ElderSpirit is an experimental community of older adults committed to spiritual growth, caring for one another, respect for the earth, and service to the larger community. The ElderSpirit Community is an ideal place to retire for the citizens over 55 years old who built this cohousing neighborhood in Abingdon, Virginia. A second ElderSpirit Community is in planning stages because the waiting list for residents is so long…
A Commune for Grownups
Resources for Entrepreneurs
I like the selection of tips for entrepreneurs provided on the Business Week Web site. Regardless of whether you’re just getting started or launching your umpteenth venture. The tipsheets offer lots of subjects from hiring to financing, from Starbucks advice to scoring venture capital funding…
Timber Company Awarded for Protecting Forests
A timber company in Chile won the “Leaders for a Living Planet” award for their conservation efforts protecting their nation’s coastal forests. Masisa’s corporate spokesman said, “Like all companies we are in business to make a profit, but our objective is not to obtain this profit at whatever cost."…
African Billionaire Creates Cash Prize for Worthy African Leaders
An African business leader who sold his cell phone network for $3 billion, has launched a radical new prize for Africa’s presidents, awarding them $5 million when they practice good governance and a pension for life. Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are pledging their support…
Landmark Voting in DR Congo
People in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been voting in one of Africa’s most significant elections for many years. Congolese hope the election will end years of conflict and abuse of power. Incumbent President Joseph Kabila faces ex-rebel Jean-Pierre Bemba… (read more at BBC)
Photographers Double Adoption Rates for Foster Care Kids After Photo Exhibits
The file folders of foster kids are filled with bland pictures unable to express the children for who they are, unique individuals longing to be adopted by a loving family. Photographer Jackie Mathey had the idea to try to capture the soul of a foster child in a unique photo session that could express their distinct personality and capabilities. She then displayed the photos at a public exhibition hoping to inspire the audience toward adoption. Not only was the exhibit effective, it’s been *extremely* effective…
What became known as The Heart Gallery has now become a national movement. Implemented in 40 states, the Heart Gallery has significantly increased adoption rates. In some places, the adoption rate after an exhibition is more than double the nationwide rate of adoption from foster care. At one New Jersey location, there was a 280 percent increase in adoption inquiries, mostly attributed to The Heart Gallery photographs. 
In addition to founding this inspiring movement, Jackie Mathey was so touched by photographing one foster child, Faye, that she and her husband adopted the child in 2003. Faye is now 14 years old and happy to know that she is in a permanent family and a permanent home. (Read more at ABC’s 20/20)
Cristina Frick is a psychology major at Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, and an enthusiastic supporter of the Good News Network.
G is for GNN-i Newsletter Launch
I’m preparing to launch the Good News Network newsletter — a weekly e-mail that will be easy on the eyes and an inspiration to the soul. If you are a registered user at GNN-i, or if you’ve subscribed to the newsletter on our homepage, you’re already on the list to get the first issue. It’ll feature the Top Ten Good News of the Week, which you can forward to your friends, and also weekly advice on how to create a life of good news — a few steps that are certain to improve your outlook, your health and even your prosperity. Sign up now using just your e-mail address. You won’t want to miss the first edition.
Farmers Go Green to Fight Global Warming
A growing number of farmers concerned with the potential effects of global warming are now adopting environmentally friendly farming methods including soil management techniques like no-till plowing, where farmers, plant crops, and turn over the soil without using machines. … "This is about my children and my grandchildren's generation," said one farmer. (AP)
(Thanks to GNN contributor, Neil Berdiev, for submitting the link)
Tough New Law Protects Indian Women From Domestic Violence
A landmark new law seeking to protect women from domestic violence has come into effect in India. The law also bans harassment by way of dowry demands and gives sweeping powers to a magistrate to issue protection orders where needed. Domestic violence, under the new law, includes "actual abuse or the threat of abuse whether physical, sexual, emotional or economic." (BBC)
The Link Between Violence and What We Eat
There is a striking correlation between violence and nutrient in the diet. A clinical trial at the U.S. government’s National Institutes for Health and earlier studies involving people with violent records found that those given supplements have been able for the first time to control their anger and aggression…
The causes of increase in violent crime in the last decades may well be decaying pathways of the brain deadened by the lack of nutrition in the stomach. The story in the Guardian also recalls an earlier study of prisoners from 2002 striking in its results. Yet, surprisingly the discovery caused little stir in the media and no perceivable action from government.
