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Inspiring News Articles
Excerpts of Highly Inspiring News Articles in Major Media


Below are one-paragraph excerpts of highly inspiring news articles from the major media. Links are provided to the original inspiring news articles on their media websites. If any link fails, read this webpage. The most inspiring news articles are listed first. You can also explore the news articles listed by order of the date posted. For an abundance of other highly inspiring material, see our Inspiring Resources page. May these inspiring news articles inspire us to find ever more ways to love and support each other and all around us to be the very best we can be.



At These Grocery Stores, No One Pays
2025-04-14, Civil Eats
https://civileats.com/2025/04/14/at-these-grocery-stores-no-one-pays/

Parents with small children, teenagers, and senior citizens clustered outside the door and waited to hear their ticket numbers called. They weren't there for books. They came to shop for groceries. Connected to the [Enoch Pratt Library], the brightly painted market space is small but doesn't feel cramped. Massive windows drench it in sunshine. In a previous life, it was a cafĂ©. Now, shelves, tables, counters, and a refrigerator are spread out across the room, holding a mix of produce and shelf-stable goods. On any given day, there's a range of produce, like collard greens, apples, onions, radishes, potatoes, and cherry tomatoes, plus eggs, orange juice, rice, bread, and treats like cookies and peanut butter crackers. As they exited, shoppers did not need to pull out their wallets: No one pays at Pratt Free Market. Launched in the fall of 2024, Pratt Free Market opens its doors every Wednesday and Friday and serves around 200 people per day. Anyone can pick up food at the store without providing identification or meeting income requirements. For Baltimore residents, 28 percent reported experiencing food insecurity last year–twice the national average. Pratt Free Market ... offers a mix of everything–from healthy, fresh produce to sweets. And every fourth Friday, the marker turns into "Pantry on the Go!", a farmers' market-style setup outside the library that offers fruits and vegetables. Last month ... they handed out onions, sweet potatoes, watermelons, celery, and apples.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.


‘Leave it to nature': how enticing insects to kill off pests helped cut reliance on pesticides
2025-08-08, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/08/insecticides-integrated-p...

While trying to come up with a pesticide solution to kill off bollworms, Dr Robert Mensah had his eureka moment. It was the 90s, and in Australia bollworms were devastating cotton farms. He experimented and eventually came up with a simple food spray, "a mixture of food ingredients, yeast and sugar-based, diluted in water and applied to crops. It emits an odour which is picked up by beneficial predatory insects and attracts them to the fields where they kill pests." It was the beginning of an international grassroots campaign, in which Mensah has worked with various charities to teach people about this sustainable farming method. Ever since the dangerous side effects of pesticides became widely known, alternatives have been sought. This approach to farming, which reduces our reliance on pesticides, is called integrated pest management. In 2005, Mensah took food sprays to Benin, where the Pesticide Action Network (PAN UK) was helping farmers transition to organic farming. There, the misuse of chemical pesticides was seriously damaging people's health. The food sprays – cheap, safe and effective – caught on with farmers in Benin where thousands now use the technique. From there, Mensah took food sprays to southern Ethiopia, where they were also trialled successfully on vegetables ... and then to Vietnam where they were used successfully on maize. Another charity, Better Cotton, is now trialling food sprays in India ... where they've trained 214,000 farmers to use sprays.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good and healing the Earth.


First 3D-Printed Home Made Primarily From Soil is Built in Japan–Ditching Unsustainable Concrete
2025-08-09, Good News Network
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/first-3d-printed-home-made-primarily-from-soi...

