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.
Jen Taylor-O'Connor grew up in what she calls a "garden variety Christian" home, though things changed when her family enrolled her in the Institute in Basic Life Principles, led by disgraced minister Bill Gothard, as a teen. And now, decades after breaking free from IBLP – which Taylor-O'Connor, 45, refers to as a "cult" – she's opening up about how her pet parrots helped her heal in the documentary Parrot Kindergarten. The film looks at Taylor-O'Connor's ongoing research on animal communication and the establishment of her Parrot Kindergarten program, which helps teach other bird parents what she's learned. She recalls first being drawn to birds as a way to help combat feelings of loneliness and navigate the trauma she'd experienced as a child. Though she'd had other birds before, when Taylor-O'Connor brought home her parrot Ellie, who is at the center of the documentary, she noticed that the bird was exhibiting anger and frustration. She found herself relating to Ellie and wondering how to help. "I didn't want her to experience what I had felt from my training center experiences, which is you just keep it all inside and then it bubbles out in harder ways. I wanted her to always have a voice," she says. "So, that's how it began to spur me into â€What does it look like for her to communicate? What does it look like for other animals to communicate?'" As a result, she started teaching Ellie tricks and saw her demeanor totally change as she developed a love of learning.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on human interest and animal wonders.
"These plants are the winners, the ones that get to pass their genes on [to future generations]," says Lee DeHaan of the Land Institute, an agricultural non-profit based in Salina, Kansas. If DeHaan's breeding programme maintains its current progress, the descendant of these young perennial crop plants could one day usher in a wholesale revolution in agriculture. The plants are intermediate wheatgrass. Since 2010, DeHaan has been transforming this small-seeded, wild species into a high-yielding, domesticated grain crop called Kernza. He believes it will eventually be a viable – and far more sustainable – alternative to annual wheat, the world's most widely grown crop and the source of one in five of all calories consumed by humanity. Remarkably, DeHaan does not paint the current agricultural-industrial complex as the enemy. "Every disruptive technology is always opposed by those being disrupted," he says. "But if the companies [that make up] the current system can adjust to the disruption, they can play in that new world just the same." The Land Institute's strategy is redirection rather than replacement. "Our trajectory is to eventually get the resources that are currently dedicated to annual grain crops directed to developing varieties of perennials," says DeHaan. "That's our [route to] success." There are signs that this is already working, with the food firm General Mills now incorporating Kernza into its breakfast cereals.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on healing the Earth and technology for good.
Wade Milyard heard the voice from "out of nowhere" and knew he needed to listen–he thought it was God, or some other higher power. The former canine officer for the Frederick Police Department in Maryland was responding to a domestic dispute at a homeless camp. Soon after he investigated the disturbance, the voice rang out. "Ask them about their laundry." Milyard heeded the voice, asked the question, and unknowingly set the course for a prayer-fulfilling future. The homeless couple he interviewed told him they typically washed their laundry in a nearby creek. The cop never forgot that response, nor his call to service. He pooled multiple donations with some of his own money and went to work creating a full service laundromat on wheels. Fresh Step Laundry was born–with a mission "to help restore dignity to the unhoused community by providing free, accessible, and hygienic laundry." Since retiring from the police force in January, the 45-year-old has been traveling around his Maryland city, which is near D.C., making a difference–one load of wash at a time. He's set a schedule so people can meet him to take advantage of his laundry service, and his email is at the bottom of the web page. In the last several weeks alone, Fresh Step has washed more than 2,000 pounds of laundry and his next goal is to add a second vehicle so he can double the number of people he can serve.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on human interest stories and healing social division.
