Greece and Turkey came to the brink of war in 1996 over a deserted islet in the Agean. Last week, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis accepted Turkey’s invitation to become the first Greek PM to visit Turkey since the late 1950’s.
Turkey’s gesture crowns a year-long effort to warm relations between the rival NATO neighbors.
In a December “Touched by an Angel, the managing editor of a daily newspaper was in the habit of publishing a steady diet of scandal, blood, and horror on the morning’s front page. She had become so immune to the gore, she was “able to sort through morgue photos over lunch.”
When the newly hired reporter (Monica) reveals herself to be an angel of God, the editor recalls a parable told to her by a favorite journalism professor in college:
We are boiling our hearts to death with a revved up media’s emphasis on the negative aspects of life. We are cooking the tenderness right out of our humanity.
Consider, for instance, the barrage of images we endure on television and in movies about crime associated with young black men in baggy clothes. Is it any wonder our posture stiffens and we look away when we encounter someone who looks like that approaching us on the sidewalk?
If, in a better world, we were informed by daily accounts of the Hip Hop generation doing good in their communities, inspiring peers with messages of hope and non-violence, like tOObiz, a positive hip-hop artist, we might walk down that same sidewalk smiling broadly with the thought, “He looks like that nice young man I saw on tv last night.”
Sealy Posturepedic has committed to fund the building of 200 beds for children living in poverty in Costa Rica.
Sealy has also indicated a desire to become a major sponsor of SOFTLY International’s global Bed-for-Every-Child program, much to the delight of the unique organization’s founder, Eloise Vincent, of Reston, Virginia.
Eloise began SOFTLY Int’l as a medical mission to serve the health needs of Costa Rican families living in extreme poverty. But doctors who treated kids for intestinal parasites, explained that their painful condition would simply reoccur in 2-4 months if patients continued to sleep on primitive floors. Thus Vincent began her quest to provide beds, cribs, and mattresses to children in the third world.
Only vinyl, hospital-grade mattresses will survive the rainy seasons. She purchases them locally to support the regional economies. Each one costs her just $28. And her construction contracts to make the frames provide wages to local craftspeople.
SOFTLY has supplied beds to a number of orphanages around the world through private donations. The initial grant from Sealy for 200 beds to SOFTLY’s Bed-for-Every-Child totals $22,500.
RELATED: Eloise Vincent once shared an inspirational story with the Good News Network about trusting that All Is Well–even at the moment when SOFTLY’s checkbook was empty.
UPDATE: Eloise passed in her sleep on August 18, 2015, at the age of 73. She will be missed.
Every day you can make a contribution to easing world hunger just by clicking on the “donate free food” button on the internet home page of The Hunger Site (www.thehungersite.com).
The contribution is made to the United Nations World Food Program. The Hunger Site allows each visitor to make a daily contribution of food to one of the 800 million starving people around the world and at no financial cost to them.
The amount of food depends on the number of sponsors that day. Each advertiser pays for one quarter cup of food per click. If there are four sponsors on a given day, then each click is equivalent to one cup of food. The more sponsors there are, the more food is donated. On November 18, 1999 your donation would have been 1 3/4 cups of rice, wheat, maize or other staple food added to over 100 tons delivered weekly.
Since the site’s inception in June, donations have grown from 173,000 to 4.8 million, or 6.3 million cups of food, according to Francis Mwanza, spokeswoman for the World Food Program that feeds people in 80 nations. “The extraordinary growth of The Hunger Site has shown us the potential of the Internet in the fight against hunger,” she said.
“The number of people who’ve visited the site proves that people do care about hunger and want to help us stop it,” said Mwanza. The U.N. program determines what food will be sent to which particular nation in crisis.
Created by John Breen, a computer programmer in Bloomington, Ind., the site offers a straightforward compilation of data on hunger, how sponsorships are calculated, links to related hunger sites and a map that starkly outlines starvation around the world.
Every time someone dies of hunger, or every four seconds, according to the United Nations, the affected country on the map flashes. The death does not necessarily occur in that country but is based on statistical probability in countries where people are starving.
