There are lots of stigmas surrounding the homeless community living on Coyote Creek, but these impoverished folks are taking it upon themselves to disprove those stereotypes with trashbags.
Since their debut in October, the Coyote Creek Homeless Stream Stewards of San Jose, California have picked up over 24 tons of litter filling the stream that they call their home.
The organizer of the project, 56-year-old Amanda Fukamoto, has been a driving force behind the cleaning process.
Using a “trash raffle” system that Amanda and Richard McMurtry, a retired programs director for the Santa Clara County Creeks Coalition contrived to encourage participation, different prizes are auctioned off each week; for every two full trash bags turned in, one raffle ticket is awarded to the contributor. The record amount of litter collected in one week was 182 bags from 17 enthusiastic volunteers.
Yet for some of the homeless living on Coyote Creek, it’s not about the prize – it’s about respectfully cleaning up after themselves.
However, since the organization of the Stream Stewards, Amanda has been pushing the Santa Clara County Water District to allow construction of a tiny house village for the community in exchange for the creek’s upkeep.
Though the bargain is rife with legislative and bureaucratic issues, Fukamoto’s proposal is a hopeful solution for tackling the root of the problem: giving the homeless community proper housing in order to reduce pollution of the stream.
Cleanse The Negativity From Your News Feed, Click To Share – Photo by Damien Gadal, CC
Expectations were high after D. Westry, the speed painter, claimed he could paint a masterpiece in under a minute-and-a-half on Anderson’s Viewers Got Talent in 2012.
At first, when the timer sounded, the audience was unimpressed by the strange shapes taking place on the canvas – at least, until Westry did the finishing touches.
(WATCH the video above)
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Even though we are living in an age where growing old is thought of as an inevitable misery, this doctor has been changing the game for seniors over the last 25 years.
It all started in 1991 when the Harvard-educated physician was transferred from working in a stressful emergency room to being the medical director of a nursing home in upstate New York. The depressing and regimented environment got him thinking on what exactly could improve the residents’ conditions.
Even though animals in nursing homes were illegal at the time, Dr. Bill Thomas took a chance: based on a hunch, he brought in two dogs, four cats, hens, rabbits, 100 parakeets, a multitude of plants, a flower garden, and vegetable patch.
There was a 50% drop in medical prescriptions along with a dramatic decrease in death rates – but most importantly, the residents were simply happier.
Dr. Thomas’s approach – dubbed the Eden Alternative – has driven nursing homes to allow a more autonomous and creative living space for their elderly. It erases the stereotype that growing old means growing useless, as well as encourages residents to think of their age as an enriching new phase of their life rather than the end of it.
Thomas, now a speaker and author of several books, also created small, independently run residences with their own bedrooms and bathrooms called Green Houses—and he has been preaching a singular message that getting old is not a bad thing.
“Within six weeks, they had to send a truck around to pick up all the wheelchairs,” Thomas told the Washington Post. “You know why most people [in nursing homes] use wheelchairs? Because the buildings are so damn big.”
Instead of spending their summers hanging around hooligans, these four middle schoolers decided to get a head start on their careers and apply for jobs at a local urban farm.
When Zsa Zsa Heard, the director of the LaGrange Housing Authority in Georgia asked them why they wanted the jobs, one of them said “I want to stay out of trouble and I do not want to be in a gang.”
Not only have the boys been learning about responsibility and making a difference in their community, but they are also going to be placed in a teen leadership program so they can continue on their paths to success.
(WATCH the video below)
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When a 9-year-old student named Bruce starts crying in the middle of his martial arts test because of the pain in his hand, his instructor was wise enough to know that ‘boys don’t cry’ is a lie – and that’s what he gently explained to Bruce in his video that is taking the internet by storm.
Jason Wilson is the founder of the Cave of Adullam Transformational Training Academy, a faith-based Detroit, Michigan organization that teaches a form of martial art and meditation called Musar Ru to young boys.
During the Initiation Test in which Bruce had to punch through a piece of wood, he breaks down in tears because it was hurting his left hand.
Instead of scolding the boy, Jason walked him through it.