It began in the small Catalan town of Taradell as a plan to provide local people with allotments where they could grow their own food. Four activists came together with the aim of promoting good environmental practices in local agriculture and business, as well as supplying renewable energy. The town has a strong tradition of community action, and as the initiative gathered momentum, the activists formed a cooperative, Taradell Sostenible, which now has 111 members and supplies power to more than 100 households. These include some of the area's most vulnerable citizens, says Eugeni Vila, the coop's president. "The question was how could people with few resources join the coop when membership costs â‚Ź100," says Vila. "We agreed that people designated as poor by the local authority could join for only â‚Ź25 and thus benefit from the cheap electricity we generate." The [Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy]'s policy aims to bring cheap electricity to households suffering from pobreza energĂ©tica (fuel poverty) who cannot afford the upfront cost of installing solar panels – typically â‚Ź5,000-6,000 for each household. "We've developed a formula to help people who are struggling to get by through incorporating them into a network that helps them to improve their situation," [Vila] says. "We've taken advantage of the EU Sun4All scheme to develop a system to assess who are the vulnerable families, and not just in terms of fuel poverty."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this in on healing the Earth.
Reducing stress and softening the sharper edges of anxiety in this way are beginners' steps when it comes to the practice of meditation. Put in the hours, though, and you may well reach the deep end: a place where radical, long-lasting upgrades to how you feel and what you experience are possible. Now, these mental transformations are being examined and understood by neuroscientists at world-leading institutions. Matthew Sacchet [is the] director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School. His team works hand in hand with advanced meditators, such as Buddhist monks, exploring how the material brain changes because of subjective experiences that are often considered spiritual in nature. Using state-of-the-art brain scanners, his team pinpoints the neural changes that occur across a variety of deep meditative practices. Beyond mindfulness-related stress reduction, advanced practitioners report experiences of ecstatic bliss, deep insights into their own minds, radical compassionate states and prosocial ways of being, and even shifts in their fundamental sense of self. Advanced meditators sometimes report states of consciousness that are described as deeply peaceful, mentally clear or subjectively non-dual – meaning there is no perceived distinction between self and other. These aren't just subjective reports: we observe changes in the brain that support their existence.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality.
In Colombia, compulsory military service has been a burden that generations of young men have had to face for more than 200 years. Since 1991, the Mennonite Christian Association for Justice, Peace and Nonviolent Action – Justapaz - has walked another path. We are a team that has been telling the country for more than three decades that young people were not born for war. That compulsory military service is not a patriotic duty, but an injustice. And, most importantly, that there is another way to serve the â€homeland'. At first, we campaigned for young people to have the right to conscientious objection. In 2016, we decided to go further: to work together with other social, youth and political organisations for the creation of the Social Service for Peace – an alternative service that trades weapons for tools and military discipline for social projects that transform lives. In 2024, our campaign was successful, and the service will be gradually implemented from 2025. Imagine this: instead of an 18-year-old learning to shoot a rifle, you see him teaching reading in a rural school. Instead of long days in barracks, you see him helping to build houses in a conflict-affected community. Instead of preparing his mind for war, you see him learning about human rights, about reconciliation, about how to heal wounds that are not just physical. That's Social Service for Peace. This programme is now codified in law.
Note: War destroys, yet these powerful real-life stories show that we can heal, reimagine better alternatives, and plant the seeds of a global shift in consciousness to transform our world. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.
There are two people on the Zoom screen in front of me. One, a Palestinian man in the ancient city of Jericho in the West Bank. The other, an Israeli woman in Tel Aviv. They're separated, literally and metaphorically, by a wall. And they're united in loss: specifically, the loss of a child. Something else unites them: a determination to build bridges of shared understanding at a time when the gulf between their peoples seems deeper than ever. They're both part of the Parents Circle – Families Forum (PCFF), membership of which has the grimmest of qualifications: that your child has been killed in the conflict. Their backgrounds could not be more different, and yet, partly because of their loss, they've arrived in the same place. The fighting has to end, and bereaved parents are better placed than most to achieve that. "Before you start to talk [in those meetings]," says [parent Bassam] Aramin, "you can see in their eyes the fear – even hatred – for this Arab, this â€terrorist'. And after you finish your human story, suddenly there is no fear. Suddenly there is empathy. Some of them cry. Some of them want to shake your hand. This is, as Robi always calls it, our â€emotional breakthrough'." â€Robi' is Robi Damelin, now director of international relations for the PCFF. Born and raised in a comfortable home in South Africa, she followed in a family tradition – her uncle had helped defend Mandela in his first treason trial – by speaking out against apartheid.
