Ten year old Jonas Corona is on a mission to give back to his community.
Four years ago he started a Los Angeles based nonprofit organization called Love In The Mirror.
“It’s not right for kids and adults to be on the streets having nothing,” the young boy tells NBC’s TODAY.
The group provides basic necessities such as food, clothing, school supplies, and books to kids and families living on Skid Row in LA.
Follow the group on Facebook.com/LoveintheMirror
(WATCH the video below from TODAY)
The 9-year-old Syrian boy with no legs wheeled himself down a bright hospital corridor, stopping to accept a pain pill from one nurse and a high-five from another.
He has been here for a month, ever since a bomb hit their house and the boy’s grandmother took him and other injured family members to the Golan Heights border half an hour away and asked the Israeli soldiers on the other side for help.
Since the effort was launched by the Israeli army, Israel has been quietly providing aid to upwards of 700 Syrians at medical centers in Israel or at a field hospital operated by medics along the heavily fortified border.
(READ the story from the LA Times)
A second-generation rice farmer from Danbury, a tiny Texas town of 1700, is a local legend.
He’s a legend thanks to the almost six million pounds of rice he’s donated to the Houston Foodbank, and the millions upon millions of free meals created from that rice.
It was in 1984 that John “Jacko” Garrett, age 70, first began donating a portion of his harvest each year to charity.
In the late 1990’s he set up a non-profit called Share the Harvest to provide a means for rice farmers like himself in Texas to easily feed the hungry.
“Their donations have been vital,” according to the Houston Foodbank. “They provide over 11 million servings of rice each year in 18 counties around Houston.”
Garrett has also run the charity himself, and with his daughter, for a time. He is worried today that he might not have time or energy to carry on much longer.
— READ the story in the Houstonian Magazine
— Watch a video below from the food bank
SHARE the story about this Inspiring Farmer, below… / Story tip from Angela Reed
The Boone County Family Restaurant in Rockford, Illinois has some very happy workers today.
Three waitresses there, each in their 20’s, “stared in disbelief Saturday as a blond-haired woman inexplicably handed them three $5,000 checks.”
Despite their protestations, the generous diner, whose identity is being kept a secret, insisted that she and the other waitresses take it.
“I want you girls to take these to help with school and everything else in life,” the woman said firmly. “You put that in your pocket. God sent me here to help you.”
(READ the story from the Rockford Register Star)
A manager of the Goodwill thrift store in Monroe, Michigan was cleaning out the pockets of some donated clothing this week when he found a bright blue envelope containing bundles of hundred-dollar bills.
Tyler Gedelian didn’t even count it before turning over the cash to police. He told WWJ-TV in Detroit that he never even considered keeping any of the money.
A man stands at his local super market checkout. For once, he is confident to have enough money, after years of being broke as a single parent.
He hears an elderly couple behind him saying they forgot their wallet. Turning around, he says he can pay for their food, feeling rich for the first time in years.
Over the last year Althea Guiboche has run out of money and run out of baking supplies, but she has never stopped giving away free bread and soup to the city’s homeless every week.
The aboriginal single mother of seven was even forced by the province to become trained in food-handling if she wanted to continue, but now she has an official certificate and she cooks inside a commercial kitchen at the community center — all toward the goal of becoming more compassionate and giving.
“I was just raised like that,” she told Shaw TV Winnipeg.
Her project is called “Got Bannock”, named for the warm bread she delivers on a Main Street corner every week. For a time, she partnered with “Chile from the Heart”, started by another Winniped woman to bring hot chile to the homeless.
(WATCH the video or READ the story, w/ photos, at CBC News)
In the burnt out wood framing of what’s left of the second floor, there is a 100-year-old bible, untouched by the inferno that ripped through the home a little more than a week ago.
The house, given to Rippy and Vaughan Luton by his grandmother, is gone, and the family had no homeowners insurance.
Their stay at a motel room donated by the Red Cross has ended, so the couple and their four kids became homeless. They have little savings, but a lot of faith.