Collaborating with robotics engineers and Italian 3D printer manufacturers, a Japanese company is building "homes of earth" made primarily from soil. Lib Work, Ltd. completed their first 3D-printed earth home in Yamaga, Kumamoto on July 22, calling their creative process "uncharted territory where tradition and convention offered no guide". With an eye toward recycling, sustainability, and reduced carbon emissions, Lib Work focused on combining 3D-printing with natural materials enhanced for strength, constructibility, and design quality. The walls of the completed Lib Earth House Model B use no cement (which produces industrial waste). Instead, they utilized only naturally derived materials with soil as the primary component to create sustainable earthen walls. Compared to the previous model (Model A) that used some cement, the building's strength has improved approximately fivefold while significantly reducing CO2 emissions from the manufacturing process itself. The walls contain cutting-edge sensors as part of a wall condensation monitoring system that monitors in real-time the temperature and humidity inside the walls. This system enables the house to manage its own condition by detecting condensation in advance to maintain a long-lasting, comfortable living environment. Additionally, the homes include remote operation of air conditioning, lighting, and bath controls via smartphone or dedicated monitor. It also features an off-grid energy system.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.


Young Adults Joining ‘Offline Clubs' Across Europe–to Replace Screen Time with Real Time
2025-05-26, Good News Network
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/offline-clubs-quickly-spreading-across-europe...

Not everyone pines for the days without cell phones, but what about social media? Would you erase social media from the history books if you could? If you said yes, you share the feelings of a staggering 46% of teenage respondents to a recent survey from the British Standards Institution (BSI), which also found that 68% of respondents said they felt worse when they spend too much time on their socials. Enter The Offline Club, (who ironically have 530,000 followers on Instagram) a Dutch social movement looking to create screen-free public spaces and events in cafes to revive the time before phones, when board games, social interaction, and reading were the activities observed in public. They also host digital detox retreats, where participants unplug from not only their smartphones, but computers too, and experience a life before the internet. BSI's research showed that out of 1,290 individuals aged 16-21, 47% would prefer to be young in a world without the internet, with 50% also saying a social media curfew would improve their lives. The Offline Club is taking advantage of this rising cross-cultural awareness and helps its followers replace "screen time with real time." Their founders envision a world where time spent in public is present and offline. It started in Amsterdam, but Club chapters quickly organized in Milan, Berlin, Paris, London, Barcelona, Brussels, Antwerp, Dubai, Copenhagen, and Lisbon. Anyone can start a club in a city.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


The pandemic divided the US. Could a full accounting help the nation heal?
2025-08-02, Christian Science Monitor
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2025/0802/covid-19-pandemic-accountability

In 2021, Kristen Magnuson had to make a secret deal to continue a staple of her daily routine: swimming at her local outdoor pool. During the pandemic, the state of Washington required a vaccine passport to gain access to public spaces such as restaurants, movie theaters, and gyms. Ms. Magnuson chose not to get vaccinated. So the mother of two made a covert arrangement with gym staff. She could bypass the lobby by sneaking in through a back door. Ms. Magnuson was grateful, but she felt like a second-class citizen. Now she has a plea: Can we talk about what we went through? She isn't opposed to vaccines – her husband and children got them. She and others are asking: What would America do differently if the country could have a do-over, or faced a similar challenge in the future? Ms. Magnuson ... isn't ready to absolve top officials until they show "a recognition of harms." "I was surprised when some politicians and doctors said that those who remain unvaccinated should not be treated if they fall ill. People were not ‘bad' or ‘COVidiots' if they contracted COVID-19; they were human," [Dr. Monica] Gandhi wrote. "There is absolutely no place for stigma, judgment, and a shame-based approach in public health." The former NIH director [Dr. Francis Collins] proposed, instead, a reckoning modeled on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the aftermath of apartheid. "That means people coming forward and confessing what they did that was harmful in public and asking for forgiveness," said Dr. Collins, who was appointed by President Obama and served as a science adviser to Biden. "That's very different than just amnesty."

Note: Read NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's powerful call for forgiveness despite being cancelled for having dissenting views on COVID policies. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


Some gut microbes can absorb and help expel ‘forever chemicals' from the body, research shows
2025-07-13, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/13/pfas-gut-microbes-forever...