Note: War destroys, yet these powerful real-life stories show that we can heal, reimagine better alternatives, and plant the seeds of a global shift in consciousness to transform our world. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the war machine.
"Delete Day," organized by several Gen Z-led groups, called on young people to excise an addictive app from their lives, starting, for now, with their phones. The event was not heavily promoted on social media, unsurprisingly, and minimally online. Instead, attendees relied on more old-school methods, like word-of-mouth. They decorated the park's entrance with chalk signs like "Delete your apps on the grass" and gave out hand-drawn stickers and pamphlets detailing how to save their data before nixing accounts on apps like Instagram. When they were ready, they could take a seat on the lawn, on picnic blankets, with candles, glow lights, and a living room lamp. The event, which drew about 80 participants, featured a few short speeches from the organizers, the deletion ritual, and a no-phones party. Nick Plante, 25, one of the speakers who organizes events around "attention activism" in the city, [said] that the night's tone was meant to be positive. The idea was to bring people together organically. "We wanted to really, really get in on a couple of people and change their lives very deeply," [said grad student Gabriela] Nguyen. Speakers shared their own struggles of growing up with social media, from being distracted at school to living with looming self-consciousness. "If you're like me, you've canceled on a friend because the pull to just stay at home and chill with all your devices is just too strong," Nguyen said.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.
The urban tree canopy in Denver is one of the sparsest in the country. In 2020, when Linda Appel Lipsius became executive director of the decades-old Denver Urban Gardens (DUG) network, which oversees more than 200 community vegetable gardens throughout six metro Denver counties, she wanted to continue increasing community access to fresh food–a longtime goal of the garden program. But she had another aim, too: increasing the city's tree coverage. Appel Lipsius decided to build a system of food forests throughout the Denver area. These dense, layered plantings incorporate fruit-bearing trees with other perennials to mimic natural forests. Now, DUG oversees 26 food forests, with 600 or so fruit and nut trees and 600 berry bushes. While urban trees are recognized for their multiple benefits, including cooling and carbon drawdown, "there are not a lot of players in Denver, or even in most cities around the country, who are focused on food trees," Appel Lipsius said. "We were able to step into this space to help build and bolster the canopy while adding food-producing perennials." Neighbors are welcome to enter and harvest a wide assortment of fruits, nuts, and berries. Beyond providing fresh food in neighborhoods that need it most, these agroforests reduce the urban heat island effect, create pollinator habitat, and combat pollution and climate change by absorbing and filtering harmful gases.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth.
Oregon has for years struggled with a drug crisis, reporting one of the highest rates of substance use disorders in the US and ranking last in the nation for access to treatment. The problem is systemic, rooted in decades of failure to invest in the level of behavioral health services needed for people with mental illnesses and addiction. The Pacific north-west state's significant affordable housing shortage has compounded the challenges, as people languish on the streets without care. On 12 November 2024, Cameron Washam, 45, was lying on the street by Portland's Union Station, on the brink of death. He and his wife, Christina Bell, 47, had long struggled with homelessness and addiction. Workers from a Portland street outreach initiative coordinated by the Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon (MHAAO), a non-profit dedicated to peer recovery services, approached and offered help, saying they could immediately take them to a detox program. They entered detox, Washam got emergency surgery for his infection, and after eight days, they were placed in an outpatient program, then a sober recovery home. The outreach effort [is] called the Provider-Police Joint Connection Program. Since its launch, the program has connected 1,005 people to services, including 651 who received access to programs on the same day outreach teams met them and 159 who got into detox and treatment.