This 2002 GNN story, “The Appleton Revolution” documents the profound benefits witnessed by problem teens when their diet is completely changed and enhanced. It also mentions the 2002 study documenting the effects of multi-vitamins on prisoners. (Guardian)
Wars are on the Wane Worldwide
The world has become dramatically more peaceful since 1992, according to the Human Security Report. The number of wars, coup d’etats, and acts of genocide has declined by 40 percent. Weapons sales between countries have dropped 33 percent during the same time, and the number of refugees has diminished by 45 percent…
The first Human Security Report released in 2005 is an in-depth analysis of world conflict. that documents a dramatic, but largely unknown, decline in the number of wars, genocides and human rights abuse over the past decade. Published by Oxford University Press, the Report argues that the single most compelling explanation for these changes is found in the unprecedented upsurge of international activism and peacekeeping spearheaded by the UN in the wake of the Cold War.
Despite this, the “nature of media reporting” leads many people to believe war is on the rise, says Andrew Mack, director of the University of British Columbia’s Human Security Center, which compiled the report. “If it bleeds, it leads,” he said of the media focus. “You automatically tend to report wars that break out. If conflict quietly peters out, nobody reports it.”
For optimists worldwide, here are some hopeful signs for the future:
– The number of international crises – defined as situations that leaders consider imminently threatening to their countries’ security – has declined by more than two-thirds since 1981, according to the Human Security Report.
– Instances of genocide and mass killings of ideological foes are also down from 10 a year in the early 1990s to one in 2004, according to Barbara Harff, a conflict historian at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. That one is grave, however: It’s in Darfur, Sudan, where Arab militias have killed at least 70,000 black Africans.
– In 1946, 20 nations in the world were democracies, according to the Maryland institute’s Peace and Conflict 2005 report. Today, 88 countries are. Many scholars contend that democracies go to war more slowly and rarely fight one another.
– The number of United Nations peacekeeping operations more than doubled from 1988 to 2005, from seven to 17.
“Until the 1990s, the international community did little to stop wars. Now it does lots,” said Mack. And it’s working, Mack added, citing a report by the Rand Corp., a U.S. research center, that two-thirds of U.N. peacekeeping efforts succeed. (Knight-Ridder)
One Man Has Sent 100,000 Students to College
In a Northern California town, one man, made it possible for anyone who wanted to go to junior college to do so. He created a scholorship fund 60 years ago and to date has sent 100,000 young people to college. This year a check for $5 million financed the education of 5,500 students, some whose grandparents received the same grant, thanks to Frank Doyle. (Morning Edition – audio only)
PC Users Can Slow Climate Change
Don’t just switch off the television, switch off the computer too. Office workers who leave 2 million computers on every night are speeding up climate change, according to new research. One in five British white-collar workers told a survey that they left their computers on at least three times a week. Power stations generating that electricity emit 200,000 tonnes of carbon a year — equivalent to the pollution from all the cars in a city the size of Liverpool. TURN ‘EM OFF! (The Independent via Climate Ark)
When Doctors Say Your Child Will be ‘a Vegetable’
Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-and-son team competing in nearly continuous marathon races. And if they’re not in a marathon they’re competing in a grueling triathlon — a remarkable record of exertion, but all the more powerful when you consider that one half of the team cannot walk or talk.
For the past 25 years Dick, who is 65, has pushed his son, Rick, severely disabled since birth, across hundreds of finish lines to impart to him the feeling of being a participant in sports. It began with an accident at birth and a proclamation that the boy would be “a vegetable” for the rest of his life. The father refused to believe it, and instead, provided every chance for the child to disprove it for himself…
The word can’t does not appear in this family’s vocabulary.