Certain kinds of gut microbes absorb toxic Pfas "forever chemicals" and help expel them from the body via feces, new first-of-its-kind University of Cambridge research shows. The findings are welcome news as the only options that exist for reducing the level of dangerous Pfas compounds from the body are bloodletting and a cholesterol drug that induces unpleasant side effects. The microbes were found to remove up to 75% of some Pfas from the gut of mice. Several of the study's authors plan to develop probiotic dietary supplements that boost levels of helpful microbes in the human gut, which would likely reduce Pfas levels. "If this could be used in humans to create probiotics that can help remove Pfas from the body then this would be a nicer solution in that it wouldn't have so many side effects," said Anna Lindell, Cambridge doctoral student and a co-author of the study. Pfas are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally break down in the environment. The microbes [in the study] largely addressed "long-chain" Pfas, which are larger compounds and more dangerous than smaller "short chains" because they stay in the body longer.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive healing our bodies and technology for good.


The Promise of Blockchain Is a World Without Middlemen
2017-03-06, Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2017/03/the-promise-of-blockchain-is-a-world-without-middlemen

The blockchain is a revolution that builds on another technical revolution so old that only the more experienced among us remember it: the invention of the database. IBM's database model stood unchanged until about 10 years ago, when the blockchain came into this conservative space with a radical new proposition: What if your database worked like a network – a network that's shared with everybody in the world, where anyone and anything can connect to it? Blockchain experts call this "decentralization." Decentralization offers the promise of nearly friction-free cooperation between members of complex networks that can add value to each other by enabling collaboration without central authorities and middle men. In a world without middle men, things get more efficient in unexpected ways. A 1% transaction fee may not seem like much, but down a 15-step supply chain, it adds up. These kinds of little frictions add just enough drag on the global economy that we're forced to stick with short supply chains and deals done by the container load, because it's simply too inefficient to have more links in the supply chain and to work with smaller transactions. The decentralization that blockchain provides would change that, which could have huge possible impacts for economies in the developing world. Any transformation which helps small businesses compete with giants will have major global effects.

Note: This article is also available here. Watch our 13 minute video on the promise of blockchain technology. Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy and technology for good.


What Blockchain Means for the Sharing Economy
2017-03-15, Harvard Business Review
https://hbr.org/2017/03/what-blockchain-means-for-the-sharing-economy

Look at the modus operandi of today's internet giants – such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Uber, or Airbnb – and you'll notice they have one thing in common: They rely on the contributions of users as a means to generate value within their own platforms. All of the profits are captured by the large intermediaries who operate the platforms. Recently, a new technology has emerged that could change this imbalance. Blockchain facilitates the exchange of value in a secure and decentralized manner, without the need for an intermediary. With a blockchain, software applications no longer need to be deployed on a centralized server: They can be run on a peer-to-peer network that is not controlled by any single party. These blockchain-based applications can be used to coordinate the activities of a large number of individuals, who can organize themselves without the help of a third party. Blockchain technology is ultimately a means for individuals to coordinate common activities, to interact directly with one another, and to govern themselves in a more secure and decentralized manner. New forms of organizations ... which have no director or CEO, or any sort of hierarchical structure – are administered, collectively, by all individuals interacting on a blockchain. And since there is no intermediary operator, the value produced within these platforms can be more equally redistributed among those who have contributed to the value creation.

Note: This article is also available here. Watch our 13 minute video on the promise of blockchain technology. Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy and technology for good.


Meet the man saving Yazidi slaves from ISIS
2016-06-02, CNN News
https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/02/middleeast/saving-yazidi-captives-from-isis

The bidding opens at $9,000. For sale? A Yazidi girl. She is said to be beautiful, hardworking, and a virgin. She's also just 11 years old. This advertisement – a screengrab from an online marketplace used by ISIS fighters to barter for sex slaves – is one of many Abdullah Shrem keeps in his phone. Each offers vital clues – photographs, locations – that he hopes will help him save Yazidi girls and young women like this girl from the militants holding them captive. Shrem was a successful businessman ... when ISIS came and kidnapped more than 50 members of his family from Iraq's Sinjar province. Tens of thousands of Yazidis fled their homes ... while thousands of women and girls were abducted and sold into slavery. Desperate – and angered at what he saw as a lack of support from the international community – he began plotting to save them himself, recruiting cigarette smugglers used to sneaking illicit produce in and out of ISIS territory to help his efforts. So far, he says, his network has freed 240 Yazidis; it hasn't been easy, or cheap – he's almost broke, having spent his savings paying smuggling fees. A number of the smugglers have been captured and executed by ISIS while trying to track down Yazidi slaves. But Shrem insists the risks are worth it: "Whenever I save someone, it gives me strength and it gives me faith to keep going until I have been able to save them all." Once they manage to make contact ... it can take days or even weeks to get safely out of ISIS territory.

