member that spoke Russian and that is how they learned Jaroslav’s story. All he wanted in the world now, was to simply go home to see his family.
“One of the things I found most inspiring, is he didn’t EVER ask us for anything – despite his situation,” explained Scout, who recorded the events on video. “He was honestly one of the most strong and stoic man I’ve ever had the opportunity of meeting.”
Eventually, after buying the man a haircut, shave, a hotel room and hot pizza, with the help of their friends at threadsociety.com, they bought him a one-way ticket home.
At the airport, after showing Jaroslav where to go and giving him cash to buy food and ground transportation on his long trip back to Europe, they said goodbye.
WATCH the tears flow when he realizes he is going home…
Jodi DiPiazza was lucky enough to get into one of the few schools available to help children with autism to reach their potential.
Loud temper tantrums often flared up during those pre-kindergarten years, but during many hours of therapy, Jodi found a talent that truly grounded her — music.
“We were afraid she would never speak. Never dreaming she would sing, or even be able to understand,” said her father in the video below. “I’ve taken off the idea that there is some limit on her, as she continually proves that that’s not true.”
Near Bridgewater, Mass., a band of brothers from a football team heard about their “water boy” getting teased. The small 6-year-old boy who has some speech impediments was being teased for wearing tweed suits with ties every day.
WCVB in Boston says the team of fifth-graders played great defense and showed their fiercely-loved assistant some solid support.
(WATCH the inspiring video below, or READ the story from WCVB)
A Chinese thief painstakingly wrote out 11 pages of telephone numbers from a stolen iPhone and sent them to the owner, state media says.
The phone directory had nearly 1000 contact numbers and no backup copy.
Days later the owner of the phone received a parcel containing his SIM card and 11 pages of carefully handwritten contact numbers, Xinhua said.
(READ the AFP story from News.au)
A Buffalo, New York bus driver who talked a depressed woman off of a bridge is scheduled to appear on celebrity chef Rachael Ray’s “Thanks for Giving” episode airing Monday in the US.
Darnell Barton’s story is one of four to be highlighted on the he cooking show, which will feature an audience full of people who’ve been hailed as heroes.
Meals on Wheels can deliver a hot meal. A doctor can prescribe pills. A personal support worker can help with dressing, or a bath. They’re all important, but what many old people need most is a whole lot harder to come by.
A friend.
Researchers say the impact on health of being lonely is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Lonely elders are more likely to die of a heart attack and are at a higher risk for dementia, depression and anxiety.
More than 1,000 Quebec seniors are now matched with younger volunteers, with the idea of creating a real and ongoing friendship. Armand Marquiset, who founded the group Les Petits Freres, in 1936, believes that loneliness is as great a problem as hunger.
The group also provides friendship in the US under the English name, Little Brothers, Friends of the Elderly.
(READ the story from the CBC)
Andrew Hales has discovered that his popular YouTube channel, which usually posts prankster videos, can score millions of hits when he displays random acts of kindness.
In September, we shared a video called “The Tip Fairies” in which Hales surprises waitresses with $200 each and then records their reaction with a hidden camera.
A new hidden camera video shows people with wallets at the ready to pay hundreds of dollars for Thanksgiving groceries, when suddenly the cashier tells them it’s all going to be free.
A commercial energy drink sponsor, GungHo, paid for the groceries. The company’s founders told Hales they had been doing this every year for more than 20 years.
Now that their generosity is captured on video, the world can share the priceless reactions of the unsuspecting shoppers.
Give Back Films joined the effort, doing all the recording in the grocery store. (Stay tuned to the Good News Network for more from this group in the coming weeks.)
(WATCH the video below… GNN is not responsible for ad content herein.)
On the third anniversary of the historic Global Tiger Summit, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation has awarded a $3 million grant to the World Wildlife Fund, WWF, for a bold initiative to help Nepal double its wild tiger numbers by 2022 – the next Chinese Year of the Tiger.
Previous support from the Hollywood superstar and his Foundation is already showing major results, growing the number of tigers in the Terai’s Bardia National Park from an estimated 18 to 50 tigers.
The grant represents the first funds awarded from the successful Christie’s 11th Hour Charity Auction in May, created by DiCaprio, which raised a record $38.8 million for conservation in a single night.