In high school Rick communicated that he wanted to participate in a five-mile benefit run for a local lacrosse player who had been paralyzed in an accident. One problem. Rick could barely move even his head in a wheelchair. Dick was overweight and out of shape, never having run more than a mile in his life. How could he push his son five miles? Well, he tried, and they hobbled across the finish line eventually. That day changed Rick’s life. He told his family that the feeling of being handicapped left him, while we was competing with his dad.
Rick’s realization turned into a whole new set of horizons that opened up for him and his family, as “Team Hoyt” began to compete in more and more events.
Dick had never learned to swim, yet they started training and racing together in triathlons.
“Whenever we are passed (usually on the bike) the athlete will say “Go for it!” or “Rick, help your Dad!” When we pass people (usually on the run) they’ll say “Go Team Hoyt!” or “If not for you, we would not be out here doing this.”
Most of all, perhaps, the Hoyts can see an impact from their efforts in the area of the handicapped, and on public attitudes toward the physically and mentally challenged.
“That’s the big thing,” said Dick. “People just need to be educated. Rick is helping many other families coping with disabilities in their struggle to be included.”
Rick’s own accomplishments, quite apart from the duo’s continuing athletic success, have included his moving on from high school to Boston University, where he graduated in 1993 with a degree in special education.
Rick communicates through pecking letters on a screen with a special type pad using motions with his head.
Rick now works at Boston College’s computer laboratory helping to develop a system codenamed Eagle Eyes, through which mechanical aids (like a powered wheelchair) could be controlled by a paralyzed person’s eye-movements, when linked-up to a computer.
Together the Hoyts don’t only compete athletically; they also go on motivational speaking tours, spreading the Hoyt brand of inspiration to all kinds of audiences, sporting and non-sporting, across the country.
Rick himself is confident that his visibility — and his father’s dedication — perform a forceful, valuable purpose in a world that is too often divisive and exclusionary. He typed a simple parting thought:
“The message of Team Hoyt is that everybody should be included in everyday life.”
Portions of the story taken from the Team Hoyt Web site written by David Tereshchuk, a documentary television producer, who currently works for the United Nations (Full Story on the Who We Are page)
Watch this inspiring video in which, during one of their triathlon competitions, Dick hauls Rick from the boat to the bike, and on to the finish line. Notice Rick’s famous smile and the liveliness in his eyes that told his family at a very early age that there was indeed a whole person inside…
Gates Foundation Gives $23M to Fight HIV in India
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced today that it will be investing $23 million over the next three years to enhance management of India’s HIV prevention response. The Gates Foundation’s India AIDS Initiative, called Avahan, meaning “call to action,” already committed $58 million, part of a five-year, $258 million HIV-prevention program.
The $23 million will focus on two main areas, providing training in management and technical capacity at the national and state levels and enhancement of skills for financial management. Avahan will enhance interventions with key populations (sex workers, clients of sex workers, men who have sex with men, and injecting drug users). The funds will be deployed between 2007–2009.
“This announcement comes at a critical juncture because of the epidemic’s current trajectory,” said Sujatha Rao, Additional Secretary and Director General of NACO.
“The government of India is taking the AIDS challenge seriously, and there’s real hope that a widespread epidemic can be prevented,” said Dr. Yamada, President of the Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program. “We are pleased to continue our commitment to Avahan, and proud to be a partner with the government of India.”
Thanks, David M., for submitting the link! You are an asset to GNN-i!
Microsoft Helps Train Reformed Colombian Fighters in Computers
Microsoft has agreed to donate more than $300,000 to open computer centers where former paramilitary fighters will receive free training for civilian jobs, after a meeting last month in which President Alvaro Uribe solicited Bill Gates’ help in reintegrating 30,000 demobilized paramilitaries into the nation’s economy. (AP)
Jumbo Jet is Eye Hospital for World’s Poor
28 million people in the world are blind, yet their blindness could have been prevented, or their eyesight restored, if only they’d had access to proper eye care — or, a seat on the world’s only jumbo jet outfitted as a Flying Eye Hospital.