Advertisers — it averaged 5.3 sponsors in October — are pleased. A new internet-based flower company, proflowers.com, was one of the first sponsors. Karleen Wise, cause-marketing manager for the firm, said it wasn’t the least expensive way to acquire new customers but the affiliation with The Hunger Site made an important statement about the firm’s value. “We sell sentiment and emotion, someone giving something to someone else. When you donate food, you’re thinking about someone else, too.”
To assuage sponsors, who cannot know exactly how much they’ll owe until donations are tabulated, Breen has capped the maximum number of donations an advertiser is responsible for. They’ll not pay more than 150 percent of the largest day in the last 30 days. Based on the current rate of 2,000 to 3,000 donations every day, the site costs advertisers between $1,000 and $1,500 on weekdays.
People from more than 100 countries have donated and are encouraged to bookmark it on their computers. Donate Food Now!
And bookmark The Hunger Site!
(The American News Service)
We can even use holidays to enrich the soul and strengthen it for harder times, so that when those times come, as they will and they must, you can “make good of this.”
My good friend Wally Bock wrote an article for his newsletter which he titled “Christmas and Cancer Both Begin with C.” Wally’s mother died of cancer in 1982 after fourteen years as one of the earliest recipients of chemotherapy. One of her life’s mottos was “What good can we make of this?” I was honored when Wally wrote about my experience alongside his mother’s.
It was right before Christmas, a year ago, that my friend Deb found out that she had breast cancer. She wasn’t alone. Almost two hundred thousand women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year according to the National Institutes of Health. Forty-four thousand of them die from it. Deb is a professional colleague and one of my dearest and deepest friends. But she’s not the first woman I cared about who got cancer.
That was my mom. That was in 1968. The doctors told mom that she only had a few months to live. She told them they were wrong. “I’m not done yet,” she said, with that firm set to her mouth that brooked no nonsense. She set out to prove the doctors wrong. She kept setting new goals. First she couldn’t go till she had a grandchild. Then it was a granddaughter to go with the grandson. Then they had to be in school and so on. The goals pulled her forward. We know from a variety of studies of survivors of all kinds of disease and trauma, that having something to live for is important. Support systems are important, too. For mom they included friends and faith and family. My dad retired early so that they could travel together and neither of them quit planning forward. It took fourteen years for the cancer to finally win. Fourteen years of then-new chemotherapy and grinding, crushing fatigue, of successes and setbacks. When my mother died she had airline tickets in the purse that was hanging in the hospital. She was to have joined my father in Europe when “this hospital stay” was done. She died in the middle of a book. In all of that living and moving forward she was simply what she had always been.
When we were kids and something bad would happen to one of us, my mom used to ask, “What good can you make of this?” She lived that out, making good of her cancer. So did Deb.
They both reached into themselves to find what good there was and reached out to share with others. But the thirty years between them make for some differences in how that happened and what they did. For my mom, chemo was new and experimental. So she faithfully kept a record of how she reacted to treatment. She wrote down what worked and how she felt and the details of every hospital visit. She chronicled the successes and setbacks. She made careful note of possible interactions of drugs, and foods and activities with her therapies. When she died, she willed the journal to her physician, to help with research.
Deb lives in the Internet era. And she had the Web and email. And so, shortly after the diagnosis, an ever-widening circle of friends began receiving “Updates from Deb.” Some were upbeat “So how do I feel? Absolutely outstandingly excellent. I just happen to have breast cancer and need surgery, but otherwise I’m great and planning forward.” Others shared fear and frustration and hopes and exhortations. Here are a couple of other quotes. “Please continue to treat me “normally” (whatever that is!) and don’t tip toe around my feelings. I don’t mind talking about it and, in fact, think the message should get out about breast cancer so more are aware of it and how it can be caught early and sometimes prevented.”
