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Surfing Dog Rescues Kids, the Most Generous Bride, School Gardens Give Hope to Poor
Inspiring News Articles
September 18, 2015

Hey awesome friends,

Surfing Dog Rescues Kids, Most Generous Bride

Below are key excerpts of inspiring news articles with great information on the surfing dog that teamed up with a quadriplegic teenager to raise money for the teen's physical therapy, the most generous bride on Earth, how school gardens are helping children in developing nations, and more.

Each inspiring excerpt is taken verbatim from the media website listed at the link provided. If any link fails, click here. The key sentences are highlighted in case you just want to skim. Please spread the inspiration and have a great one!

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Meet the surfing therapy dog named Ricochet
June 14, 2014, New York Post
http://nypost.com/2014/06/14/meet-the-surfing-therapy-dog-named-ricochet/

Judy Fridono tells of how her dog Ricochet failed out of traditional service-dog training only to reveal a hidden talent: surfing with children with special needs. Fridono reveals the first time Ricochet hopped on a surfboard with Patrick Ivison, a quadriplegic teenager who surfed on his own with the help of a team of humans. Fridono had planned to make a video of Ricochet and Patrick surfing side-by-side, each on their own boards, to help raise money for Patrick’s treatment, but Ricochet had another idea. She wanted to surf tandem with Patrick. “Patrick, she wants to surf with you,” I said, not knowing where the words came from. “That’d be cool!” Patrick grinned. Here was a boy with a disability and I was asking him and his mother and their assembled team to put their trust in a dog. “All I can do is trust Ricochet to know what she’s doing,” I told them. “Can you trust my dog?” I asked 14-year-old Patrick. “Sure! Let’s do it!” he answered without hesitation. Patrick’s team lifted Patrick onto the board first. Then, we let Ricochet hop on the board, and she positioned herself. The team pushed Ricochet and Patrick out on the board together. Then, in one incredible moment, Ricochet and Patrick were surfing together on the same board, riding a wave of hope that changed their lives forever. Thanks to Ricochet’s fundraising, Patrick was able to get physical therapy at an innovative rehabilitation center for spinal cord injuries. In 2012, he walked across the stage at his high school graduation.

Note: Judy Fridono's book about this surfing dog is titled “Ricochet: Riding a Wave of Hope With the Dog Who Inspires Millions”.


The Most Generous Bride on Earth: Couple Feeds 4,000 Syrian Refugees on Their Wedding Day
August 4, 2015, The Daily Beast
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/04/the-most-generous-bride-of-earth...

A couple in Turkey ... doled out food to 4,000 Syrian refugees for their wedding reception. The bride wore an elaborate white dress, with a tiara perched on her headdress, and the groom sported a white tuxedo with black trim. They stood behind large food trucks distributing meals to hungry Syrians. The couple had decided that instead of hosting their friends and family for a traditional banquet reception, they would feed the victims of a bloody civil war next door. The idea came from the groom’s father, who volunteers for a Turkish relief organization called Kimse Yok Mu (KYM). For the past few years, KYM has distributed daily meals to the thousands of impoverished Syrians who’ve flooded across the nearby border. He approached a representative of the organization and proposed that the family would cover part of the costs of feeding refugees for the day. His son ... was surprised by the prospect, but [was] soon won over. “When he told that to the bride she was really shocked because, you can imagine, as a bride you wouldn’t think about this — it’s all about you and your groom,” says Hatice Avci, the international communications manager for KYM. “In southeastern Turkey there is a real culture of sharing with people in need. They love to share their food, their table, everything they have. That’s why the bride also accepted. And afterwards she was quite amazed about it.” So, they arrived at KYM’s distribution center on Thursday to spend the day serving food and taking photographs with their grateful recipients.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


School gardens fight hunger in developing countries
September 2, 2015, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/Change-Agent/2015/0902/School-gardens...

A school garden is a holistic investment in a child’s future. By raising awareness of healthy eating, gardens can combat ... hunger and micronutrient deficiencies. A school meal provides strong incentive to send a child to school. Once in school, a well-fed child is both less likely to drop out and more likely to focus on lessons. Children who learn creative agricultural techniques can handle situations that might have caused community-wide food shortages in the past. A number of flourishing programs provide excellent examples: Belize’s GATE program, organized by Plenty Belize, has a long-term program to help schools develop organic school gardens. Some of its schools ... are now processing food with solar dryers and canning equipment. South Africa’s EduPlant program supports schools with new gardens for two years until they can manage on their own. EduPlant also organizes workshops for educators, produces education materials, and runs an annual competition for learners’ projects. Uganda’s garden-based education, a large part of the country’s school curricula, is already producing tangible benefits such as practical agricultural skills, reduced school tuition, and improved health. Kenya’s School Garden Initiative has established 11 school gardens. While working in the gardens, children learn fine arts, math, science, history, language, and nutrition. School gardens ... instill strength and confidence by demonstrating the possibility of immediate self-reliance, empowering children in the way all schools should.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Sarah Chayes battles a worldwide scourge: deep-rooted corruption
August 13, 2015, Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Making-a-difference/2015/0813/Sarah-Chayes-battles...