Note: Explore more positive stories on healing our bodies and repairing criminal justice.
The cafeteria at Ballard High School during lunch is a loud place. Students are talking and laughing, playing card games and going out to the courtyard for an informal recess. This year the high school in Louisville instituted a cellphone ban from "bell to bell" – meaning, not just during instructional time, as is now required by state law in Kentucky, but also during lunch and time between classes. Kentucky joins a growing number of states, schools and districts that have been implementing new phone bans. In the first month of school this year, students took out 67 percent more books than the same month last year. "Even my library aides who do the bulk of the circulating were like, â€Gosh, there's a lot of kids checking out books,'" said Stephanie Conrad, the school's librarian. Conrad was prepared for the uptick in library use because of similar phenomena at other schools that instituted cellphone bans, but she said it has still been exciting to see how much kids are reading – and engaging more with their peers. "Like, a minute or two of downtime with kids, they used to have their phone. They were kind of in this little cellphone cocoon. Very quiet, not interacting," Conrad said. And now – "it's wonderful. They're interacting, and they're not isolated online." Neuss, the principal, acknowledges that ... most students would still prefer to have their phones during lunch, but from where he sits, they look like they're having more fun without them.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining education.
Having a sense of purpose in life may help people live longer. Now, new research from the University of California in Davis shows that having a sense of purpose in life may have another benefit as people age: reducing the risk of dementia. The new study ... found that people who reported a higher sense of purpose in life were about 28% less likely to develop cognitive impairment–including mild cognitive impairment and dementia. The protective effect of having a purpose was seen across racial and ethnic groups. It also remained significant even after accounting for education, depression, and the APOE4 gene, which is a known risk factor for Alzheimer's disease. "Our findings show that having a sense of purpose helps the brain stay resilient with age," said Aliza Wingo, senior author. "Even for people with a genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease, sense of purpose was linked to a later onset and lower likelihood of developing dementia." The findings support the idea that psychological well-being plays a key role in healthy aging, said Thomas Wingo, a co-author of the study. Wingo hopes future studies will explore whether purpose-building interventions can help prevent dementia. "What's exciting about this study is that people may be able to â€think' themselves into better health. Purpose in life is something we can nurture," he said. "It's never too early – or too late – to start thinking about what gives your life meaning."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on amazing seniors and healing our bodies.
Farmers Alberto GĂłmez, JosĂ© Castillo and Javier Castillo arrive with their selected seeds, stored in shigras – hand-woven shoulder bags – as has been done for generations. In San Lorenzo, they call themselves "seed guardians" for their role in protecting this living heritage and passing it down the generations. [They] are among the farmers supporting draft legislation, under review by the lower house of the Colombian parliament, that would ban genetically modified (GM) seeds, which they claim threaten their traditions, livelihoods and food sovereignty. The initiative has the backing of Indigenous, peasant and environmental organisations, but faces opposition from agribusiness and sectors that support GM. In San Lorenzo, the rejection of GM seeds evolved into organised political opposition after people detected the use of such seeds in nearby crops in 2012. They then feared that GM seeds might cross-pollinate with their native varieties, altering their traits and threatening their ability to preserve them. The alarm prompted them to act. They travelled from village to village, hosted workshops, collected 1,300 signatures and drafted a citizen-led proposal. The initiative was backed by the Seed Guardians of Life Network, a national platform comprising farming and environmental groups, as well as local collectives and the municipal government. It was formally submitted to the town council. In 2018, San Lorenzo declared itself a GMO-free territory.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and healing the Earth.