Note: A 2021 news article by the CBC about his heroic work reported that he has saved about 400 individuals from ISIS forces. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine and ending human trafficking.


These 'cannabis cars' run on batteries made of hemp – they could change how we think about electric vehicles
2025-04-21, The Cool Down
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/hemp-batteries-ev-cannabis-cars/

Hemp is one of the most sustainable materials available to manufacturers because it's cheap to grow, uses little water, doesn't need any toxic pesticides, and can absorb more carbon than trees. Hemp batteries have their own advantages, too. These batteries use lighter and more widely available materials like sulfur, boron, and hemp instead of the heavy metals used in traditional lithium-ion batteries. Some EVs use a device called a supercapacitor, which stores energy through static electricity rather than a chemical reaction, like in conventional batteries. In these batteries, a material called graphene is used. But graphene is expensive. To create ... "cannabis cars," scientists use hemp bark – a waste product created by cannabis plants – and cooked it to make a substance that resembles graphene. Hemp lasts longer than graphene. It also stores more power and is easy to source. Son Nguyen, Bemp Research's founder, told EnergyTech that the company's lithium-sulfur battery can help solve shortages in the EV battery supply chain. "Sulfur is very abundant. Boron is also relatively abundant, with the biggest boron mine being in California," Nguyen said. "Being an American company, our focus right now is to make batteries for American electric vehicles, and we do not see any supply chain problems. Bemp batteries are less reliant on rare earth metals from around the globe and thus will help U.S. national security."

Note: Read about why architects are choosing hemp walls for their superior insulation, resistance to mold and moisture, and environmentally friendly, biodegradable design. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.


Former Navy SEALs Are Diving to Save the Ocean
2025-05-16, Reasons to be Cheerful
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/force-blue-veterans-ocean-conservation/

When Rodolfo "Rudy" Reyes went diving in the Cayman Islands in 2015, the experience changed his life. The highly decorated veteran had logged thousands of dives as a Special Ops Force Recon Marine in 18 years of service. But, as Reyes recalls, "As combat divers we operate at night, pushing 200 pounds of equipment, carrying massive weapons. It's very stressful and we focus on the mission – taking on the enemy." In the Caribbean, Reyes dove for the first time during daytime at his own pace, guided by his friend Jim Ritterhoff, who worked with the Central Caribbean Marine Institute. At the time, Reyes was struggling with depression, post-traumatic stress and substance abuse. "I had a really hard drug habit after all these intense combat tours," he admits, but diving in the Caymans, surrounded by vibrant marine life, reignited a sense of wonder. "It brought me back to life. It inspired the same kind of protective spirit and willingness to go fight in the battlefield that I used in the Marine Corps, but now I wanted to use that passion to fight for ocean conservation." In 2016, Reyes, Ritterhoff and Keith Sahm co-founded Force Blue, a nonprofit that recruits veterans – especially Navy SEALs and Special Operations divers with military dive training – to channel their skills into marine conservation. "We're learning to transfer combat diving expertise into protecting and providing refuge for this incredible aquatic environment," Reyes explains.

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and stories on healing the Earth.


