As a boy, Wendell Pierce dreamed of leaving his hometown one day for the world stage. Today, the veteran actor with global credits has returned on a mission: rebuilding neighborhoods, brick by brick, aisle after aisle.
After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, Pierce seized an opportunity to help his childhood neighborhood. He started a nonprofit with the goal of replacing hundreds of destroyed, 1950s-era homes with new ones.
The next item on his agenda was to solve the food desert problem with a chain of convenient neighborhood grocery stores.
The owner of a construction company installed an elevator in the home of a family whose 9-year-old daughter Sara has cerebral palsy.
As a result, Sara can have the independence to go outside and play with her friends without asking for help — and her family can stay in the house her great-grandfather built in 1932.
Chris Johnson, founder and CEO of Hollister Construction Services, also established a charitable foundation, Strides for Sara, in 2009, making it his mission to acquire for Sara a wheelchair that would allow her to remain in her local school district. Without the chair, Sara would have been bussed 45 minutes away.
Now, he has achieved a feat above and beyond what most friends would do.
In Tultitlán, Mexico, where the police officers are considered some of the most corrupt in Latin America, children who are victims of domestic violence, susceptible to drug sales and bullying, are being helped by cops with big smiles and red noses.
Respect for law enforcement officers in recent years has plummeted in the wake of the rampant drug trade. So-called Police Clown Units, “Polipayasos” as they call themselves, have been trying to change that. Aiming to keep the next generation from becoming involved in crime, they visit schools, streets, and hospitals creating a dialogue with children and families about life, its temptations, and how to do the right thing.
In one community on the outskirts of Mexico City, for instance, 5-6 police officers volunteered for the brand new unit last month and began spreading a positive message to children while combatting bullying and violence in homes, schools and neighborhoods. Training in psychology and motivation makes them especially suited for the task.
Dressed in police uniforms but wearing clown make-up and radiant smiles, instead of guns they point balloons and fingers. On their travels around the district they are transforming the image of the “bad police officer”.
They have already uncovered a few tragic child abuse cases and garnered national attention from media across Mexico and overseas.
“We’re cops, interested in giving talks, workshops and courses in primary and secondary schools to prevent bullying, crime, domestic abuse, and prevent them from falling into drugs,” said one of the Polipayasos, a cop for 15 years who spoke in Spanish. “We believe playing with them will promote a culture of prevention and gain their confidence.”
This latest Polipayasos unit may have modeled its humor strategy on a duo of officers in Monterrey, 8 hours to the north. Going by their clown names, Blossom and Trumpets, these two policemen began a few years ago wearing colorful make-up and blue and green wigs, in their quest to keep young Mexican students on the right track.
Through comic plays and songs, the clowns teach that a wallet found on the street must be returned to its owner. Positive interactions like those mean the next time the kids see police officers they smile instead of run and hide.
The video below features Spanish language, but you can click the translation button [cc] and choose your language. (Video by Florence Leyret-Jeune)
Prosecutor John M. Tran, elected to the Fairfax County Circuit Court on April 4 by the state’s General Assembly, became the first Asian-American to serve as a judge in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
The New South Wales Government has been forced to close a youth detention center because of a lack of inmates.
The same positive trend is occurring with teens in Saskatchewan. The number of incarcerated youth in that province has fallen so much that units have been closed at three youth detention centers and one will be repurposed to house adult women.
Changes to policing and court practices in both localities has cut child incarceration by nearly 50 percent.
Officials in Paris this week looking for a greener way to keep its lawns mowed, replaced the fleet of noisy gas-guzzling lawnmowers with a small flock of sheep that are grazing the city’s open spaces.
The scheme also cuts down on the need for chemical herbicides.
The four woolly ewes were shipped in from an island off the Brittany coast, says the AP story.
Adam Grant helps others chronically and compulsively. And when you hear about his research, you’ll wonder if you should be doing the same. Grant is a leading researcher in the field of organizational psychology, where he studies, among other things, how being helpful, and feeling helpful, can benefit the rest of us.
In one of Grant’s most influential studies, he set out to do the impossible–to motivate call center workers.
By the time Cesar Gutierrez was 16, he had already gone to jail twice, experimented with gang life, sold drugs and ran away from home.
Today, the 22-year-old works at a popular Manhattan restaurant as a sous chef and has cooked with renown chef Daniel Boulud.
He entered a contest organized by Boulud and the non-profit Careers Through Culinary Arts — and won. The prize was a prestigious scholarship to train at one of the best culinary schools in Paris.
They came on their motor scooters by the hundreds.
The community of Contamana – a remote town in eastern Peru – came out in force on Wednesday when their local airstrip needed lighting for an emergency medical night-flight.
One of the biggest trends out there is sharing. People like Rob Gonzalez are making a living from renting out cars, formal clothes, rooms to vacationers, and even pets.
It has become the norm: People using online sites to share what they have – in the tangible world – with strangers.
Along with President Obama, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Secretary of State John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have decided to forgo portions of their salaries in solidarity with federal workers.
Like Obama, they volunteered to give their money to help reduce the deficit, or to foundations that benefit federal workers adversely affected by sequester legislation, which forced automatic government spending cuts.
Ted Komada, the music teacher who started a chess club nine years ago at Killip Elementary School, hoped to help the mostly low-income students build confidence.
Now, his chess team heads to the national finals, after having won five consecutive state championships in Arizona.
The club that began with only two kids now attracts one hundred and practices nearly every day.
Janelle Giannetta, 26 weeks pregnant with her first child, was fed up with her dog Louie Friday morning after he playfully jumped on her, scratching her face.
Hours later, the year-old golden doodle was a hero — credited with saving the Long Island woman and her baby.
Responding to incessant barking upstairs, Janelle’s husband found her stricken by a seizure with foam around her mouth.
Bogged down by a stagnating economy and sinking poll ratings, British Prime Minister David Cameron ventured into a new swamp when he waded waist-deep into mud to rescue a drowning sheep.
Cameron was on his way back from visiting a farmer near his weekend home in the Oxfordshire countryside last month when he heard bleating and spotted a ewe that had got stuck in the mud after following her two lambs.
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Super Makh! Reappearing this year in the popular Egyptian comic publication Tok-Tok is a superhero comic with a social mission — to help women and girls stop their harassers.
Super Makh, the Egyption version of Superman, tackles the pressing issue of sexual harassment by using popular culture to affect change.
Dallas Wiens lost nearly all of his facial features following a terrible accident with a power line in 2008. After becoming the first American to undergo a full facial transplant, he started leading a burn patient support group, which is where he met the love of his life.
Over the weekend, Dallas married Jamie Nash, 29, in Forth Worth, Texas, at the same church where he had his accident.
Sometimes, when I am home alone, the red phone rings downstairs. It’s a rotary phone from eBay. I bid $63.13 for it two years ago because we needed a land line for our alarm system, and so why not get an old rotary phone, because how cool are we, with our disposable income and throwback tastes?
Teen births and pregnancies have plummeted over the past two decades, down 42 percent from 1990. Most Americans, it turns out, have no idea that we’re actually in the midst of a big public health success story.
Surprisingly, young adults ages 18-34 are most likely to be misinformed.
As a boy, Wendell Pierce dreamed of leaving his hometown one day for the world stage. Today, the veteran actor with global credits has returned on a mission: rebuilding neighborhoods, brick by brick, aisle after aisle.