“I don’t mind you crying, I cry too,” he says in the video. “I don’t know if you’re facing fear or you don’t think that you can make it – and we all face that from time to time – but when we hit that resistance and we feel pain, we want to stop, right? Because it’s hurting and feel like ‘I don’t want to go through this anymore’, right? But we have to fight through it as men.”
After a few more wise words, the instructor tells Bruce to try again and hit as hard as he can – not only does he manage to punch straight through the board, but he is met with rousing applause from his class mates.
“During these perverse times, it’s truly vital that we, the men and fathers of this generation, do not allow our boys to grow up with a false sense of masculinity like many of us did,” Jason says in the description of the video. “As a result, we have a mass amount of emotionally unstable men walking in unresolved anger, confusion and depression, instead of power, love and discipline.”
You can help the Cave of Adullam spread their teachings worldwide by donating to their crowdfunding page or following them on Facebook.
(WATCH the emotional speech below)
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This 14-year-old boy was only separated from his summer camp crew for a short period of time when – due to a few missteps – he found himself in real trouble.
While Juan Heriberto Trevino was searching for firewood at the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range in Galeana, Mexico, he lost his footing on some moving tree trunks and slipped into a ravine.
Luckily for Juan, a dog that he had met only a few hours before named Max, was close behind.
For the 44 hours that the boy was trapped in the canyon, Max refused to leave his side – the two cuddled together at night for warmth and the canine even lead Juan to water so they could rehydrate.
By the time Juan was rescued, he was suffering from exhaustion and dehydration but was otherwise unharmed.
The Trevino family wanted to adopt the heroic hound for protecting their son from the winding and windy mountains, but he was already a part of a nearby family.
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While Dartmouth college student Jake Gaba was in China for a 100 day foreign language study program, he wanted to uniquely share his love for the trip with the world – and he found the perfect method.
“I knew I wanted to capture my experiences in a very special way, and I also knew that just taking photos of my travels wasn’t enough. I had to dance,” he writes in the description for his video on YouTube.
All set to the tune of Bruno Mars’s “Treasure”, Jake filmed himself boogying his way through Shanghai, grooving through Beijing, and jamming in Hong Kong.
(WATCH the funky montage above)
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15 firefighters were dispatched to the middle of a swamp where a 13-year-old horse had fallen into muddy waters.
Cupcake and her owner took a ride in a rural area near Denver, Colorado just before the horse collapsed. By the time help arrived on the scene, Cupcake was lying knee-deep in water, exhausted from their trip.
A black California man named Sampson McCormick was left speechless at a market after an elderly white man offered to pay his $20 grocery bill as an apology for racial inequality and police brutality in the country.
Every driver knows the nerve-wracking feeling of seeing police lights in their rear view mirror, but what about the sweet relief of being given an ice cream cone instead of a ticket?
Officer Brian Warner and Police Chief Kevin Lands of the Halifax Police Department in Virginia spent a swelteringly hot day pulling drivers over and claiming they were in violation of a vehicle code only to declare it’s “against the law” to drive on a hot day without an ice cream cone.
When Dion Leonard signed up for an intensive 7-day desert run, he didn’t think he would be taking home anything but a medal.
But after a tough little pup joined him for 125 kilometers of the 250 kilometer race – he knew it belonged with him in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Dion met Gobi the dog on the second day of the 2016 Gobi March 4 Deserts in China. Gobi had been keeping up with the other 101 competitors the day before, but eventually decided to stick with Dion.
“She would run ahead of me and wait for me 20 or 30 meters down the road and then I’d have to catch up with her,” Dion told Good Morning Scotland. “She’s such a small dog but has a massive heart.”
Even though the competition was grueling, Gobi matched Dion step-for-step, leading to the two becoming fast friends.
“There were times during the race when, you know I’m there to race and compete and I’m trying to do my best to win the race but we had to cross some really large rivers where I would have to carry her over them. I didn’t actually have the time to do it but I realized then that I had to take her with me and the bond was made.”
Once the race was finished, Dion created the Bring Gobi Home crowdfunding campaign to raise money for his running buddy’s quarantine and veterinary bills. The adoption process can take up to 4 months with a staggering €5,000 price tag.