Sarah Chayes ... was a correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio and was assigned in 2001 to cover post-Taliban Afghanistan. But she soon decided to put aside her reporting career [to] become a key player in the attempt to bring about a sea change in US foreign policy by showing how what some see as an innocuous crime – corruption – is actually a serious threat to international security. She has seen it at work not only in Afghanistan but in other places with violent insurgencies, such as Syria, Nigeria, and Iraq. In Afghanistan, the government “was really a criminal organization masquerading as a government,” she says. “Its objective was amassing personal wealth, and it was doing this very well.” The United States had aligned itself ... with a corrupt system by working through corrupt proxies and providing them with funds and other assets, she says. This made the US no longer a neutral player in the eyes of those being harmed by corrupt practices. In 2007 Chayes wrote a book, “The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban,” that showed how the corruption and “warlordism” in Afghanistan was supported by the US. It was read by academics and by those at high levels of the US military. In his final testimony to the US Senate, [former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael] Mullen pointed to systemic corruption as the No. 1 challenge undermining US efforts in the region: Chayes’s issue had finally entered the conversation of high-level US decisionmakers.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


US Researchers Develop 'Chrysalin,' Drug That Mitigates The Deadly Effects Of Nuclear Radiation
August 24, 2015, International Business Times
http://www.ibtimes.com/us-researchers-develop-chrysalin-drug-mitigates-deadly-effects...

In recent times, the potentially dangerous effects of exposure to the nuclear radiation and disasters have become an issue of serious concern among the developed nations. With an aim to find a relief for those who are exposed to such radiation, a U.S. research team claims to have discovered the drug that can potentially reduce the deadly effects of nuclear radiation. The study, which appears in the Laboratory Investigation, a journal in the Nature publishing group, shows that taking a single dose of a regenerative peptide called "Chrysalin" significantly increases the survival rate. The research team ... claims that taking a single injection of the synthetic peptide 24 hours after exposure to the potentially toxic nuclear radiation counteracts the damage to the gastrointestinal system of the mice, which in turn delays the mortality. “The current results suggest that the peptide may be an effective emergency nuclear countermeasure that could be delivered within 24 hours after exposure to increase survival and delay mortality, giving victims time to reach facilities for advanced medical treatment,” researcher Carla Kantara said in a statement. Chrysalin, a 23-amino acid peptide, was artificially produced by the researcher to stimulate repair of the bones and muscle and skin cells. During previous studied, [Chrysalin] has shown to improve proper blood flow for repair of tissues, reduce inflammation and cell death.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.


What happens when people are forced to stare into the eyes of a stranger for a whole minute?
June 8, 2015, Daily Mail (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3129104/Social-experiment-sees-people-forced...

The incredible reactions of people intentionally sharing a silent moment of eye contact with strangers has been filmed as part of a social experiment in Australia. In the video ... the public is asked where the human connection has gone, and invites people to share eye contact with strangers for one minute to find out. As people share a very personal moment with each other, they can be seen unexpectedly tearing up, sharing a smile or a hug. The public experiment was created by the Liberators International, an organisation which according to their personal webpage work to 'inspire humanity to share acts of freedom, love and kindness with one other.' The organisation was founded by Peter Sharp, an artist with the mission to create social art which engages communities in playful acts and in sharing acts of love and kindness with one another. Curious onlookers look baffled as the watch the voluntary participants get emotional and shed a tear before hugging each other. On their Facebook page, Liberators International wrote ‘In this experiment we discover what happens when we intentionally share eye contact with strangers… We had no idea how quickly things would escalate!’ Through the unique experiment, strangers can be seen sharing a smile and a laugh with one other, breaking the ice that ordinarily exist between strangers today.

Note: Watch a very sweet two-minute video of this unusual gift. And check out some of the other playful and inspiring experiments done by Liberators International.


