The storybook and character are part of Sesame Street’s new autism project, “See Amazing in All Children.” It launched online Wednesday and features a free, downloadable app with videos and stories to help kids understand autism.
Sesame Workshop has partnered with 14 education and autism groups to share their project in schools. The show’s producers are waiting for reaction from the autism community before putting Julia on the broadcast. Image credit: Sesame Workshop
When InStove first started out, their “green” stoves were written off as “patio furniture.”
Years later, these multi-purpose, biomass cook stoves are feeding thousands of children across Haiti while ensuring the safety of the cooks who prepare the meals.
The latest stove to arrive in Haiti is dedicated in the memory of my grandmother, Lucy, who passed away in June. She was a beautiful, warm-hearted woman who always made sure everyone was fed–and often took pans out of the oven with her bare hands (as we all gasped).
Photo by Nick Moses
Many people gift InStoves in someone’s name as a way to honor their memory; individuals and organizations raise money to buy the stoves at cost, and donate them to developing countries overseas. Currently, they are being used in hospitals, clinics, schools, refugee camps, and orphanages.
The “Lucy Stove” recently landed at El Shaddai Ministries, an organization that feeds, houses, and educates 200 orphans in the Cambry, Sud region.
Before the InStoves arrived, cooks were preparing food over dirty, open charcoal burners, breathing fumes for hours each day while cooking hundreds of meals. Additionally, the unsustainable charcoal used for cooking was made from dwindling forest resources in Haiti, which has a 97% deforestation rate—it was costing the orphanage $400 each month.
Now, the kitchen can sustainably cook on sticks collected on the property and in the vicinity, feed thousands of kids and community members over its lifetime, and save them money on their energy bills.
And, just like grandma’s invulnerable hands, no one will ever be burned by it.
InStove also sent an autoclave unit to the El Shaddai Ministries clinic—a health facility which previously had no way to safely sterilize medical equipment or waste.
The mere task of cooking food overseas is a larger problem than you’d think: nearly three billion people worldwide cook on inefficient, biomass fires, contributing just as much to global climate change as car tailpipes do.
InStove’s design reduces the amount of fuel needed by up to 90 percent, the equivalent to the carbon footprint of up to 2.7 American households.
And, because the stoves are all vented to outside the kitchen, the cooks can breathe easier.
“This is exciting,” said one of the cooks at El Shaddai. “Now I can wear my church clothes to work!”
The Lucy Stove itself was also made with love—InStove founder Fred Colgan, 71, and his co-founder, Damon Ogle, put the finishing touches on the stove together this past July. The two men hadn’t worked side-by-side on stoves since the first 50 were shipped out to Darfur six years ago.
Ogle had recently finished treatment for throat cancer, but still decided to drive down to the factory facility in Oregon to help out.
In the beginning, when Colgan, then a 65-year-old retired carpenter, met Ogle, an engineer with a new stove design, they both shared a common vision to help some of the world’s poorest people.
“I asked him if he thought it was something we could take to the world and serve poor people with as a nonprofit,” Colgan told Good News Network. “I guess we were in the right place at the right time, just two stubborn old guys who wanted to make a difference.”
Colgan and Ogle immediately got to work hand-building prototypes of a stove that featured a combustion chamber made of stainless steel surrounded by lightweight insulation. At operating temperature, which can reach 1100 degrees Celsius, the stove literally “burns up the smoke,” and captures over half the energy generated by the fire.
Currently, there are InStoves located around the world, including 100 in North Darfur and 100 in South Darfur being used to feed 200,000 children. Colgan trained many of those cooks himself.
(WATCH the video below or visit InStove.org to learn more)
Scientists in Australia accidentally stumbled on a substance that can remove toxic mercury from the sea. It’s called limonene, and can be found in any orange peel.
Dr. Justin Chalker, a professor of Synthetic Chemistry at Flinders University, and his team, were working with sulfur and limonene to create a red, rubber-like polymer. When they began running tests to measure its potentially harmful impact on the environment, they discovered quite the opposite — the substance can suck mercury right out of water.
Mercury pollution plagues much of the world’s oceans, and cleaning it up has been difficult and expensive. The element, regulated by the EPA, is emitted into the air during the burning of fossil fuels. It eventually falls into water where it contaminates food supplies and can poison marine life. Eating fish and seafood tainted with mercury has been linked to serious health problems in humans.
The inexpensive polymer could potentially make large-scale cleanups of mercury affordable because it is made from industrial waste.
“So not only is this new polymer good for solving the problem of mercury pollution, but it also has the added environmental bonus of putting this waste material to good use,” Chalker said.