“I’m usually so active – having ‘nap attacks’ in the middle of the day or having to come home early from events is not my idea of fun.” “So thanks for letting me voice my frustrations – pray for patience for me and continued ‘easy’ treatments.” For her and mom, the hard part was not the treatments as much as the loss of the ability to “do things.” So they conserved strength and found other ways to “make good of this.” “
Making good of this” for Deb reached in two directions. Her emails reached to other people with cancer, especially to women with breast cancer, telling them they weren’t alone. She described what she was going through so they would know and anticipate things. She shared resources with them like many of the websites I’ll share at the end of this. But the good was also, sometimes I think mostly, for those of us who don’t have the disease. We heard from Deb what she needed from us and what challenges she really faced. That helped us be friends and supporters for her. I don’t think I’ve seen much of that elsewhere. So much of the material on cancer is directed toward those the disease attacks and very little is directed toward those who love them. We’re more or less expected to know how best to support them and understand what they’re going through. But we often don’t and Deb’s letters closed that gap.
In her most recent Update, the one I received this weekend, that’s who the message is aimed at. Deb told us about how the effects of chemotherapy hang on and that, just when it seems that it’s over, there’s still a bit of time to go. We can’t all go back to normal just yet. For some people who had loved ones with the disease, there was a special benefit. Not everyone attacked by cancer has Deb’s strength or her ability to write. And so, often, they learned from Deb what their own loved one might want to tell them, but couldn’t right then. Both my mom and my friend took control of their therapy. A physician once talked to my mom about how “they” were fighting the disease. “OK,” she said, “you take the medicine for a while and I’ll write the prescriptions.”
Deb scoured the web for information and the power it brings. She went to meetings with her physicians knowing about treatments and side effects. That information helped her make the critical choices about her treatment and who she would allow to do it. Not every physician made the cut. In the end, though, it was mostly not intellect or communication that these two remarkable women used to fight a malicious disease. Mostly, it was faith and friends. They talked to friends and listened to us and let us love them. They prayed and they encouraged us to pray for them. They drew on their faith in God and in themselves. In doing that, they set an example of more than just how to fight a disease. They reminded us of the power of those friends, the power of that faith. In the last year we’ve seen several studies that tell us that prayer helps healing and that folks who believe they will heal are more likely to heal. Remember that this Christmas season. More than presents and parties, this should be a time of friends of and of faith. Christmas is a time to enrich the soul and strengthen it for harder times, so that when those times come, as they will and they must, like my mom and like Deb, you can “make good of this.”
I think there needs to be a change of consciousness with the news … to try to seek a higher ground. Why can’t it be more representative of the way the world really is? I think we don’t know what the bombardment of crime and violence does to our minds, I think we’re in denial about it.
When I read the newspaper, I look for the good news because every thought we think changes our biochemistry. Your hormones are all affected by your thoughts. Pay attention to things that bring you joy.
Inspired by compassionate college basketball coaches and retail sales struggles, companies are donating millions of pairs of shoes to help children in impoverished countries.
After food, clean water and simple housing, shoes are one of the most basic needs that can help change lives. Over 300 million children woke up this morning without a pair of shoes. Soon, many of those children will have new hope with this life changing gift.
Today was an interesting day. The phone had rang last night and told me where to go.
The program was teaching disabled children how to ride bicycles. A local public school was holding the camp on their facilities.
On the drive there I thought about how courageous these kids are. This was the first day of writing about my experiences and it had good symbolism in starting things out. After about 20 minutes of meeting people and learning about the program kids started to show up.
Today my wife made two very special floral bouquets and we jumped in the car and drove them down to the elderly home where the kindness touched two people’s lives.
The local paper often has this home listed in obituaries. When we explained that we simply wanted to give these bouquets away, the staff member, Rose, looked at us with bewilderment. We asked her to present them to two people she felt could most use them, like someone without visitors whose day could be made brighter.
When she asked our name we said it was not important, she looked at us again bewildered.
These flowers were grown from a tiny little area we have for a backyard. (40×30 feet). Maybe five bouquets can be grown a year from it. Giving them away really made our hearts smile.
I ride motorcycles, have a few tattoo’s, and here I was carrying flowers! I didn’t mind one bit.