Learning To Not Know
August 30, 2015, Daily Good
http://www.dailygood.org/story/1116/learning-to-not-know-awakin-call-transcript/

The seven core assumptions are [a] set of beliefs [from the inspiring book] "Heart Of Hope." The first assumption is that the true self in everyone is good, wise and powerful. [The] second assumption is that the world is profoundly interconnected. You CANNOT disconnect. The third one is this idea that ... every one of us is born with a fundamental inclination to be in good relationship with others. No matter what happens to you or what you do, that's still there. That's a part of human nature. The fourth is, all humans have gifts. Everyone is needed for what they bring. Fifth, everything we need to make positive change is already here. We can find ways to access that together. Sixth, Human beings are holistic. You just cannot work [just] with the mind, or just with the body. Human beings have these other aspects, the emotional side, the spiritual side. When we are not paying attention to those, they always impact us sideways and we don't really understand what's going on. The seventh is this idea that in order to live from this core self that represents the best in us, we have to practice. All of these things build on each other and can become habits of how you show up in the world. But only if you practice.

Note: Listen to the complete 84 minute audio interview with prominent social justice advocate Kay Pranis at the link above.


‘Rosenwald’ offers timely lessons in wealth management
August 27, 2015, Boston Globe
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/movies/2015/08/27/rosenwald-offers-timely-lessons...

Something changed in America between the time of Julius Rosenwald’s death in 1932 and the current presidential election cycle, in which a billionaire leads one party’s polls by spreading what his detractors see as a message of greed, xenophobia, and entitlement. Owner of the retailing giant Sears, Roebuck & Co., Rosenwald was the son of an immigrant who started out as a door-to-door peddler and, through hard work and opportunities, opened his own store ... and became very rich. Why has nobody heard of him? He wasn’t a big self-promoter and he didn’t think wealth marked him as exceptional. In an archival film snippet in Aviva Kempner’s artless but essential documentary, “Rosenwald,” he is heard to say, “Don’t be fooled by believing that because a man is rich he is necessarily smart. There is ample proof to the contrary.” Now imagine those words uttered by certain billionaires today. Rosenwald was not just humble and wise. Despite his canny capitalism, he was what might today be called a socialist. He believed in spreading the wealth - or at least his own. He believed in social justice and racial equality. He quietly spent millions building more than 5,000 schools (monickered affectionately “Rosenwald schools”) for African-American children in the South. He befriended Booker T. Washington and generously endowed the great black educator’s Tuskegee Institute. For decades his Rosenwald Fellowships benefited gifted people such as Marian Anderson, Ralph Bunche, and James Baldwin.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


Corbynomics: Quantitative Easing for People (PQE)
July 9, 2015, Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/adnan-aldaini/quantitative-easing_b_8095758.html

What is termed Corbynomics is Jeremy Corbyn's proposal that: "The Bank of England to be given a new mandate to upgrade our economy to invest in new large scale housing, energy, transport and digital projects: Quantitative Easing for people instead of banks." The money to fund these projects will be created electronically by the Bank of England. Only 3% of the money in circulation is in the form of coins and notes; the remaining, 97%, is created electronically by private banks every time they make a loan and by the bank of England under its Quantitative Easing programme. The recovery in the British economy thus far has been mainly based on inflating property and financial assets prices. The Bank of England has created £375bn, following the 2008 economic crash, that went into banks and financial markets through the buying of existing government bonds (Quantitative Easing for banks). Positive Money calculates that only 8% of that money went into the real economy, with the rest trapped in financial markets, inflating financial assets and property prices, and benefiting the top 5%. This has been money creation that creates bubbles in the economy, and when they burst, the fall out can devastate the lives of millions. Quantitative easing for people (PQE), in contrast, will bypass the financial markets and private banks with the money channelled through a National Investment Bank into the areas that Britain needs. This seems ... less risky to the economy than conventional Quantitative Easing.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


The end of coal is near
September 3, 2015, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/The-end-of-coal-is-near-6483929.php

We are witnessing the end of an era. Coal is fast becoming the telegraph to renewable energy’s Internet. The fossil-fuel divestment movement, which began just three years ago, is having an impact. Institutional investors representing nearly $1 trillion of portfolio value, including Stanford University, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, have committed to divest from coal. In California, legislation passed Wednesday that would require several of the state’s largest pension funds to divest from coal as well. Coal’s contribution to global warming has led Pope Francis, Prince Charles and the Dalai Lama to call for a transition to clean energy. While coal remains America’s largest source of electricity generation, over the past six years coal-fired generation has declined from 52 to 34 percent of our electricity portfolio. Renewable energy, which made up just 12 percent of California’s generation in 2008, now provides more than 25 percent of the state’s power. California is on track to reach Gov. Jerry Brown’s goal of 50 percent renewable energy by 2030. As a result of this progress, there are now more Californians working in the solar industry than working for the state’s utilities. The United States now has twice as many solar industry employees as coal miners. Exporting our know-how to the world, which needs to get off coal too, will be our next big business. Now is indeed the time to divest our pension funds from coal, cut the cord from this piece of our past and hasten our transition to a clean energy future.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


These Former Debt Collectors Decided to Ditch the Industry, Buy Up Medical Debt, and Forgive It
August 17, 2015, Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/these-former-debt-collectors-decided-to-ditch...