Sulfur is a byproduct of the petroleum industry, which throws out 70 million tons of the substance every year.
On top of that, the citrus industry produces 70,000 tons of limonene every year that it cannot use.
A high-tech mouthguard promises to be a game changer for treating and preventing sports-related concussions.
FITGuard, a device that alerts coaches immediately if a player should get medical attention for a head injury, comes from the mind of a former college athlete who suffered his own brain injury while playing college rugby in 2011.
Anthony Gonzales once took a hit to the head so hard during a game that he couldn’t remember which team he was on—in fact, he didn’t even know he was hurt. His teammates eventually realized something was wrong and pulled him from the game, but he cut it dangerously close. Unfortunately, Gonzales’ experience is pretty standard in college sports: athletes report less than half of their potential concussions to coaches and remain in the game when they should be treated to prevent permanent brain damage.
After recovering, Gonzales started thinking about a way to improve the system. He and fellow Arizona State University graduate Bob Merriman created FITGuard to let coaches and trainers know instantly if a player has likely suffered a concussion. Merriman calls it the brain’s equivalent of a car’s “check engine light.”
The mouthguard is packed with sensors that measure the force of a blow to the head and calculates the chances of a concussion. LED lights in front change from green to red to alert the wearer and others around him if the hit was hard enough to warrant immediate medical attention.
Even if the chances of a concussion are low, FITGuard continues monitoring for symptoms for several minutes, sending a steady stream of information to a smartphone or tablet app to let coaches and parents know if the player should be pulled from the game for medical treatment.
The FITGuard is expected to be on the market sometime next year and will cost around $100 per mouthpiece.
(WATCH the FITGaurd video below) — Photo: FITGuard video
The Teal Pumpkin Project was developed in an effort to encourage households to make the holiday more inclusive for kids who are allergic to nuts, chocolate, soy, wheat, and milk. About two kids in every classroom are at serious risk of being exposed to those foods, yet candy sold in bulk usually does not have ingredient labels or allergen warnings.
As an alternative, people taking the Teal Pumpkin Pledge can buy non-food treats for mere nickels at the dollar store, spooky gifts like glow sticks, bubbles, kazoos, spider rings, stickers, and vampire fangs.
Even toys can be a tricky road, though—Play-Dough, for example, contains wheat while other toys may contain common allergens like latex.
Alternatively, the Bay Area Allergy Advisory board has posted these handy lists of allergen-free candy.
Over 100,000 households in all fifty states have painted their pumpkins teal to signify allergy awareness for the coming Halloween season. The #tealpumpkinproject website also has lots of flyers, signs, and gift ideas that can be downloaded for free.
For those planning to hand out regular candy along with allergen-free treats, it’s advisable to keep them in separate bowls (and remember which is which).
When a doctor grew concerned with patients being put on waiting lists because they could not afford treatment, he started his own clinics — and treated 100,000 people, whether they could pay or not.
Dr. Daniel Ivankovich founded the nonprofit, OnePatient Global Health Initiative, in 2010, so he could provide health care regardless of insurance or people’s ability to pay.
It’s allowed him to open three clinics is some of the poorest and underserved parts of Chicago, Illinois and to make medical trips to Haiti to help people abroad.
He now performs 600 surgeries every year for people who couldn’t otherwise afford it — and has treated 100,000 patients for other conditions through his OnePatient clinics.
“We never turn away a patient,” Dr. Ivankovich told CNN. “The greatest thing we give them is hope.”
His work has made Dr. Ivankovich one of CNN’s Top Ten Heroes of the Year.
You can vote for him as your choice for Hero of the Year at CNNHeroes.com. The network will announce the winner at their annual televised award show December 6, and present the 2015 winner with $100,000 for continuing his or her good work.
A lonely, elderly gentleman’s phone call to a radio station turned him into a star, and put a youthful smile on his face.
Bill Palmer called into BBC Radio Solent in Southhampton, UK because he just wanted someone to talk to. The 95-year-old man’s wife had to go into a nursing home recently, and he had no one at home to keep him company.
Radio host Alex Dyke suggested they talk in person, and sent a taxi to Palmer’s house to pick him up and bring him to the studio.
When Palmer shared his story with listeners (listen to the full segment here), the phones lines “lit up” — as they say in the radio biz — and the gentleman had plenty of new friends wanting to talk to him.
The video clip below was posted on the station’s Facebook page and earned many positive comments.
“Well done, Alex,” Pamela Kynes posted. “What a truly heartwarming wonderful thing to do.”
“That brought a tear to my eye,” Tracy Riggs commented.
One caller offered to round up a ukulele band to play music for Palmer and several asked the station to give him a weekly slot on the air.