However, a man, who wants to remain anonymous, has come forward with a property that needs some work, and is willing to give them the house.
A news reporter from KDKA had the cameras rolling when they told the couple the good news.
(WATCH the video below or READ the story from KDKA)
The number of children taking antibiotics has decreased over the past decade with fewer unnecessary prescriptions being written in every age group, according to a study in the March 2014 Pediatrics that examined the years 2000-2010. – American Academy of Pediatrics
When a soldier is shot on the battlefield, the emergency treatment can seem as brutal as the injury itself. A medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity to stop bleeding from an artery — an agonizing process that doesn’t always work. Many soldiers still bleed to death.
Now, RevMedx, a small group of veterans, scientists, and engineers, has come up with a better way to stop the hemorrhaging.
This photo of neatly folded and laundered blankets left on a park bench became the most popular story ever posted by the Good News Network in its 5 years on Facebook. The story brought poignancy to the touching photo, yet only three sentences were necessary to attract a quarter million “Likes” and 8,900 comments.
The woman who snapped the photo, wrote the story: “Yesterday this pile of blankets was all over the ground filthy, partially wet and frozen having been slept in the night before. I saw a D.C. city worker putting the stuff into what looked like a trash bag. Then this morning I walk by the same spot and see the blankets had been washed and folded… Made me smile”.
The abortion rate in the United States dropped to its lowest point since the Supreme Court legalized the procedure in 1973, according to a study suggesting that long-acting contraceptive methods are having a significant impact in reducing unwanted pregnancies.
The Guttmacher Institute said abortions dropped 13 percent from 2008 to 2011, after having fallen eight percent between 2000 and 2005.
(READ the story in the Washington Post)
An animal shelter in Iowa had a crisis of cold noses when their furnace broke down during the sub-zero weather in January.
The Clinton Humane Society didn’t have the money to replace the heating system because they’ve been inundated in recent months with local animal-hoarding situations. The only solution was to try to raise the money.
But a local HVAC firm, the Schebler Company, came to the rescue donating a new furnace, and a large crew to do the installation, too.
(READ the story, with photos, in KWQC-TV)
You may have heard about the ongoing international effort to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons.
A similar American-backed campaign, carried out under a cloak of secrecy, ended successfully last week in another strife-torn country, Libya.
The United States and Libya in the past three months have discreetly destroyed what both sides say were the last remnants of Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi’s lethal arsenal of chemical arms.
(READ the story in the NY Times)
RELATED:
Syria Meets Deadline, Renders Chemical Weapons Facilities ‘Inoperable’
The Idea That Turned Russian Warheads Into American Electricity
Andres Amador spends a lot of time on beaches creating artworks, but he doesn’t use a paint and brush. He relies on a rake — and the Northern California coastline as a canvas — to create intricate designs in the wet sand, which last only hours, until the tide comes in like a wet eraser.
His expansive artwork, like that of snow artist Simon Beck, spans hundreds of square feet and is a delight for beach combers lucky enough to gaze upon his finished designs.
“Its fun,” says the 42-year-old from San Francisco. “I get to be at the beach.”
Called Earthscape Art, his beach paintings were inspired by the markings made in the sand by his walking stick.
SEE more of his amazing work on his Facebook page, and his website, AndresAmadorArts.com, where you can buy prints.
Ex-marine John Keller says he wasn’t trying to be a hero when he used a kayak, a hotwired boat and an air mattress — along with his smarts and brawn — to fend off thugs and save more than 200 people in his New Orleans apartment building during Hurricane Katrina.
“I really didn’t think about what I was doing, I was just doing it,” the six-foot-seven, 260-pound New Orleans native told the Edmonton Journal.
“I didn’t really think about it until I read the paper and it listed blow by blow what I did. I was like, ‘Damn, I didn’t really think I was doing all this.'”