DiCaprio has long been a passionate advocate for the environment and joined forces with WWF beginning in 2010 to launch Save Tigers Now, a global campaign to raise political, financial and public support to save tigers in the wild.
The grant will bolster WWF’s work with the government of Nepal and local communities in Nepal’s Terai Arc landscape to strengthen anti-poaching patrols, protect core areas for tiger breeding, restore critical habitat corridors, and continuously monitor tiger populations.
“Leonardo DiCaprio’s foundation is all about delivering real results for conservation on the ground and empowering local communities; nowhere is that more evident than in Nepal,” said Carter Roberts, President and CEO of WWF-US. “The numbers speak for themselves and we are grateful for our partnership.”
Nepal is on target to become one of the first tiger range countries to achieve the 2010 Global Tiger Summit’s goal of doubling wild tigers by the next Year of the Tiger in 2022. The Terai Arc Landscape of Nepal, where the grant will be used, is 9,000 square miles and includes protected areas that are critical tiger, rhino and elephant habitat. The densely populated region is also home to nearly seven million people who depend on its natural resources for their livelihoods.
The grant will allow park rangers to use sophisticated monitoring tools in conjunction with community policing and intelligence-gathering to tackle poaching. Basic park infrastructure, such as guard posts, will also be expanded and corridors between parks will be strengthened to give key species the freedom to roam and help grow new tiger populations across the Terai.
“Protecting a top predator like the tiger helps keep forests and grasslands intact, and ensures that other species like rhinos and elephants can thrive.” said Justin Winters, the Executive Director of the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation. “The most impressive part of this project – and the key to its success so far – is the true collaboration between WWF, the Nepal government and the local communities. Finding solutions that protect tigers and benefit local people is the only way to ensure long term success.”
WWF and its partners will also use the grant to help local communities benefit from conservation by creating income-generating activities through tourism, handicrafts and organic vegetable production. The grant will also support insurance funds to help families cope with the loss of livestock to predators.
Most of the women and girls had never seen the ocean before.
They live in the West Bank, which is landlocked, and Israel does not allow them to freely travel. They risked criminal prosecution, along with the dozen Israeli women who took them to the beach. And that, in fact, was part of the point: to protest what they and their hosts consider unjust laws.
Such beach visits began a year ago as the idea of one Israeli, and have blossomed into a small, determined movement of civil disobedience.
(READ the story, w/ photos, from the NY Times)
Substantive negotiations with Iran involving the US, UK, Germany France, Russia and China have led to an interim agreement signed last night that achieves a first step toward diplomatic agreement regarding its nuclear program.
The agreement will halt progress of Iran’s nuclear program and even roll back parts of it. In return, Iran will get a temporary easing of some sanctions.
“It achieves a great deal,” said President Obama. “For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back.”
Two programs underway aim to bring holiday cheer to seniors who may not otherwise receive Christmas gifts.
In the last nine years, the Be a Santa to a Senior program hosted by Home Instead Senior Care has provided holiday gifts to more than 4,400 seniors, said Brad Cannon, franchise owner of Home Instead.
They have identified 800 seniors in one region in Kentucky to be part of the program.
(READ the story in the BG Daily News)
A touching story unfolds today as one Illinois high school football team and its fans help their rivals for the State championship after the town of Washington was devastated by a tornado.
According to a story on NPR’s Weekend Edition, the coach and players for Springfield’s Sacred Heart Griffin High School say that although they’ll do all they can to beat Washington, they’re also trying to help the team.
Moms of the Springfield players have spent all week arranging to get food for Washington players. They’re also sending six buses to Washington to pick up Panthers fans who may have lost their cars in the storm.
(READ the story or LISTEN to the audio from NPR)
John and Ann Betar eloped on Nov. 25, 1932, fleeing their close-knit Syrian neighborhood in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and driving as fast as they could to Harrison, New York, to avoid Ann’s father’s plans to marry her off to a man 20 years older.
Now, as their 81st wedding anniversary approaches on Monday, the pair, named as the “longest married couple” in America, can only laugh as they look back on the commotion they caused.
“Everyone was hopping mad, and my wife’s aunt consoled my father-in-law by telling him not to worry, the marriage won’t last,” chuckled John Betar, now 102 and still driving “though not quite as fast as the day we got married.”
(WATCH the video or READ the Reuters story from TODAY)
