25-year-old filmmaker Silas Hagerty spent this summer in Zambia documenting the rise of football (soccer) as a tool to fight HIV/AIDS in local African communities.
As Zambian Football announcer Denis Lewewe states in Hagerty’s new film, “Football is religion.” When a soccer ball hits the ground in Africa, people unite. Through this powerful platform, knowledge is spreading and stories are being told…
Verizon Wireless was the first wireless carrier in the nation to collect and recycle old cell phones to protect the environment, and has done so since 1999, but even more inspiring, the proceeds from recycling and selling older wireless phones have been donated to assist survivors of domestic violence…
Electric vehicles, gasoline-electric hybrids, diesels, and flex-fuel and hydrogen-powered cars are inching up the consumer on-ramp at a faster pace, judging from world debuts of 21 alternative-fuel vehicles. (CM Monitor)
Part 3 in our series on Gratitude and how it can change your life features a man so down on his luck that calling him a victim would be the sensible story line. But, as Harry Tucker explains, his Attitude lifted him to a place where his own story became the impetus for a positive, inspiring life — much like the moth (right) emerges from a cocoon. The A in Gratitude stands for Attitude. If we assume that our world is filled with problems and impossible odds, then we are right. Conversely, if we believe that our world is filled with beauty, opportunity and infinite love, then we are also right…
In the face of global warming peril and consumers facing higher energy costs, the world’s leading retailer yesterday announced an ambitious campaign to sell 100 million compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) at its Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club locations by the end of 2007. If achieved, this goal has the potential to save customers as much as $3 billion in electrical costs over the life of the bulbs. In addition to saving money for consumers, 20 million metric tons of greenhouse gases can be prevented from entering our atmosphere…
Expedition Hope is a program to raise awareness and funds while helping to erase the stigma of depression through recognition generated by the rare accomplishment of climbing the Seven Summits, the highest mountain on each continent. Its founder, Joe Lawson, is an Indianapolis native and accomplished mountain climber and adventurer who was 16 when his father, Virgil, 50, committed suicide after years of battling depression. Expedition Hope is dedicated to Virgil and others like him…
Watch this sweet kitty for 30 seconds and sprout a smile!
For homeless people, posing for family portraits can seem like a luxury. But students from a Santa Clara University photography class traveled to shelters and volunteered to shoot portraits, delivering the power of images that tug on the heart. "The students give prints to the residents, who plan to send them off to relatives or tuck them away until they can hang the portraits on walls of their own." (Christian Science Monitor)
Instead of a planned new golf course and 100 luxury homes, an expanse of rolling hills, wetlands and scenic waters have been preserved as public parkland through the purchase of one of the last large, privately held open spaces in the New York City metropolitan area. Governor George E. Pataki yesterday announced the purchase of 575 acres from developers and its reunification with the adjacent Sterling Forest State Park in Orange County…
Buy yourself a stocking stuffer, or a gift for an office mate who makes you happy. Hay House Publishing is featuring a holiday sale on inspiring magnets, two dozen colorful designs. US Shipping is $5.00 on orders under $15. I need to stop writing and order! No connection with GNN: Hay House
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North Dakota townspeople gathered around a frozen pond where Brutus, a seven-year-old Keeshound/ Samoyed dog struggled to pull himself from the numbing cold waters onto the ice. They cheered as two men grabbed a boat across the road and made their way toward the exhausted Brutus… Read the heart-warming story about a town that came together, donating all their winter coats, to help save a neighbor’s pet. (Minot Daily News)
The Holiday Season is upon us and toy shopping can be daunting for family members searching for a perfect toy to give a child with a disability. Not only do they want a toy that will bring joy to their child, they need to find toys that will accommodate special needs. Enter Ableplay.org, a toy rating system and Web site that provides comprehensive information for parents, special educators, therapists and others looking for the best choices for the children in their lives with disabilities…
Baltimore had a sensational new idea to provide green areas for local kids in exchange for developers adding more asphalt in other areas of the city. Thanks to the city’s new plan requiring developers to pitch in, ten schools in the area were transformed. Asphalt playgrounds, often containing glass, which were dangerous when kids fell, became grassy plains of green. (Baltimore Sun)
Israel’s leader is offering the Palestinians "reduced checkpoints, releasing of frozen funds and a prisoner exchange in return for a serious push for peace by the Palestinians." (AP reports)
Volunteers with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation planted hundreds of thousands of baby oysters into a specially prepared habitat made of recycled chunks of concrete last week. Thanks to the foundation, it was a record oyster planting season that added 9 million of the mollusks, compared to 4 million last year. The concrete was recycled from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (right). (Baltimore Examiner)
The Brookfield Zoo proudly announced this week the birth of a new baby okapi — an endangered animal known to be native only to a single forest in Democratic Republic of Congo.