Keller’s Herculean story is one of two in the first episode of Proper Television’s new series “Hardcore Heroes,” which premiered in January on History.
Thanks to his fearless efforts and unlimited resourcefulness, John Keller saved 244 people – half of whom were elderly and/or disabled – from what would probably have amounted to certain death, according to NOLA.com.
He still lives in the building today.
(READ the story in the Edmonton Journal)
— Hardcore Heroes heads to Canada in 2014; episode listing
For 15 years, dentists from around the U.S. have teamed up with women who are domestic abuse survivors in need of major dental work to provide new smiles at no cost.
Give Back A Smile is the only national assistance program that repairs teeth due to intimate partner violence. To date, the program has restored the smiles of more than 1,400 domestic violence survivors. Volunteer dentists provide on average $9,000 worth of smile-zone restoration treatment at no charge to qualified adult domestic violence survivors.
Survivors apply for services through the Madison, Wisconsin-based program, but can get help from anywhere in the U.S.
A mother in Wales has posted an advert on Gumtree offering free home cooked meals every Monday to families living on benefits.
Boudicca Stretton-Brown, 27, said she was happy to cook extra while feeding her own family “to offer a little help to those who may need it.”
Now people are writing to say that they saw my advert and felt inspired to donate to charity.
(READ the story in the Independent)
The structure and toughness of a mollusk shell has inspired scientists at McGill’s University to create glass that doesn’t shatter. Instead, the glass bends with flexibility that comes from a network of microscopic cracks.
According to a study published in the journal Nature Communications, a research team in McGill’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, led by Prof. François Barthelat, has successfully taken inspiration from the mechanics of natural structures like seashells in order to significantly increase the toughness of glass.
“Mollusk shells are made up of about 95 per cent chalk, which is very brittle in its pure form,” says Barthelat. “But nacre, or mother-of-pearl, which coats the inner shells, is made up of microscopic tablets that are a bit like miniature Lego building blocks, is known to be extremely strong and tough, which is why people have been studying its structure for the past twenty years.”
Previous attempts to recreate the structures of nacre have proved to be challenging, according to Barthelat. “Imagine trying to build a Lego wall with microscopic building blocks. It’s not the easiest thing in the world.” Instead, what he and his team chose to do was to study the internal ‘weak’ boundaries or edges to be found in natural materials like nacre and then use lasers to engrave networks of 3D micro-cracks in glass slides in order to create similar weak boundaries. The results were surprising.
The researchers were able to increase the toughness of glass slides (the kind of glass rectangles that get put under microscopes) 200 times compared to non-engraved slides. By engraving networks of micro-cracks in configurations of wavy lines in shapes similar to the wavy edges of pieces in a jigsaw puzzle in the surface of borosilicate glass, they were able to stop the cracks from propagating and becoming larger. They then filled these micro-cracks with polyurethane, although according to Barthelat, this second process is not essential since the patterns of micro-cracks in themselves are sufficient to stop the glass from shattering.
The researchers worked with glass slides simply because they were accessible, but Barthelat believes that the process will be very easy to scale up to any size of glass sheet, since people are already engraving logos and patterns on glass panels.
He and his team are excited about the work that lies ahead for them.
“What we know now is that we can toughen glass, or other materials, by using patterns of micro-cracks to guide larger cracks, and in the process absorb the energy from an impact,” says Barthelat. “We chose to work with glass because we wanted to work with the archetypal brittle material. But we plan to go on to work with ceramics and polymers in future. Observing the natural world can clearly lead to improved man-made designs.”
Read the full paper, ‘Overcoming the brittleness of glass through bio-inspiration and micro-architecture’ by F. Barthelat et al, in Nature Communications: www.nature.com.
Green Bay Packers wide receiver Randall Cobb and New York Giants linebacker Mark Herzlich are helping two young boys build their confidence and overcome bullying and discrimination in their schools.
The boys, Elijah Williams and Tyson Wheelock, enjoyed meaningful time alone with these big role models.