Palmer was overwhelmed by the outpouring of kindness, and while listeners couldn’t see the smile on his face in the studio, they sure heard it in his voice on the air.
(WATCH the BBC RadioSolent video below) — Photo: BBC Radio Solent, Facebook
Bill phoned BBC Radio Solent. He was upset, lonely and missing his wife.Alex decided to invite him in.We sent a cab to pick him up, have a listen to what happened next.
An online art movement is transforming fashion-obsessed dolls into confidence-boosting toys for young children everywhere.
Australian artist Sonja Singh kicked it off with her Tree Change Dolls.
Ever since she began rescuing Barbies, Disney princesses, and Bratz dolls from second-hand stores and repurposing them into make-up free “outdoorsy” characters, artists around the world have been following her lead.
Bobby Jean, an artist in Spokane, Washington, has decided to transform the heavily made-up Bratz dolls who don revealing outfits into companion characters for under-represented groups of kids.
In the video below, she creates a doll without hair in a hospital gown that could comfort a child during her chemotherapy sessions. She plans to auction the doll to raise money for a children’s cancer research hospital.
A Canadian artist named Wendy Tsao has been auctioning her reimagined dolls to raise money for charity as well.
She converts Bratz dolls into cultural role models like author of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, and Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai, as part of her Mighty Dolls art project.
Tsao wanted kids to have alternatives to fashion and fantasy role models.
“There are real-life people who are heroes, too, with inspiring stories of courage, intelligence, strength and uniqueness,” Tsao wrote online. “Could children learn about and be inspired by them through toys?”
Warrick Dunn delivered 64 touchdowns in his National Football League days, but he’s made 145 single parent families the biggest winners of his career.
Dunn started Homes for the Holidays right after he signed his first pro contract in 1997, designed to help single parent families realize the dream of home ownership. Last month, Xeniya McBroom and her daughter became the 145th family to move into a home thanks to Dunn.
McBroom had to take a financial management course to qualify for Dunn’s help and, although it isn’t free, she’s buying the house from Habitat for Humanity with a zero percent loan.
Dunn’s charity provided the $5,000 down payment to let McBroom and her daughter move in to their new home in Tampa, Florida. Without the help, home ownership would have been out of reach for her and the 144 other families Dunn has helped.
Homes for the Holidays was inspired by his mother, a single parent who raised him and five younger siblings but never got to own her own home.
The former running back for Atlanta and Tampa Bay thinks of her with every new homeowner he helps.
(WATCH Warrick Dunn Charities’ 150th family’s story below) — Photo: KTVT video
The “future” isn’t what it used to be for this famous pair of time travelers who landed in 2015, one more time. On their first trip, during the film Back to the Future II, there were flying cars, hoverboards, and the Chicago Cubs had won the World Series.
Actors Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd were met with thunderous applause and a standing ovation from the studio audience last night as they arose from their time traveling Delorean on the stage of Jimmy Kimmel Live.
The two reprised their roles as Marty McFly and Doc Brown on the perfect day: October 21, 2015 is the exact date the famous movie characters in 1985 chose to arrive in a futuristic Hill Valley in the wildly popular “Back to the Future” sequel.
The veteran actors Fox, 54, and Lloyd, who turns 77 today, took fans ‘back in time’ for the best ten minutes of laughter this current space-time continuum could offer.
Wait ‘til they hear the Cubs were eliminated in the play-offs.
(WATCH the Jimmy Kimmel video below) – Photo: Jimmy Kimmel video
SHARE with Friends Who Don’t Want to Wait Until the FUTURE…
Only a mother would notice a need like this one and respond with such compassion.
As refugees from Syria continue to flow into Europe by the thousands, an American mom observed that luxuries like baby carriers and slings were scarce in scenes of fleeing families.
One crowdfunding campaign later, and 1400 baby carriers are being gifted to mothers seeking asylum in Greece.
Cristal Logothetis, a Californian who was once an undocumented immigrant in the U.S. herself, created the fundraising page to ask for used baby carriers or donations to buy more.
To date, more than a thousand donors have contributed $40,000, and the campaign has created a surge of donated baby carriers from mothers around the globe.
Come mid-December, a team of volunteers including Cristal will be distributing the carriers to refugee families around the Greek islands.
“Mothers have to walk hundreds of miles with babies and toddlers in their arms; a task that is physically strenuous to say the least,” says Cristal on the Indiegogo fundraising page. “Kos is only the beginning of a long and arduous trip for Syrian refugees, so we want to make sure their lives are a bit easier with baby carriers that will lessen the weight and free their arms!”