An Experiment in Tribally Owned Internet
2024-02-20, The Nation
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/hoopa-acorn-wireless-native-internet/

In the final bay of an old, mustard-colored mechanic's garage in the middle of the Hoopa Valley Reservation's main settlement is the headquarters of Acorn Wireless. This small, relatively young Internet service provider is owned and operated by the tribe's public utilities department–an unusual arrangement in the United States, where Internet service is more often the purview of predatory corporations like AT&T and Verizon, whose regional monopolies enable them to charge exorbitant rates for uneven service. Before the launch of Acorn, residents had to choose between a HughesNet satellite connection (more than $100 per month), a bare-bones Starlink kit ($600), unreliable wireless hot spots–or, as was often the case, nothing. Download speeds are nearly 75 percent slower in tribal areas, yet the lowest price for basic Internet service is, on average, 11 percent higher. Acorn's operation is based on the idea that local, democratic ownership can help address the coverage disparity by eliminating the profit motive. Because it is owned by the tribe and administered by the tribe's public utilities department, Acorn can focus on equity instead of revenue. Its premium service package is set at $75 a month, [but] most Acorn customers can get service at no personal cost. Hoopa's experiment in public broadband remains a work in progress, embodying hopes (and facing hurdles) that are shared on tribal lands all over the country.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on people-powered alternative systems.


These are the top 3 regrets at the end of life, according to a death doula at the bedside of over 1,000 past patients
2025-04-12, Fortune
https://fortune.com/well/2025/04/12/biggest-life-regrets-death-doula/

She has been at the bedside of over 1,000 people globally in their last moments of life–from her home in the U.S. to Thailand and Zimbabwe. O'Brien, a registered nurse, had an impulse to move into hospice care over two decades ago and has since worked as an oncology nurse and a death doula, supporting those at the end of life. O'Brien's recent book, The Good Death, aims to normalize the realities of death and the need to plan for the end. At the end of life, many people share what they didn't do but knew they always wanted to do, O'Brien says."We all are here for a purpose, and we all have gifts, and when we don't share them and act upon those, that's where the huge regret comes," O'Brien says. Not "dipping into the unknown" or trying something new is a factor of having an abundance mindset, she says. When we consider our time sacred and limited, we are less afraid to take action on something that may excite us. "One of the things we don't know is how many days we have," she says. "When you get that feeling, or you have something that you want to do, don't let your ego, the fear part of you, shut it down." Many people at the end of life regret not being vulnerable enough to let themselves be loved and give love. They often share that they could not reach a level of forgiveness with someone else or themselves, O'Brien says. It's essential to extend ourselves grace, know when to take ownership, and release guilt, she says. O'Brien encourages patients to envision the time they're struggling to let go of and ask themselves if they did what they could in the moment with the information and resources they had.

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories and meaningful lessons from near-death experiences.


‘The Remarkable Life of Ibelin' Review: More Real Than Reality
2024-10-24, New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/movies/the-remarkable-life-of-ibelin-revie...

Benjamin Ree's "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin" ... is a rare and beautiful thing: a moving documentary that excavates the question of the "real" in a profoundly humanistic and unconventional way. [The film] is about Mats Steen, a Norwegian man who died in 2014 at the age of 25. Mats lived out his final years nearly immobilized, the result of being born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Mats left behind something for his family to find: the password to his blog. Robert and Trude, Mats's mother, logged in to leave a note for any readers about his passing. What happened shocked them: They began to receive emails from people all over Europe, an outpouring of love and tribute to Mats, whom everyone called "Ibelin." They were players in World of Warcraft, members of the same guild – or "community of friends," as one participant puts it – which called itself Starlight. Mats played as a burly, friendly man he called Ibelin. Mats, as Ibelin, was involved in other players' lives. A significant friend is Lisette, who lives in the Netherlands and met Mats in the game when they were both teenagers. Another is Xenia-Anni, a Danish mother who struggled to connect with her son Mikkel, in part because of his autism, until they met Mats in the game. Gaming wasn't a distraction, but a life, a place where [Mats] could express all the complex parts of his personality that the physical world couldn't accommodate. All of these people and many others tell Ree that they received wise advice from Ibelin that changed their lives. They built real friendships and had real fights and worried about one another.

Note: Explore more positive human interest stories like this.


After Gaza protests, more colleges try out an old-fashioned ideal: Civility
2025-04-10, Christian Science Monitor
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2025/0410/gaza-protests-civility-ston...