This would be such a nice project for gardening hobbyists to do. Just pick a location where your heart tells you to drop them off. Think of how many lives this would brighten. These elders have helped pave the road for the younger people to live on. Many were in wheelchairs watching the door. Some looked with hope in their eyes that maybe we were their visitors.
Share in this little way and your heart will smile, too!
Doctors Without Borders not only won the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize, but Kathleen Mahoney, one of its volunteers, a graduate nursing student at the University of Pennsylvania, was recently honored by the Points of Light Foundation for her work in Boa Vista, Brazil and the Javari region dealing with disease epidemics and other health issues.
“It was very difficult for me to imagine that this would be my daily routine,” says Kathy, “but now I can’t imagine not doing it. It has been an incredible learning experience.”
She trained local health promoters to diagnose malaria and to recognize and treat other diseases that plague their communities.
She would travel in a small plane to the mountains, and then hike on foot or take a canoe or horse to remote villages, carrying boxes of medicine and equipment.
Once she arrived in a village, Mahoney teamed up with local health workers. She taught them about modern techniques and in turn learned about native medicine, as they attended to patients together .
Doctors Without Borders launched the project in Brazil in 1993, to control a malaria epidemic brought on by mining in the area. The region, rich in gold, had attracted prospectors as well as their diseases, to which the indigenous populations had no resistance.
As part of a Doctors Without Borders team, Mahoney provided microscopes to nearly 40 villages and launched a training program for diagnosing and treating malaria. There is now at least one trained microscopist in each village, and since the project began, the number of annual cases of malaria in the area has been cut by almost half.
Both President Bill Clinton and former President George Bush are sending a congratulatory letter to Kathy as part of the award. The Points of Light Foundation is a nonprofit organization established to engage more people more effectively in volunteer community service.
(Photo by CIFOR, CC license on Flickr)
50% drop in Herbicide Use; 90% Decline in Insecticides
Concerned about the environmental hazards of landscaping chemicals used to achieve a typical golf course’s manicured appearance, some golf clubs are returning their fairways and greens to a more natural appearance, probably more like the way golf courses looked when the game began. After some adjusting, say officials at the Ivanhoe Golf Club, their members have come to appreciate the changes.
Workers in Belleville, Michigan will never forget hometown businessman Bob Thompson, who sold his successful asphalt paving business for $422 million.
He paid the taxes and then he took $128 million and rewarded the 550 employees at the plant.
Hourly workers who already had retirement plans received $2,000 for each year worked. Salaried employees that had no retirement plans were each rewarded with between one and two million dollars each.
When asked why he did it, Thompson said the short answer is that “It was the right thing to do.”
“People came into my office crying.”
But upon reflection he realized he did it for himself: It was an egotistical thing. “To have the esteem of your workforce – what more could you want?”
The farm boy who grew up to be an Air Force pilot started the business 40 years ago with an investment of $3,500. He says he was able to succeed because of the quality employees that made the difference between them and their competitors.
After giving them the money he asked one thing of them: “Tell your kids and grandkids about me’.”
Bob stayed on at the office to help the transition go smoothly. That same year, he and his wife, Ellen, founded the Thompson Foundation with $100 million from the sale of the Thompson-McCully Company.
The Foundation’s mission is to help low-income people rise out of poverty and become self-sufficient. In the beginning, the Foundation:
Although the Foundation serves a seven-county region (Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, St. Clair, Livingston, Washtenaw, and Monroe), the vast majority of its funds are used to serve those who live in Detroit, Highland Park and Hamtramck. The Thompsons intend to distribute ALL of the Foundation’s funds in the next 10-15 years.
Paris – Lance Armstrong became the second U.S. cyclist ever to win the Tour de France and wear the coveted yellow jersey to victory on the Champs Elysees.
The 2,287-mile Tour, with its mountainous terrain, is one the most grueling competitions in all of sports. Armstrong was not only riding with the first U.S. team ever to produce a winner in the 86 years of the tour’s running. He was also riding for the many cancer survivors who followed his comeback from a grueling disease.