My dad was in a tragic car accident when I was 12 and has been paralyzed from his chest down without the use of his fingers ever since. Dancing was one of the first things on his mind after his injury – he loved it, but it was too painful to think of dancing in a wheelchair. Unfortunately for me, that meant dancing with my dad became nothing but a memory.
I always knew how painful it was for him to leave dancing behind, but when I got engaged almost 17 years later, I had one request: a father-daughter dance. It wasn’t an easy sell, but he eventually agreed, and we killed it on the dance floor!
Not only that, but that one dance broke through all the walls he had built up. He was transformed – he danced all night, he danced at another wedding two weeks after mine, and he has even taken dance lessons with my stepmom since.
Sharing my dad’s story has already inspired others to dance, showing that you can have a disability AND a fun, fulfilling life. This is the core value of AbleThrive.com, my startup social enterprise that curates resources on living well with a disability so that it’s easier to find what we need to thrive.
Nothing should ever stop you from doing what you love.
For nearly a decade, 300 single mothers fighting cancer have relied on one woman for help.
When her best friend began undergoing treatment for cancer, Jody Farley-Berens of Phoenix, Arizona stepped in to help the single mother of four in any way she could.
During the process, it occurred to her that other women were going through similar struggles and needed helpers, too. That’s why she founded Singleton Moms in 2006, a nonprofit that provides both emotional and financial support to single mothers with cancer, helping them pay bills and even sending crews to clean their houses.
“Neighbors helping neighbors, family helping families. This is what we should be doing for one another,” Farley-Berens told CNN.
Her work has made Farley-Berens one of CNN’s Top Ten Heroes of the Year.
You can vote for her as your choice for Hero of the Year at CNNHeroes.com. The network will announce the winner at their annual televised award show December 6, and present the 2015 winner with $100,000 for continuing his or her good work.
Grocery shopping was a struggle for the mother of a little girl with cerebral palsy, until a grocery store manager rolled out a “princess wagon.”
That’s what Melody Leach calls the cart her local grocery store bought for daughter Beatrice. You can tell by the smile on her face, the little girl loves her new ride.
The two-year-old can’t sit in a regular shopping cart, so mom would have to shop while juggling a basket and a wheelchair down the aisles
Assistant Manager Mike Myers was familiar with cerebral palsy and asked his bosses at King Soopers to buy a cart built for special needs kids.
The staff in Loveland, Colorado surprised Melody and Beatrice with the new cart, which has an adjustable seat they won’t outgrow anytime soon.
And while it’s available to any family for use in the store, Myers and his staff decorated it with sparkly signs and balloons, christening it “Beatrice’s Cart.”
(WATCH the video below from KUSA news) — Photos: KUSA video
The best qualities of the world’s many religions were on display in Salt Lake City, Utah last week where the Parliament of the World’s Religions convened.
Roughly 10,000 people representing 50 faiths attended, taking part in discussions focused on ending violence, tackling climate change and addressing income inequality.
The gathering also featured its first Women’s Assembly addressing religion’s role in empowering women and its responsibility for dignity and human rights of women.
Primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall spoke to attendees about uniting religious and spiritual communities to save the environment. More than 70 other speakers, including three Nobel Peace Laureates, covered issues from ending war to countering extremism with acts of compassion.
Nearly 1,000 volunteers worked behind the scenes as attendees put their faiths’ activities on display. Buddhist monks worked on an intricate sand painting as Sikhs served up to 7,000 meals at a time from their local langar — a community kitchen that feeds people of all faiths free of charge.
On the final day of the Parliament, the sand painting was brushed away to demonstrate the impermanence of this world and the Sikh langar donated thousands of pounds of unused food to a Catholic charity that feeds the poor in Utah.
The Parliament is the oldest and perhaps most diverse interfaith gathering in the world, dating back to its first meeting in Chicago, Illinois on September, 11 1893. Since 1999, it has gathered people of faith together every five years.
The board of trustees announced during the gathering that the Parliament would meet every two years now, instead of five.
Chairman Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid closed this year’s session saying that participants had been telling him all week, “This was the best Parliament ever.”
In his latest project, the “Wolf of Wall Street” is focused on the manatees of Belize.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio plans to turn a 104-acre private island in Belize into a game-changing new model for eco-tourism around the world.
When it opens in 2018, the resort and conservation areas on Blackadore Caye will host both tourists and scientists, while creating habitat for marine life, and restoring native species both on the island and in the water around it – including manatees.
“The main focus is to do something that will change the world,” DiCaprio told the New York Times. “I couldn’t have gone to Belize and built on an island and done something like this, if it weren’t for the idea that it could be groundbreaking in the environmental movement.”