Working the runways of the developing world for 25 years, the ORBIS humanitarian jet has eliminated blindness and restored sight to millions.
If the teaching component is estimated, as many as 27.5 million children and adults have benefited as a result of the skills gained by doctors and medical professionals through ORBIS training, then shared among colleagues and passed on to patients.
Many of the world’s leading surgeons donate their time to perform surgery and teach aboard the aircraft. 124,000 health care workers have been trained in more than 80 countries in all facets of eye care and surgeries.
ORBIS has created permanent offices in five priority countries: Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia, India and Vietnam. Country offices are run by local health professionals who are responsible for developing their own regional programs.
On October 9, the ORBIS Flying Eye Hospital landed for the first time in Vietnam. Although ORBIS has worked with Vietnamese authorities and health officials over the past 10 years to support the ophthalmic community in Vietnam, this is the first time the Flying Eye Hospital has actually touched down in the country.
The Associated Press reported on its landing in Danang Vietnam, and the difference it made for patients:
“The results were immediate a day after the surgery when the bandage was removed. She will need glasses, but should now be able to read 5-point type.”
‘Saul!’ she shouted instantly when six fingers were held up 10 feet away.
‘I see everything clear now,’ she said, smiling. ‘I could never see my father so clear.’”
U.S. Mayors Embrace Kyoto Protocol
In the fight against global warming, 320 mayors of U.S. cities have boldly gone where the U.S. government would not — into the forefront with 164 nations to embrace the Kyoto Accord and set targets that will lead to reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels said that even if the federal government did nothing to clean up its act, U.S. mayors could make a difference.
On the day in 2005 when the Kyoto Protocol became law around the world — except in the U.S., where in 2001 President Bush had withdrawn from the treaty — Nickels launched the Climate Protection Initiative and urged heads of other cities to join Seattle in pledging to meet or beat the Kyoto standards, by reducing their heat-trapping gas emissions 7 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.
Seattle was the first to require all its city-owned buildings to be certified green. The buildings, including the new city hall and central library, use less water, less energy and are healthier places to inhabit.
The city’s diesel buses run on veggie oil producing 78 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less air pollution; electric-powered Segways move the meter-reading patrols along Seattle’s streets; its public utility, Seattle City Light, became the first major U.S. electric utility to achieve zero net emissions of greenhouse gases last year.
Big cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Dallas have signed on to Nickels’ Climate Protection Initiative and they are pooling their best ideas to share with smaller cities, everything from how to enact anti-sprawl land-use policies to how to green the roofs of your buildings.
A report by AP yesterday features all sorts of programs run by U.S. cities trying to meet the Kyoto standards:
Lincoln, Neb., is now running its public buses on biodiesel, has begun operating wind turbines at its electric utility and has established miles of bike and pedestrian trails. Lexington, Ky., has replaced incandescent traffic signal bulbs with more energy-efficient LED ones, added hybrid cars to its municipal fleet and began picking up trash just once a week to trim vehicle emissions. In Salt Lake City, stricter guidelines aimed at making public buildings green have been passed and wind energy is being more widely used. And, many cities have partnered with businesses to meet their goals…
Dubai Tours Offer Positive View of Islam
With tensions high between the Western and Islamic worlds, Dubai's leaders are funding mosque tours for Western visitors that aim to clear up misconceptions about Islam, especially that the religion condones violence. The tours have become hugely popular and have grown from irregular gatherings of a dozen people to five-times-weekly tours of a hundred or more. (AP via Forbes)
Hearts Open to Donate Fire Equipment a World Away
An entire marketplace burned to the ground in the poor West African country of Guinea-Bissau because they didn’t have a working fire engine.
The news reached the town of Plymouth, Mass, in the USA, which happened to have some used fire trucks hanging around — and an ambulance too.
Some local people bought the trucks, the fire department donated some hoses, and off they were shipped half way round the globe to people they didn’t even know.
A member of the Guinea Bissau fire force stands proudly watching over the country’s new fire engine, donated and outfitted by Plymouth, Mass. fire departments.