Since the Israel-Hamas war, relationships between some students have been nowhere near brotherly, let alone collegial. Some students just aren't accustomed to contrary or controversial ideas and believe that even hearing them is harmful. What hasn't made headline news is the spike in civil discourse initiatives at campuses. Here's one gauge. At the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, a coalition of College Presidents for Civic Preparedness went from a handful of participants prior to Oct. 7, 2023, to well over 100 afterward. The likes of Harvard, Yale, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor have launched civil discourse initiatives since the deadly Hamas attack that sparked the Israeli invasion of Gaza. One success story is the Dialogue, Inclusion, and Democracy (DID) Lab at Providence College in Rhode Island, run by Dr. Bevely and Professor Nick Longo. "With Mutual Respect" events feature two people on opposing sides of an issue. Panelists don't so much debate as endeavor to foster mutual understanding. In December 2020, Vanderbilt [University's] women's basketball team elected to protest for racial justice by staying inside the locker room during the national anthem. Vanderbilt ... facilitated structured dialogue between the basketball players and military veterans on the Nashville, Tennessee, campus. Some athletes shared experiences of racism and discrimination. Young men and women, some of whom had combat experience, explained why they felt so strongly about serving their country. The culture of civil discourse needs to be rooted in a relationship of trust. "If as a student, I'm challenging something, or I say something controversial, I'm going to have to trust you that you're not excluding me," says [Chancellor] Dr. Diermeier.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and reimagining education.


The Towns That Invent Their Own Money
2025-03-24, Reasons to be Cheerful
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/towns-invent-community-currencies/

Community currencies – alternative forms of money sometimes also referred to as local or regional currencies – are as diverse as the communities they serve, from grassroots time-banking and mutual credit schemes to blockchain-based Community Inclusion Currencies. Local currencies were common until the 19th century, when the newly emerging nation states transitioned to a centralized system of government-issued money as a way of consolidating their power and stabilizing the economy. Far from being a neutral system of exchange, a currency is a tool to achieve certain goals. Inequality and unsustainability are baked into our monetary system, which is based on debt and interest with practically all the money ... being created by private banks when issuing loans. Well-designed community currencies eliminate two main sources of financial inequality: money's perceived inherent value and the interest rates, which both incentivize people to hoard their money. Like the pipes that bring water to your house, money is the conduit that gives you access to goods and services. The value of money is created in the transaction. In 2015 it was estimated that almost 400 of them are active in Spain alone, and across Africa blockchain-backed systems, like the Sarafu in Kenya, help underserved communities do business without conventional money. Elsewhere, local currencies like the Brixton pound in the U.K. or BerkShares in Massachusetts are a way to keep money in the community, buffering it against the pressures of a globalized economy.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.


Meet the woman who lives without money: ‘I feel more secure than when I was earning'
2025-01-31, The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/feb/01/meet-the-woman-who-lives...

In 2015, [Jo] Nemeth had quit her community development job, given the last of her money to her 18-year-old daughter Amy and closed her bank account. "I was 46, I had a good job and a partner I loved, but I was deeply unhappy," Nemeth says. "I'd been feeling this growing despair about the economic system we live in." Her "lightbulb moment" came when her parents ... gave her a book about people with alternative lifestyles. "When I read about this guy choosing to live without money, I thought, ‘Oh my God, I have to do that!'" The first thing Nemeth did was write a list of her needs. "I discovered I really didn't need much to be comfortable. Then I just started ... figuring out how I could meet my needs without having any negative impacts." For the first three years, Nemeth lived on a friend's farm, where she built a small shack from discarded building materials before doing some housesitting and living off-grid for a year in a "little blue wagon" in another friend's back yard. Instead of paying rent, Nemeth cooks, cleans, manages the veggie garden and makes items such as soap, washing powder and fermented foods. And she couldn't be happier. She soon started tapping into the "gift economy" more deeply, giving without expecting anything in return, receiving without any sense of obligation. "That second part took a while to get used to," she says. "It's very different to bartering or trading, which involves thinking in a monetary, transactional way: I'll give you this if you give me that. I actually feel more secure than I did when I was earning money," she says, "because all through human history, true security has always come from living in community and I have time now to build that ‘social currency'. To help people out, care for sick friends or their children, help in their gardens. That's one of the big benefits of living without money."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.