California has long led the way on school meals. In 2022, it became the first state in the country to make school meals free for all students, regardless of income. Many districts have implemented farm-to-school programs to bring local foods into the cafeteria. And last year, months before the "Make America healthy again" movement would make its way to the White House, it became the first state in the nation to ban six synthetic food dyes from school meals. This week, it passed legislation that will put it in the lead on school meals in yet another way – banning ultra-processed foods. On Friday, California lawmakers passed a bill that will define, and then ban, ultra-processed foods from school meals. Ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, are industrially formulated products that are often high in fats, starches, sugars and additives, and make up 73% of the US food supply today. The text of California's new law defines a UPF as any food or beverage that contains stabilizers, thickeners, propellants, colors, emulsifiers, flavoring agents, flavor enhancers, nonnutritive sweeteners or surface-active agents – and has high amounts of saturated fat, sodium or added sugar, or nonnutritive sweeteners. "We actually had food service directors come in and testify," [state assembly member Jesse Gabriel] said. "Not only had it not cost them more, but in many districts they had actually saved money by switching to healthier alternatives."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies and reimagining the economy.
Tony McAleer was just 16 years old when he ... became active in the White Aryan Resistance, where he became a leader. But 15 years later, he left that life behind and embarked on a path of healing. He's since founded a non-profit, Life After Hate, which helps other people leaving white supremacy groups, written a book called The Cure For Hate, and starred in a documentary about his journey. "When I left the movement, I still had the beliefs intact," [said McAleer]. "It's not just the ideas in someone's head, it was my whole identity. It was who I hung out with, the videos I watched, the music I listened to. It's challenging to get someone to admit that what they believe is wrong. I left the movement behind, but I was still a jerk. I still had all of the wounds that were spilling out all over everywhere. I used humour, sarcasm, putting people down, I could verbally destroy people without any violence. I was still a jerk because I hadn't dealt with the source of my anger and hatred, the source of my self-loathing." It wasn't till I met a counsellor – who was Jewish – in 2005. I went through about 1,000 hours of ... counselling and really got to the root of who I was. The more he connected me to my humanity, the more I could recognize the humanity in others. And the more I could connect to the humanity in others, the more I could recognize the humanity in myself. It's very important that we learn to call out behaviours, we call out ideology, call out the activity, but we need to call the human being in.
Note: For more, watch our latest 20-min video on what can transform a divided world, where you'll hear the powerful words and stories from those at the edge of death, leaders who reached across deep divides, and even a former neo-Nazi who left hate. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.
On July 14, 48 students walked through the doors of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark. to become its inaugural class. Named after its founder–the world's richest woman and an heir to the Walmart fortune–the school will train students over the next four years in a radically different way from the method most traditional medical schools use. And that's the point. Instead of drilling young physicians to chase symptom after symptom and perform test after test, Alice Walton wants her school's graduates to keep patients healthy by practicing something that most doctors today don't prioritize: preventive medicine and whole-health principles, which involve caring for (and not just treating) the entire person and all of the factors–from their mental health to their living conditions and lifestyle choices–that contribute to wellbeing. Visually, the school lives up to its acronym: AWSOM. The building, with soaring glass walls, is located on Walton family property and includes not just a wellness studio and gym, but a rooftop park, healing gardens where students can study, growing gardens for producing healthy foods, and a reflection pond. Walton is covering tuition for the first five graduating classes. They will get all the science and disease knowledge they need to manage the â€sick-care' side of things," Walton says. But "I wanted to create a school that really gives doctors the ability to focus on how to keep their patients healthy."
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.
No toilets, expensive food of dubious quality, crowded housing. This was the reality for many in 1840s Britain. Something had to change. And the Rochdale Pioneers knew it. The group of 28 artisans and cotton weavers ... wanted to start a co-operative society in order to provide their community with affordable and unadulterated food. Their small grocery shop started by selling only flour, sugar, oatmeal and butter and opened just before Christmas 1844. Any profit was shared among member-owners. With this, the co-operative movement took root. Today, these businesses employ some 280 million people around the world – 10% of the employed population. Approximately 3m co-ops with an astonishing 1.2bn members, more than an eighth of the world's population, exist internationally. Shared Interest is a UK-based social lender that supports farmers and handcraft producers in 47 countries around the world. From sphagnum moss farmers in Peru to coffee farmers in Rwanda, the organisation provides finance for smallholder communities that collectively provide around a third of the world's food but are often stuck in cycles of poverty. Uganda-based coffee producer Bukonzo Organic Farmers Cooperative Union (BOCU), which Shared Interest has supported since 2014 ... negotiates prices, undertakes marketing and manages export on behalf of 13 smaller primary co-ops. Having this tiered system is crucial for small-scale farmers who don't speak English.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy.