A state of emergency was declared on Saturday when torrential rainfall caused raging floodwaters throughout Elliot City, Maryland.
While Dave Dester and his wife were taking refuge in their Main Street shop and watching the fast moving currents sweeping cars down the road, they saw that one of them still contained a female driver.
Four nearby shop owners and pedestrians quickly formed a human chain to pull the woman from her vehicle, while Dave filmed the rescue.
Though the woman refused to climb completely out of the car for fear of being swept away, one of the men in the chain eventually scooped her into his arms and carried her to safety amidst encouraging cheers.
(WATCH the heroic rescue above)
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Tune in at 1:00 PM Eastern today for the new Facebook Live show, “Within Good” where two friends, Anthony Samadani and May May Ali, Muhammad Ali’s daughter, will discuss some of the good things going on in the world and some good ideas that may appeal to viewers.
They also want to hear from you on these topics and find out about the good things you are up to. May May and Anthony will also cover some of the trending topics on GOOD NEWS NETWORK in a fun, relaxed setting.
This show is all about being empowered to focus on the good things going on in the world and finding good in ourselves because… WITHIN GOOD – we like to say, THERE IS GOD.
Anthony is an Attorney and TV producer. May May is a Social Worker in the juvenile delinquency prevention & family development field. @SamadaniAnthony @MayMayAliOfficial @Within Good
Every child enrolled in school must face the difficulty of passing tests, but for Ben Twist, that difficulty was multiplied by his autism.
So, when the 11-year-old didn’t get the grade that he was hoping for, his assistant headteacher Ruth Clarkson went out of her way to remind him that test scores aren’t everything.
She says that since Ben struggles with social, sensory, and communicative issues, just taking the exams was a huge achievement – and having the world acknowledge that meant even more.
A volcano in Hawaii broke into a “smiley face” last week as its slow moving lava flow finally reached the ocean.
The Kilauea volcano, active since 1983, has been dribbling toward the sea since May, according to CNN, and offered a helicopter film crew the perfect photo to mark the occasion.
The 6.5 mile-long lava flow is now cooling in the waters of the Pacific, and turning to rock, making the biggest island in Hawaii even bigger.
This ring of fire isn’t the only place in the universe to deliver a grin. A much colder spot, on Mars, is also beaming a happy face.
The much bigger grin was discovered by NASA in 1999, when the Mars Orbiter Camera captured a smiling crater on there Red Planet. The Galle Crater, nicknamed the “Happy Face Crater” crater, has a diameter of about 134 miles (215 kilometers).
(WATCH the video below courtesy of Paradise Helicopters)
After living a life of crime, abuse, and violence, and spending 15 years in prison, Patric McGuinness is now a changed man.
He’s not about to waste his new perspective either – when he’s not volunteering with at-risk youth, he’s studying to take The Knowledge test: a series of intensive exams and quizzes for cab drivers which requires him to memorize more than 3,000 streets in London.
The tests can sometimes take up to 3 years to complete, but McGuinness doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. There’s something oddly therapeutic for the ex-con when he is researching the English roads.
This jovial little garden gnome isn’t the kind of lawn ornament to hang around in the yard all day – in fact, he’s just been returned home from an 8 month trek across North America.
When Bev York noticed that the gnome was missing from her Victoria’s Highlands property in British Columbia late in 2015, she figured it had just been misplaced or stolen.
Then on July 25th, 2016, the statue reappeared once more on her front lawn in a plastic bag tied to the gate with a hardcover photo book of the newly-dubbed “Leopold”.
“Hi, my name is Leopold the traveling gnome,” read the first page of the book. “One morning back on December ’15, I saw a motorhome toddle along Finlayson Arm Road and I thought to myself, ‘There’s got to be more to life than standing knee-deep in rainwater, being peed on by neighborhood dogs and staring at the same view every single day.”
The photos document Leopold traveling from the Grand Canyon, to Route 66, to what appears to be the beaches of San Ignacio, Mexico.
He also can be seen enjoying a margarita or two.
On the last page of the book is an inscription that Bev took to heart: “Hope you enjoyed my album. Sorry I disappeared for so long, and remember: adventure before dementia.”
