Attention Amazon customers. Start 2014 off right. AmazonSmile will allow you donate Amazon’s money to your favorite nonprofit organization at no cost to you.
Whenever you need to purchase a product from Amazon.com be sure to visit the AmazonSmile page so you can donate .5% of the purchase price to any of the one million nonprofits listed on their site.
It’s easy. Find out how to do it.
(READ the article at BradAronson.com)
The Apple iPhone commercial for Christmas 2013 is called Misunderstood.
In the advertisement, a teenager looks like he is totally absorbed by his iPhone while ignoring his family during the holiday. But maybe he’s just misunderstood.
Watch the inspiring video below…
When a Nevada graphics manager saw a Good News Network post in November about a woman in Canada who runs a shoebox project for women in shelters, something in the article stuck with her.
In addition to the usual essentials like soaps, toothbrushes and socks, the project focused on giving items that would make the women feel better about themselves. Some of the “extras” they likely wouldn’t receive.
“I opened that article in a tab on my browser and kept it there for nearly a month,” said Kippy Spilker of Carson City. “I kept reading it and thought, ‘Maybe I could do something similar.'”
She decided to fill up as many shoeboxes for the homeless as she could — with a goal of filling 50 boxes for Christmas.
Spilker told a couple friends at work who suggested she open it up for donations from friends and co-workers so they, too, could have a chance to help.
As photos of boxes and items were posted on FB, packages of donations started arriving, even from out of state. People who never even met Spilker sent money via Paypal.
“Every day there was something new dropped off at my desk. I would come in to a bag of stuff, or a box of water,” said Spilker, whose husband agreed to forego their own gift-giving so they could put all their time and money into this. “It was just so cool.”
It was one good friend at work who really latched on to her idea of wanting to give “extras.” She brought in some gorgeous Italian scarves that she said she kept getting as gifts from family, but would never wear, and then she brought in lightly-used expensive perfumes, makeup and lotions. So, they put all that stuff (the makeup and hairbrushes and perfumes, etc.) in kind of a “grab box” to feature alongside the shoeboxes.
The week before Christmas, her husband, Jeremy Spilker, helped her fill 73 shoeboxes and bring them to Reno’s Tent City, a parking lot near several homeless shelters.
“We brought many other donations that couldn’t fit in boxes, to give to folks who wouldn’t otherwise have a Christmas, a little warmth and love,” Spilker wrote in an email to GNN. “We got a lot of hugs and “God Bless You’s and even saw tears.”
“One woman’s reaction was enough to make the whole thing worthwhile. As she was looking through the “extras” box, she was astounded!” exclaimed Spilker, who works on Nevada newspapers owned by Swift Communications. “She kept proclaiming how this was really amazing stuff, and she was telling the people around her where the products came from. Obviously at one point in her life, these things mattered a lot to her.”
“Watching her go through that box, it was really like watching a kid at Christmas. I was glad we could share the shoeboxes with basics (each had a scarf, 2 pairs of socks, soaps, lotions, hand sanitizer, tissues, Christmas chocolates and candy, toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, handwarmers, q-tips, bandaids, razors… but it was watching this one woman’s reaction, and knowing the difference we made to her, that really touched me. When she was done, she was almost in tears and came up and gave me the longest, tightest hug.”
“That let me know we made a difference.”
(WATCH the video of the big day – and a ‘Loving Hearts’ meal being served – below)
When 42-year-old Chris Rosati was diagnosed with ALS, he came up with an unusual plan to spread cheer: steal a Krispy Kreme truck and give away all the donuts.
When Krispy Kreme heard about the plot after it was posted on social media, not only did they support Rosati’s plan, they helped him pull it off.
After a $10,000,000 loan to local farmers proved successful, Whole Foods Market announced on January 2 that it will give up to $25,000,000 in low interest funds to farmers who support their non-GMO, earth friendly values.
“America’s Healthiest Grocery Store” says the amount of these loans can be as varied as their uses, which include grass fed cattle and equipment conversions to organic production.
(READ the story in the Examiner)
A police sergeant said it was “pure dumb luck” how a 20 year old, Nick Simmons, was reunited with his family in upstate New York after a news photographer shot his photo huddled with homeless men on a grate in Washington, DC.
The family was alerted to the photo, published in USA Today to illustrate the cold weather.
The photographer was touched that her work was responsible for the young man going home. It is particularly good news because temperatures in DC are set to plunge today to 0 degrees Farenheit.
(READ the AP story via the El Paso Times)
A Denver businessman devised a new way to help the homeless, after his car ran out of gas on the corner where a lonely man daily holds a sign that says, ‘Homeless, Cold, and Hungry’. The man dropped his sign and helped push the car out of the intersection.
Chris Rezac holds a different sign today, one that advertises realtor Joe Manzaneres’s business, and his life has changed because of the new and guaranteed income. Not only that, the realtor has helped him get new clothes, a cell phone, a bus pass and a resume.
British architect Norman Foster has unveiled a concept to build a network of elevated pathways above London’s railways to create safe car-free cycling routes in the wake the most deadly year for cyclists in the city’s history.