When Paola Gonzalez received a phone call from RIP Medical Debt, she was certain what she heard was a mistake. A prank, maybe. The caller said a $950 hospital bill had been paid for in full. She wouldn’t have to worry about it again. “They wanted to pay a bill for me,” she said. “I was just speechless.” The 24-year-old student ... has lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease. “I can’t always work,” Gonzalez said. “I’ll be fine today and sick tomorrow. It’s really amazing that people would help out like this.” Gonzalez is one of many people who have had a debt paid by RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit founded by two former debt collectors, Jerry Ashton and Craig Antico, that buys debt on the open market and then abolishes it, no strings attached. In [its first] year, the group has abolished just under $400,000. On July 4, it launched a year-long campaign to ... abolish $17.6 million of other people’s debt. It works like this: typical collection agencies will buy debts from private practices, hospitals, and other collection agencies. The buyers often [purchase] a debt for pennies on the dollar while charging the debtor the full amount, plus additional fees. Antico and Ashton are plugged into the same marketplace. They buy the debt for around one percent of the amount it's worth. Then, they forgive it. Ashton worked in the debt collections business for more than 30 years. The industry treated debts as “commodities” and sold them for a profit while the debtor struggled to pay off the full amount. “That I find to be unconscionable,” says Ashton.

Note: Ashton was inspired to rethink debt by Rolling Jubilee, a program that came out of the Occupy Wall Street movement which similarly abolishes student loan debt.


How the Social Mission of Ben & Jerry’s Survived Being Gobbled Up
August 21, 2015, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/business/how-ben-jerrys-social-mission-survived...

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield founded their gourmet ice creamery in 1978 ... to make the world’s best ice cream, to run a financially successful company and to “make the world a better place.” When Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods conglomerate, offered to buy the company in 2000 for a rich 25 percent premium ... they worried that Unilever would abandon the progressive aspects of the business. But as a public corporation, Ben & Jerry’s had a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. It agreed to a deal. Very quickly, some of their worst fears were realized. A production plant and a distribution center were shuttered. Sales representatives at headquarters were fired. But today ... Ben & Jerry’s [remains] as mission-driven as ever. The recipe for this amicable partnership was written into the acquisition agreement. Unilever established an “external board” charged with overseeing Ben & Jerry’s culture and social mission [that] does not report to any authority other than itself, nominates its own members, has the right to sue Unilever and will exist in perpetuity. Even with the external board in place, a question remained: How many of Ben & Jerry’s ambitious initiatives could a multinational like Unilever reasonably be expected to support? The answer, it turned out, was most of them. The company now offers its lowest-paid workers more than twice the national minimum wage. It uses only cage-free eggs. And recently, Ben & Jerry’s became a B Corporation, [to certify its] high social and environmental standards.

Note: Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


On Rooftops of Paris, Expect Green Roofs and Solar Panels
August 19, 2015, Yes! Magazine
http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/france-green-roofs-law-solar-panels-20150819

Green rooftops will soon be sprouting up across France, thanks to a new law passed in March. New buildings in the country’s commercial zones - think shops, offices, and restaurants - must now have either solar panels or green roofs, meaning a growing medium such as soil and a covering of vegetation. The new rooftop vegetation will provide habitat for birds, absorb airborne pollutants, [retain] rainwater, and reduce the urban heat island effect whereby high concentrations of concrete buildings and asphalt increase air temperature. Green roofs could even improve worker productivity, with a recent study by the University of Melbourne finding that participants who took a 40-second break to look at a green roof were more focused and accurate when they got back to work compared to those who viewed a concrete roof. Similar green-roof bylaws exist in various cities around the world, including Tokyo, Toronto, Copenhagen, and Zurich. In Toronto ... all commercial and large residential buildings built since 2009 have been required to have at least 20 percent green-roof coverage. In Copenhagen and Zurich all new flat roofs, both private and public, must be vegetated. And since 2001, all new buildings in Tokyo larger than about 11,000 square feet are required to have at least 20 percent usable green-roof space. However, France is the first to introduce such legislation country-wide. The new law means that France’s urban and industrial skylines might look more like New York City’s booming rooftop farms and less like a concrete jungle.

Note: Don't miss the inspiring photos of innovative green roofs at the link above. Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.


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