California has introduced a first-in-the-nation online public platform to help bridge silos. The platform, called Engaged California (EC), enables and encourages the direct engagement of citizens with government and with each other. Engaged California is not glorified polling and is more than a town hall gathering. It is a three-way tool that enables policymakers and administrators to listen at scale to average citizens outside of election cycles and be responsive; it invites citizens to directly voice their concerns and proposals on an ongoing basis; and it is a platform for Californians from all walks of life to interact with each other to find common ground. Audrey Tang ... helped craft California's program ... modeled on the pioneering online deliberative platform she created as Taiwan's first digital minister. Tang's vTaiwan platform engages thousands of citizens at a time to weigh in on social issues or policy propositions. In essence, as each participant formulates a position on an issue, others chime in with their own versions. Extreme positions fall to the margins with minimal support, and more consensus views aggregate in the middle. In turn, legislators, parties and administrators can formulate policies in full knowledge of where the public stands. Housed in the state's Office of Data and Innovation, Engaged California is meant to become a permanent feature of governance going forward that will be used for the public to deliberate a range of concerns and proposals
Note: Read more about how vTaiwan is changing the game. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and technology for good.
For 4.4 billion people, the only water available is unsafe to drink. In the early 1990s, I was working as a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory ("Berkeley Lab") when I heard about a devastating cholera outbreak in my home country. I started to study waterborne pathogens with the aim to develop a new way to make water drinkable that would be affordable and effective in rural areas of low income countries. In a short few years, and later on with funding support from the Energy Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, I came up with an invention – the UV Waterworks – that met all my goals. It was inexpensive, efficient, portable and effective. Roughly the size of a microwave, the device sanitizes water using UV light to kill harmful bacteria, viruses and molds. It can purify approximately four gallons of water per minute and provide a year's worth of potable drinking water for just seven cents per person. The University of California, which runs the lab, filed the initial patent. I helped found WaterHealth International, which exclusively licensed the UV Waterworks technology from the university in 1996. In the time since, the invention has benefited tens of million people across India and Africa. Roughly 80% of our customers live below the poverty line in their home countries.
Note: Read about the ecologist who used sunlight, plants, and pond life to turn toxic sewage into clean drinking water–proving that nature can heal what industry has broken. Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good.
On July 7, 2022, days after Chad LaVia was freed from a year of incarceration at the jail in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, the county sent him a bill for $14,320 in "room and board" fees – $40 for each of the 358 days he'd spent inside. The invoice also reminded LaVia that he owed another $2,751.46 in fees from previous jail stints there, which brought his total debt to just over $17,000. LaVia had only two months to pay off the debt, the invoice warned, until it would be turned over to a collection agency. In September, Dauphin County's commissioners voted to forgive the nearly $66 million in pay-to-stay debt looming over formerly incarcerated people and their families. The move, championed by a commissioner who won in 2023 after running on jail reform, followed a 2022 decision by the commission that ended pay-to-stay fees but had not erased people's previous debts for jail stays. LaVia Jones said the decision to finally forgive the outstanding jail debt will help her son move on with his life, calling it "a huge relief." "The longer you sat in jail, the more debt you incurred, the more debt your family incurred. People sit there pretrial for one year, two years. It's so wrong," she said. "So this really helps him to move on with his life." Local groups ... argued for years that the pay-to-stay scheme worked against efforts at successful re-entry for people released from jail, who are typically poor and who are almost always more concerned with basic survival and staying free than with settling debts.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.