‘It's tough when you see a small child who's wounded': How Bikers Against Child Abuse are making a difference
2024-09-08, Chek News
https://cheknews.ca/its-tough-when-you-see-a-small-child-whos-wounded-how-bik...

Revving their engines, the Bikers Against Child Abuse love to ride, and they love to make a difference by helping children who have been abused. It is about giving them back some of the power balance that has been stolen from them, giving them back some of the childhood that has been stolen from them," says Bikers Against Child Abuse‘s Tom Goudreau, whose road name is ‘Motown'. The Bikers Bikers Against Child Abuse – BACA for short – has chapters all over North America and around the world. Children they help are welcomed in a special ceremony and they can reach out for help whenever they need it. "They get a road name like we have, and two primaries who will be responsible, 24/7, for that child whenever they need it," Motown says. "We'll be there at three o'clock in the morning, if necessary." It's something Motown wishes he had had as a child after being abused by a family member. "A lot of us are survivors," he says. "The number one thing that people say to us around the world is, I wish you were there when I was a kid. That's usually with a tear in their eye. Child abuse is epidemic. We need to face the facts. This happens everywhere. That's why we're in 19 countries around the world because child abuse is everywhere." "It's tough when you see a small child who's wounded, needs help, but when you see them, change from that small child to somebody who's empowered, it's the best feeling in the world," [a member] adds.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


Badass bikers show up for abused children, offering advocacy and protection
2024-07-07, Upworthy
https://www.upworthy.com/bikers-against-child-abuse-biker-family-rp7

When you are a child who has been abused by people who are supposed to protect you, how do you feel safe? That question is the heart of Bikers Against Child Abuse International (B.A.C.A.), an organization dedicated to creating "a safer environment for abused children." With specific training and extensive security checks, the frequently big and burly members of B.A.C.A. serve as protectors of chid abuse survivors. They take a photograph with the child, which the child keeps to remind them that they have family to call on. They serve as escorts when kids feel frightened to go somewhere. They show up at court hearings to help kids feel less intimidated. And check out the B.A.C.A creed to see how dedicated these folks are to this work: "I am a Member of Bikers Against Child Abuse. The die has been cast. The decision has been made. I have stepped over the line. I won't look back, let up, slow down, back away, or be still. My past has prepared me, my present makes sense, and my future is secure. I'm finished and done with low living, sight walking, small planning, smooth knees, colorless dreams, tamed visions, mundane talking, cheap giving, and dwarfed goals. I no longer need pre-eminence, prosperity, position, promotions, plaudits, or popularity. I don't have to be right, first, tops, recognized, praised, regarded, or rewarded. I won't give up, shut up, let up, until I have stayed up, stored up, prayed up, paid up, and showed up for all wounded children."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.


From source to stomach: How blockchain tracks food across the supply chain and saves lives
2024-08-12, World Economic Forum
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/08/blockchain-food-supply-chain/

Efficiently run food supply chains can positively impact communities and lives across the globe. Real-time tracking supports sustainability, prevents food waste, and ensures compliance with environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards. Communication throughout the supply chain can help producers earn fair compensation for their efforts. Traditional approach to food supply chain management face challenges to efficiency, security and transparency. The consequences can be dire, from food waste to death by contamination. Blockchain technology can provide much-needed transparency, traceability and privacy, as well as co-ordination across disparate parties, enabling greater food access and quality improvements across the global supply chain. Built on a blockchain backend, Silal Fresh adopted a comprehensive traceability solution that utilizes consumer apps, a web-based dashboard, and integration with existing supply chain management systems. This significantly improved identifying and flagging delays in their deliveries, as well as increased satisfaction, trust and brand loyalty. They even added tracking to each piece of produce so that a consumer could pick up a vegetable, scan a QR code, and see that food item's journey. Ultimately, increased transparency and traceability can save lives. With improved traceability, food recalls can happen faster, and the source of contamination can be determined quicker.

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