“We heal each other all the time, and don’t even realize that we’re doing it.”
Healing comes out of a very simple human relationship – knowing your life matters to another person, and connecting to something larger and unseen. A great example of this was given to me via email shortly after I posted the above quote somewhere online:
The U.S. Navy set a goal for the year 2000 to reduce hazardous waste and emissions by 50%. At the Annopolis, Maryland Naval base the goal of waste reduction will be achieved by recycling or replacing high waste products with more efficient ones.
HURLBURT FIELD, Fla. — Good guys still exist, and one of them is an airman from the 25th Intelligence Squadron here, who recently returned more than $9,000 in found money.
Heading home in his car after a late-night training flight, Senior Airman Jason Baxter crossed an intersection that was well lit, and he saw what he thought was a book, maybe a Bible, lying in the road.
Looking in the first pocket, he found about six dollars and a driver’s license. But when he opened the second pocket, “There was a big wad of cash – hundred-dollar bills,” Baxter said.
Once he arrived home, he counted the money. There was more than $9,000 cash.
For some, the decision might be difficult. Not so for Baxter.
“Integrity is one of the Air Force’s core values, and I’m also a Christian.”
He immediately called the Sheriff’s Department and reported his find. “That’s just the right thing to do,” Baxter said.
The sheriff’s department sent a deputy to Baxter’s home who retrieved the appointment book and money.
Its owner, Karrie Jo Blakston, 19, and her boyfriend had withdrawn the cash earlier in the day.
They were going to use the money to pay for their wedding. Blakston had forgotten the appointment book on top of her car and driven away.
The deputy said Blackston was, “Elated, and thankful that there are still some honest people in the world.”
Esther Stevens’ dining table in Colorado Springs, CO, has become a makeshift operations center for getting aid to the victims of Hurricane Mitch.
“I’ve never done anything like this,” said Stevens, whose whirlwind flurry of phone calls in the days following the storm produced volunteers, medical personnel, supplies and even a plane for the devastated region.
“Everyone is desperate,” her friend said. They needed a brigade of workers, supplies, and could Stevens come up with some airplanes?
Stevens, who is studying to be a physician’s assistant, started calling people who might have contacts. As she made the calls, the web grew wider. Donations were coming in — to World Vision as well as to Stevens’ house. And an amateur pilot from Chicago was on standby to fly down, carrying extra fuel for trips to isolated villages.
“I feel for the country I was born in, where people give all that they have,” she said. “If you’re a stranded stranger and you need five dollars to take a bus to the airport, they will sacrifice their monthly wage to put you on the bus. That’s just the way people are down there.”
Once Stevens got going on the phone, help started coming from unexpected places. A call to Emma Gribble, a Colorado acquaintance, mushroomed. Soon after enlisting Gribble, Stevens started getting calls from Gribble’s home state of Kansas. One doctor told her, “Send me a list of whatever medical supplies you need. I’ll send it to any location you want.”
Stevens called her parents in North Carolina, and they put her in touch with David Frost, a friend who happened to have jungle flight training. He is accustomed to flying without the benefit of air traffic controllers and landing on airstrips the size of driveways. Frost, 51, was ready to spend two weeks shuttling food, water and other emergency items from regional cities that now act as supply depots to villages that can’t be reached by road.
“The desire (to help) was there, but it took Esther’s phone call to get us involved,” Frost said.
Stevens called Transtainer Corp. in New Orleans about shipping rates. “I happened to find a very generous man who said he didn’t care how long things went on, he’d take supplies down there and do it for free.”
She is paying for the shipping to Louisiana, and she’ll have a huge phone bill this month, but that is part of her donation.
Hours before the final deadline, Pacific Lumber agreed to accept federal and state funds totaling nearly a quarter billion dollars in exchange for the Headwaters Forest, over 10,000 acres including the largest unprotected grove of ancient redwoods in the world.
Many people would be willing to donate a quarter for wildlife conservation, reckoned Norman Gershenz, a conservation biologist at San Francisco State University.