The gardener couldn’t help but laugh as she browsed through the album, declaring that the prank was in very good taste. Wherever the anonymous travelers are, she would like to thank them for the gift and – next time they embark on an adventure – should bring her instead.
Let Leopold Travel The Internet Too – Click To Share With Your Friends (Photos by Bev York)
Gift certificate, layaway plan or voucher. Call it what you want, but an innovative organ donation program has started to spread to other transplant programs across the United States.
It all started when Howard Broadman approached the UCLA Medical Center with the concept of donating a kidney to a stranger, so that if his ill grandson needed one in the future, he would be guaranteed the lifesaving organ.
UCLA agreed. They instituted a program that allows for living donors to give a kidney in advance of when a friend or family member might need a transplant.
“Sometimes, patients may be heading toward transplantation in the next few years, but it would be more convenient for a friend or family member to donate a kidney now,” said Dr. Jeffrey Veale, a transplant surgeon who helped initiate the program. “Their intended recipient who is nearing dialysis would receive a gift certificate to redeem for transplantation when needed.”
“It is such a simple concept,” Veale said. “It’s the brainchild of a grandfather who felt he would be too old to donate in a few years when his grandson would likely need a transplant.”
Broadman, a lawyer and retired judge in Laguna Niguel, California, was 64 at the time, and his grandson Quinn was four. “I approached UCLA and asked, ‘Why don’t I give a kidney to someone who needs it now, then get a voucher for my grandson to use when he needs a transplant in the future?’ And that’s just what we did.”
This program was also recently used for a teenage girl in New York who has a functioning kidney transplant. The girl’s father donated a kidney so that she would have a gift certificate for a second transplant if she needs it.
Nine other transplant centers across the U.S. have agreed to offer the gift certificate program, under the umbrella of the National Kidney Registry’s advanced donation program. Veale anticipates that more living donors will come forward to donate kidneys, which could trigger more transplant chains.
Veale said some potential donors who have given thought to helping a stranger that needs an organ are reluctant to donate a kidney for fear that a family member might need one in the future. But if the gift certificate approach is successful, altruistic donors could donate a kidney and their spouse or child would receive a gift certificate for a future transplant.
“We have seen an increase in the number of altruistic donors over the past few years,” Veale said. “Often these people start off as blood donors or bone marrow registrants.”
There were 5,538 living donor kidney transplants in the U.S. in 2014. If just 0.5 percent of the nation’s adults became living kidney donors, the kidney transplant waiting list would be wiped out 15 times over.
At his home in southern California, Broadman’s eyes welled with tears as he reflected on the implications of what he started. “I’ve left a legacy for my grandson,” he said. “I may not even be here when he realizes it, but I changed his life. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
A group of kids ages 8-11 who spent their summer learning entrepreneurship skills in Hong Kong have written a book called How To Be A Good Babysitter in just four days.
After only three days of crowdfunding, the campaign, produced by the new Jumpstart Kids program, successfully raised 100% of its goal. With more funding, they’ll be able to start printing their more books and raise more money for the Hong Kong Dog Rescue, a charity that the kids selected for this project.
“We were quite surprised that by day 3 of the program the kids brainstormed 30+ book ideas, narrowed it down to one title and wrote most of it,” Yana Robbins, the founder of Jumpstart, says. “In the following sessions they continued writing, worked on the layout, learned about sourcing images, wrote sponsorship letters, cold called sponsors, conducted mock media interviews and had a passionate discussion about which charity they want to support.”
The 38-page book will be in English and Cantonese and filled with 60+ tips and illustrations on how to be a good babysitter. The book is meant to be an introduction for 7-10-year-olds on how how to play with the baby or toddler, what to do if they cry, and what they should and shouldn’t do, like always washing hands before handling the child.
Jumpstart Kids is a new program developed by Robbins’s Jumpstart Magazine, a print/online publication for startups in Hong Kong. The goal is to instill a confidence in kids to teach them that they can do anything and they can make a difference.
The sale of their book has already been approved at eight Bookazine shops and its publication date is set for October 15, 2016.
