Superstorm Sandy showed New York’s vulnerability to big weather, and offered a warning to the world.
Now the Rockefeller Foundation is offering $100 million dollars in grants to help cities face up to Sandy-like events and prepare, so they can come out the other side.
Its 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge looks to catalyze infrastructure investment, improve coordination within governments, open up access to useful software and services, and spread good ideas.
Between classes, they schemed and conspired. For weeks, the football players at a middle school in Olivet, Mich., secretly planned their remarkable play. Not even the coaches knew.
The goal was not to score, but to “make someone’s day, make someone’s week, make them happy.”
Keith Orr is a little kid who’s learning disabled and struggles with boundaries — but in the sweetest possible way. What is surprising is how the team has embraced him.
A single mom in Durham, North Carolina had her faith restored in her own parenting abilities by a complete stranger.
The mom, whose kids are often hard to handle in restaurants, received a kind note applauding her patience and parenting skills from a young man at a nearby table.
After signing the note, Jake even paid for the family’s dinner and included a Pizza Hut Gift Card for the next time they want to dine out.
The mother, who is remaining anonymous, told WTVD that her 6-year-old boy has ADHD and Asperger’s, the other, a 4-year-old shows bullying tendencies, so they often sound loud in restaurants.
But Jake focused on the good in the situation, and wrote the following:
“I do not know your back story, but I have had the privilege of watching you parent your children for the past 30 minutes. I have to say thank you for parenting your children in such a loving manner.
“I have watched you teach your children about the importance of respect, education, proper manners, communication, self control, and kindness all while being very patient. I will never cross your path again but am positive that you and your children have amazing futures.
“Keep up the good work and when it starts to get tough do not forget that others may be watching and will need the encouragement of seeing a good family being raised. God bless! -Jake”
A Good Samaritan has stepped in to help a 19-year-old DePaul student whose bike was stolen in Chicago.
After Olguiemar Freyre’s bike, her only form of transportation, was stolen while she was working earlier this week, the part-time student penned an angry note and left it at the scene of the crime.
A Chicago man who saw the note stepped in and offered to help.
This could be the best example of positive thinking yet.
Your unpleasant feelings are not only inevitable, they can also play a key role in your health and well-being.
A small study from Olin University published earlier this year showed that being comfortable experiencing and expressing mixed emotions was a predictor of improvements in well-being, while ignoring or evading negative feelings was not associated with boosts in well-being.
Participants who reported and acknowledged that they had both happy and sad emotions, were more likely to have better mental health.
A Huffington Post article describes six ways to embrace negative emotions, including turning your anger into creativity, gaining compassion by working through your shame, becoming grateful after loss, and using envy to spur yourself to become more.
Half Moon Reef was once a massive underwater oyster colony in the most productive fishery in Texas, rich with shellfish, blue crabs and shrimp. Today there is barely an oyster left in the nearly-500-acre site.
It took seven years of planning but conservationists with the Nature Conservancy in Texas, are now rebuilding the reef in the heart of Matagorda Bay using huge boulders of Missouri limestone carried down the Mississippi River on 36 barges.
Scientists, engineers and laborers will spend two months placing the rocks in 8 feet of water along 45 acres. In its first-ever reef construction starting from the ground up, The Conservancy’s hopes are high for revitalizing an entire ecosystem.
In the wake of a natural disaster, whole cities must commence rebuilding. The challenge for social entrepreneurs in countries like Haiti, who want to help in the aftermath, is to deploy a housing design that would require only minimum time and effort for its construction so great quantities could be produced and quickly distributed to the homeless.
A recent graduate cum laude from Delft University of Technology, Pieter Stoutjesdijk, came up with an elegant solution.
US factory activity expanded in October at the fastest pace in two-and-a-half years, suggesting that the 16-day partial shutdown of the government had little effect on manufacturers.
Instead, overseas demand and healthy US auto sales appear to be supporting factory output.
A study at Great Ormond Street Hospital suggests lullabies do more than just help babies sleep – they reduce pain in sick children.
Singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Hushabye Baby and Five Little Ducks to sick children was found to alleviate their suffering, and in a more significant way than previously parents might have guessed.
Two Dutch artists are transforming a shanty town clinging to the hillside in Rio de Janeiro using buckets of bright neon colored paint.
With the help of 20 local youths in the Santa Marta slum, stacks of huts on several streets are now a kaleidoscope of color.
“It gives the community life!” said Edimar Marcelinho Franco, who once was a local drug dealer and now is a professional painter after having being trained in the skill and transformed 34 of the buildings.
Brazilian paint company Coral, a subsidiary of Holland’s AkzoNobel, offered to help with raw materials and training for the locals.