Entitled SkyCycle, the proposal by architects Foster + Partners, landscape architects Exterior Architecture and transport consultant Space Syntax is for a “cycling utopia” of approximately 220 kilometers of dedicated cycle lanes, following the routes of existing train lines.
(READ the full story from DeZeen magazine)
Pope Francis announced on Sunday that he would travel to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan in May, his first visit to the Holy Land and one that comes amid a new US push for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The three-day visit in May also underscores Francis’ close ties to the Jewish community, his outreach to Muslims and the Vatican’s longstanding call for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
(READ the Assoc. Press story from the Washington Post)
Maria Arias and her family have been struggling lately, since her husband lost his unemployment benefits because of federal cuts.
Shopping at Walmart in Spring Lake, North Carolina on New Year’s Eve, she got to the register with her groceries and went to pay the $73 bill with a gift card and her debit card to cover the rest.
When her card was declined for both a debit and credit payment, she readied herself to put the groceries back in humiliation.
Jonnie Wright stood on an Iowa street corner in the freezing cold on Christmas Eve disguised as a homeless man. Anyone who rolled down their window to give him a donation received a surprise in a sealed envelope.
The Des Moines businessman gave away nearly $1,000 and the money he received went to the local homeless shelter. He said the stunt to reward people for their kindness had been on his ‘bucket list’ of things he wanted to do before he died.
A 10 year old Missouri boy has spent the last month shoveling his driveway, and everyone else’s driveways. And he has not asked for any compensation.
Jimmy Friel has shoveled for more than a dozen of his neighbors because many of them are elderly and he doesn’t want them slipping and falling.
In a blog post, Bill Gates shared his thoughts on the best news of 2013, especially in his chosen philanthropic fields of global health.
“If you measure progress by the number of children who die of preventable causes, or by the number of people who escape extreme poverty—as I do,” says Gates, “then 2013 was definitely a good year.”
Whether a teen is struggling with grief after a family death, or a life-changing diagnosis or homelessness, the ARTS program gives them a world of their own to adjust and grow through trouble. ARTS stands for A Reason To Survive, and those reasons include dance, music, painting, poetry, knitting, sculpting or anything creative.
It was started by a man, Matt D’Arrigo, whose mother and sister were both diagnosed with cancer when he was a young man. Painting in his room brought positive transformation and he later found his calling — helping others to get the same sort of therapy when they need it most.
The curse of cataracts leads to blindness in millions of the world’s poorest adults. After years of darkness, they are now seeing the light, and giving thanks to the American doctor who brought them the gift of sight.
He is a doctor changing lives overnight. Geoff Tabin founded a charity, the Himalayan Cataract Project, that sends flying clinics into remote parts of Asia and Africa to carry out a simple, but transformational eye operation.
(WATCH the video below or READ the ITN story via the PBS NewsHour)
General Mills said it has stopped using genetically modified ingredients in its popular breakfast cereal Cheerios.
The US food manufacturer hopes that using non-GM cornstarch and non-GM sugar and oats will firm up customer loyalty in the face of growing opposition to such additives.
(READ the full story from New York Daily News)
Global manufacturing ended 2013 on a strong note as major exporters like Japan, Germany, and Italy posted their fastest growth in years, and China saw no major slowdown in manufacturing output. (Reuters)
Native peoples’ efforts to reintroduce fading species and restore habitats has unified environmentalists across regions — the Indigenous and non-indigenous alike.
Among the 2013 environmental victories, several species have bounced back, including a record return of Chinook salmon to the Columbia River. A healthy wolf population flourished in Yellowstone National Park, strengthening the wildlife web around it. And, tribes were instrumental in pulling the Black-Footed Ferrets back from the brink.
Here are some of the more notable wins, and the tribes involved in making them happen.
(READ the list at Indian Country Today)
Before you kick your dying Christmas tree to the curb, consider this: Members of the conservation group Trout Unlimited would love to turn that tree into fish habitat.
On three Saturdays in January, the Tualatin Valley chapter of Trout Unlimited will be collecting Christmas tree donations at two locations in the Portland metropolitan area. Later, they’ll place the trees into a side channel of the Necanicum River near Seaside, where they will provide predator protection and food sources for baby coho salmon.
The group is entering the third year of a program called Christmas for Coho. It’s is one of many groups across the country turning old Christmas trees into fish habitat.
Similar projects have taken place in California, Missouri, Ohio and Louisiana.
(READ the story with links from OPB -Oregon Public Broadcasting)
All 52 passengers who were stranded aboard an ice-locked ship in Antarctica for more than a week were rescued by helicopter early Thursday, officials said.
The Akademic Shokalskiy sent out a distress call on Christmas morning after it became surrounded by sea ice while on a scientific mission more than 1,700 miles south of Australia.
On Thursday, a helicopter from a Chinese ice-breaking ship Xue Long — or Snow Dragon — transported groups from a makeshift helipad which the passengers had stomped out in the ice near the ship.
(READ the story from NBC News)