This Illinois zoo was home to the first okapi birth in captivity in 1959 and has since helped to raise 28 calves, writing the book on okapi husbandry. The new female calf named Sauda, a Swahili word meaning "dark beauty,” has tripled in size since her birth two months ago. (Brookfield Zoo)
A negotiated cease-fire was agreed upon by Palestinians and Israelis themselves who sought and achieved Sunday’s truce. (Lebanon Daily Star)
Opening in theatrical release this week, Beyond the Call is an Indiana Jones meets Mother Teresa adventure, in which three middle-aged men, former soldiers, travel the world delivering life saving humanitarian aid directly into the hands of civilians and doctors in some of the most dangerous places on Earth, where few would ever go — the front lines of war.
"People need to get out of this country and open their eyes — and most people don’t." … Getting out to the theatre and seeing Beyond the Call is the next best thing. (Click more for video…)
JERUSALEM – In a moving scene of reconciliation and hope, the father of the Israeli soldier whose capture started the current round of fighting in Gaza visited a Tel Aviv hospital Thursday to see Palestinians injured in last week’s Israeli bombardment of Beit Hanoun…
And two Palestinians whose families were decimated by the attack joined Noam Shalit in offering prayers for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the recovery of the injured and an end to the holding of his son.
“I came in order to express my sympathy with the families from Beit Hanoun, who lost 23 of their loved ones and have a large number of injured here at the centre,” said Shalit after visiting the wounded Palestinians. His son, 19-year-old Cpl. Gilad Shalit, was seized on June 25 in a cross-border operation that also killed two soldiers and wounded six others.
Usama Ahmed al-Athamna, who lost his wife, mother and 16 other family members in the Israeli artillery strike, said he was praying for the health and safe return of the Israeli soldier.
“I truly thank Gilad’s father for the visit, and I pray that his son is returned home safe and sound and that it will bring an end to the tragedy we had at home,” al-Athamna said.
Rasan Gasan, whose brother Basem died of his wounds in the hospital last Friday after being injured in Beit Hanoun, said, “I want to thank Gilad’s father for coming to visit us. It breaks our hearts, more than they are already broken, that this man’s heart breaks for us.
“I hope his son is brought him soon, and I ask both governments, enough, stop. They are continuing negotiations through bloodshed when it’s better to sit at a table of peace and speak eye to eye. We can reach an agreement through peace, not bloodshed,” Gasan said.
Shalit’s visit to the Sourasky Medical Centre in Tel Aviv came a week after Israel admitted that its artillery guidance system malfunctioned on Nov. 8, sending huge shells crashing into civilian homes in Beit Hanoun, killing 20 people. Three more subsequently died from their injuries. Three of the 40 wounded were transferred to a hospital in Tel Aviv the day after the attack after Israel offered medical assistance to the victims.
“I have met the families, and I can see that the people of Beit Hanoun are peace-seeking and not involved in terror, and they only want to provide for themselves,” Shalit said.
“I feel that the Athamna family and the other families who lost their loved ones are exactly like the Slutzker family in Sderot and my family in the Galilee,” he said, referring to the family of the woman killed by a Hamas rocket attack on Wednesday. “We are all victims of the same madness, the same incessant wars and illogical violence, from firing rockets towards populated centres, to two terribly erroneous shells, the common denominator is that the civilian population pays the price.”
Early reports from Gilad Shalit’s captors said he had been wounded and had received medical treatment, but since the first week of his capture the only information about him has been assurances by leaders of both Hamas and Fatah, the two major Palestinian political parties, that he is still alive. Egypt has been leading international efforts to secure his release, but so far without success.
Noam Shalit said after leaving the Israeli hospital that the injured Palestinian children lying unconscious were paying the price of “these useless wars”. He urged the Israeli government and Palestinian leaders to “end the violence which brings more violence and hatred in a perpetual cycle that must be broken.
“We aren’t looking to see who is to blame or who started it. I hope there will be developments in negotiations with a new Palestinian government that will allow for a fresh start when all this madness ends soon,” Shalit said.
“It is time to end this affair. So much suffering has been caused since June 25 to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians,” he said.
“One of the main obstacles in bringing Gilad home is that the Hamas leadership is in Damascus and unfortunately won’t heed our calls. Unfortunately, they don’t see the suffering of the Palestinian people, the residents of the Gaza Strip, and they are apparently living the good life in Damascus,” Shalit said.
Matthew Kalman is a journalist writing for the AP wire services.
Distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)
Originally printed by Ynetnews, 16 November, Reprinted with permission
The number of family foundations and nonprofits has doubled in the past five years. For the wealthy, giving money or creating charities to make a difference in the world is becoming ‘the cool thing to do’. Read about the positive developments in philanthropy at the Christian Science Monitor.