The ‘Back to Rio’ project became a global story when it raised $112,000 through an online fundraising campaign. Their goal was to paint an entire hillside favela community. In the process, the Dutch mural artists aimed to provide employment for locals and uplift the self-esteem of a heavily populated, tumultuous neighborhood.
“While painting the houses brings a visual improvement, plastering them helps with controlling moisture, acoustics and temperature,” Haas and Hahn wrote for their Kickstarter campaign. “More people coming to see the artwork will bring new business and employment opportunities for locals.”
“Visual beautification, job creation and boosted pride and self esteem can help to change perception and remove negative stigma.”1711 people donated money to The Favela Painting Foundation and twenty-two individuals gave at least a thousand dollars.
Syria’s chemical weapons facilities are “inoperable,” the Joint Mission of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the United Nations overseeing the destruction of the country’s weapons program confirmed yesterday.
“The Joint Mission is now satisfied that it has verified – and seen destroyed – all of Syria’s declared critical production and mixing/filling equipment,” according to a statement released by the joint OPCW-UN team.
Last week my son and I chased down and captured a balloon on a windy day for a sad-faced little boy. It looked like he lost his best friend.
Living amongst mostly Indian people (from the Asian country) I’ve been friendly, but I don’t know if I’ve won their trust.
Today that changed a little.
[Editor’s note: The Good News Network is getting ready to unveil its new website that will offer blogging opportunities for users. This little story submitted by Richard is a great example of things we want to see posted in your good news blogs. Thanks, Richard, for providing a fine example, although entries do not have to be as short as this one.]
Three friends from Australia, Matt, Janis and Greg, have embarked on an adventure of a lifetime going 3,500 km across India in an autorickshaw. The two-week journey, called the ‘Rickshaw Run’ will culminate in bringing a new learning center to Bangalore’s underprivileged children.
So far, the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season has been one of the weakest since modern record-keeping began about half a century ago, marking the first time in 45 years that the strongest storm to form was just a minor Category 1 hurricane. –Global Post
An estimated $1.3 million worth of art from more than 130 international artists, mostly from Syria and Lebanon, is being auctioned at below-gallery prices in Beirut to raise money for Syrian refugee children.
“This is first time that you have so many artists from the Middle East mobilize for a cause.”
Australian scientists studying the ocean have found that coral is more resilient than first thought, and has the ability to deal with increasing temperature. – ABC News
Georgia teenager Zach Hodskins was told he’d never play college basketball, but now he’s earned a spot on one of the nation’s top teams, the University of Florida. The 17-year-old was born without the lower half of his left arm.
“I just see myself as another player that’s worked hard to reach his goals,” said Hodskins.
He “loves” to flip stereotypes of his disability around.
A heartbreaking story ran in the Tampa Bay Times on October 8 about a brave boy, 15, who stood up in front of a church during Sunday services to ask someone to love him.
The orphan had been raised in foster care and lived in a group home for boys where the bathroom remained locked and surveillance cameras recorded everything.
The Times reporter wrote, “Davion always longed for a family. His caseworker took him to picnics, put his portrait in the Heart Gallery. But he had thrown chairs, blown his grades, pushed people away.”
But when he learned his birth mother had died in June along with her long rap sheet of convictions, everything changed. The boy with four names – the last thing his parents ever gave him — Davion Navar Henry Only, realized now that he would never have a loving family if he didn’t abandon his anger.
His case worker, who had believed in him and arranged for him to speak at the church told the Times, “He decided he wanted to control his behavior and show everyone who he could be.” All summer, he worked on dropping his defenses. He lost weight and earned A’s in school.
Holding a bible, and dressed in an ill-fitting black suit and donated tie, he got scared at the last minute, but somehow found the courage to ascend to the pulpit to tell his story: “My name is Davion and I’ve been in foster care since I was born. . . . I know God hasn’t given up on me. So I’m not giving up either.”
“I’ll take anyone — old or young, dad or mom, black, white, purple. I don’t care. And I would be really appreciative. The best I could be.”
Since the story with its poignant photos was published, more than 10,000 families have come forward to adopt Davion. Others wanted to mentor the boy, send him gift cards, contribute to his college fund. He was on the Today show and The View for which he flew in a plane for the first time to New York City.
The latest story from the Tampa newspaper says Davion could be in a new home by Christmas.
And the best part, according to the boy, is he has raised so much awareness for boys in his situation that “The Davion effect” will more than likely find forever families for some of the other boys waiting in foster care across America.
Superstorm Sandy showed New York’s vulnerability to big weather, and offered a warning to the world.
Two Dutch artists are transforming a shanty town clinging to the hillside in Rio de Janeiro using buckets of bright neon colored paint.