Shortly after his first visit to the Central American country in 2005, Dicaprio bought Blackadore Caye for $1.75 million – then spent nearly ten years looking for the right developer to create a new model for eco-tourism resorts.
He finally partnered with Paul Scialla, the chief executive of Delos, a New York developer, and architect Jason McLennan, head of McLennan Design and founder of the Living Building Challenge.
The island has been uninhabited for as long as anyone can remember. But the damage around the cay has been significant–waters overfished and trees cut down by fisherman who want to smoke their catches.
DiCaprio’s plan is to clear invasive plant species from the island and replant native mangrove trees. A nursery will grow marine grass to support a manatee conservation area.
A series of 68 villas will rest on platforms built in the water off the island’s shore, creating artificial reefs for fish and other marine life. There will be 48 houses — costing between $5 million and $15 million — built on the beach. One of those houses has already been auctioned off for charity — raising $11 million for global wildlife conservation through the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation.
At least 45% of the island will be reserved as conservation areas, promoting the growth of native plants and animals.
Eco-tourism is big business for Belize, worth about $196 million a year and accounting for 15% of the country’s gross domestic product. While most of the visits support existing wilderness and wildlife reserves, DiCaprio’s plan is to restore a place that has been damaged by human overuse.
While most eco-tourism is meant to leave a limited footprint–or no footprint– on the environment, DiCaprio wants to actually heal a habitat that had been abused, by building a resort that restores.
Manager Kobi Tzafrir was fed up with growing intolerance by both Arab and Israeli extremists and decided he could make a small difference by feeding people who were willing to bridge the gap over lunch or a snack.
His Facebook post essentially says there are no Arabs nor Jews at Hummus Bar, only human beings. It touts “really excellent” Arab hummus and Jewish falafel and invites people of all faiths and backgrounds to dine together — and enjoy free refills on soft drinks.
מפחדים מערבים? מפחדים מיהודים? אצלנו אין ערבים! אבל אין גם יהודים... אצלנו יש בני אדם! וחומוס ערבי אמיתי ומעולה!...
Now you can donate the key for business success to a mom opening an internet café or a repairman needing a better filing system–on the other side of the world.
In this amazing modern digital age, it can be easy to take technology and it’s benefits for granted. Some are not as fortunate to have the same access to electronics that are essential to cutting-edge thinking.
Globetops is a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that meets the needs of both low-income innovators and people looking for a meaningful way to recycle their computers. Entrepreneurs from Guinea, East Africa Haiti, Nepal, India–and the U.S.– can submit brief profiles on their ideas, stating the possibilities that could come from owning a laptop. After that, donors can choose to support their favorite cause by shipping off their old machine for better use.
The founder of Globetops, Becky Morrison, partnered with Northern Lights editor Chris Carson to make a video illustrating just how much of an impact their donations have made.
“I’m very passionate about depicting images of people in the developing world who are not needy and suffering, but who are passionate and powerful,” says Morrison. “There are people doing big things throughout the world, who simply don’t have the resources that they need.”
A little girl’s promise to her grandmother has meant nine million dollars in goods and services for Native Americans on a South Dakota reservation.
Today, a half-century later, Rochelle Ripley is keeping that promise, working alongside the Lakota tribe with volunteers to improve their health and education, and rebuild homes for the Lakota people.
Ripley’s grandmother was full-blooded Lakota and entertained her as a child with stories of life on the reservation.
“My grandmother was my world,” Ripley told CNN. “She asked me if I would go back home and help our people when I grew up.”
Ripley travels to her ancestor’s homeland four times each year from her home in Glastonbury, Connecticut, since creating a nonprofit called Hawkwing. She brings in donations and coordinates volunteer efforts to help her grandmother’s people on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota.
She recently worked with a national teachers’ sorority to provide a bookmobile, delivering reading materials to kids scattered throughout the 4,200-square-mile reservation. Ripley also rallies volunteers to spend two weeks every year building and repairing houses — termed the “most urgent need” by the Lakota Tribal Chairman. Her nonprofit supports medical and dental clinics and mental health counseling. It has also partnered with Vitamin Angels to provide $300,000 worth of vitamins to children and mothers.
Ripley and Hawkwing have created a food pantry and arranged for outside shipments of fresh produce – and even delivered greenhouses to help the Lakota grow their own organic crops.
Her work has made Rochelle Ripley one of CNN’s Top Ten Heroes of the Year. You can vote for her as your choice for Hero of the Year at CNNHeroes.com. The network will announce the winner at their annual televised award show December 6, and present the 2015 winner with $100,000 for continuing his or her good work.
InStove also sent an 
