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Finlands much-lauded housing first approach ... has been in place for more than a decade. The idea is simple. To solve homelessness you start by giving someone a home, a permanent one with no strings attached. If they want to drink, they can; if they want to take drugs, thats fine too. Support services are made available to treat addiction, mental health and other problems, and to help people get back on their feet, from assisting with welfare paperwork to securing a job. The housing in Finland is a mix of designated standard apartments sprinkled through the community, and supported housing: apartment blocks with on-site services, built or renovated specifically for chronically homeless people. Formerly homeless residents ... pay rent from their own pockets or through the benefits afforded by Finlands relatively generous welfare state. The approach is working. As homelessness rises across Europe, Finlands numbers are falling. In 1987, there were around 18,000 homeless people. In 2017, there were 7,112 homeless people, of which only 415 were living on the streets or in emergency shelters. The vast majority (84 percent) were staying temporarily with friends or relatives. Between 2008 and 2015, the number of people experiencing long-term homelessness dropped by 35 percent. While its expensive to build, buy and rent housing for homeless people, as well as provide the vital support services, the architects of the policy say it pays for itself. Studies have found housing one long-term homeless person saves society around 15,000 ($17,000) a year ... due to a reduction in their use of services such as hospital emergency rooms, police and the criminal justice system.
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Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi wants consumers to ask more questions. Satyarthi stars in the new documentary, "The Price of Free," in which he rescues child slaves in India who work in factories, some of which supply U.S. stores. He told CBS News, "For every product, consumers can ask this question to the brand or shopkeepers, 'How can you guarantee that they are truly made without child labor?' That can be the starting point ... When consumers start asking questions, then [stores] have to find answers." Satyarthi said consumers have the power to hold businesses accountable for their practices. "It would not be too difficult to write to president of a company and ask, 'How will you ensure that your products are made without child labor?'" he said. "This is their moral and legal responsibility to ensure that no child exploit or labor is engaged. Brands cannot just escape." Satyarthi began his work freeing child slaves in India in 1981 and says he has saved more than 85,000 children since then. He has expanded his work to reach children around the world who are touched by not just slavery, but also trafficking, sexual abuse and other types of violence. The children come from poor families who are told they will be paid and taken care of; instead, they become enslaved under poor working conditions. He said that beyond the rescues, his organizations make sure the children have the social and educational support they need through government services before they are released.
Note: Why have so few ever heard of this most amazing, courageous man who has risked his life countless times to rescue tens of thousands of children from slave labor? After surviving numerous beatings and the murder of two of his colleagues, Satyarthi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for creating a global network focused on fighting for the rights of over 100 million child workers worldwide and rescuing the many millions still held as slave labor in almost every country in the world. Don't miss the moving documentary on Sartyarthi and his work titled "The Price of Free."
Back in 2005, Jameel McGee says he was minding his own business when a police officer accused him of - and arrested him for - dealing drugs. "It was all made up," said McGee. Of course, a lot of accused men make that claim, but not many arresting officers agree. "I falsified the report," former Benton Harbor police officer Andrew Collins admitted. "Basically, at the start of that day, I was going to make sure I had another drug arrest." And in the end, he put an innocent guy in jail. "I lost everything," McGee said. "My only goal was to seek him when I got home and to hurt him." Eventually, that crooked cop was caught, and served a year and a half for falsifying many police reports, planting drugs and stealing. Of course McGee was exonerated, but he still spent four years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Today both men are back in Benton Harbor, which is a small town. Last year, by sheer coincidence, they both ended up at faith-based employment agency Mosaic, where they now work side by side in the same caf. And it was in those cramped quarters that the bad cop and the wrongfully accused had no choice but to have it out." I said, 'Honestly, I have no explanation, all I can do is say I'm sorry,'" Collins explained. McGee says that was all it took. "That was pretty much what I needed to hear." Today they're not only cordial, they're friends. Such close friends, not long ago McGee actually told Collins he loved him. "And I just started weeping because he doesn't owe me that. I don't deserve that," Collins said.
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Nestled on a wide plateau surrounded by the Espinhaco Mountains in southeastern Brazil is the city of Belo Horizonte. The city of 2.5 million is an industrial and technological hub, which had historically led to stark socioeconomic divisions, including high rates of poverty. But while other similarly situated cities around the globe struggle to meet the basic needs of their residents, Belo Horizonte pioneered a food security system that has effectively eliminated hunger in the city. The entire program requires less than 2% of the city's annual budget. Building off Brazil's grassroots Movement for Ethics in Politics, in 1993 Belo Horizonte enacted a municipal law that established a citizen's right to food. Today, Belo Horizonte's food security system comprises 20 interconnected programs that approach food security in sustainable ways. When the novel coronavirus pandemic hit Brazil in February, Belo Horizonte was well-positioned to address at least one attendant issue of the pandemic: The city already had a substantial infrastructure for distributing fresh, healthy food at low or no-cost to the vast majority of its residents. As Brazil's COVID-19 cases skyrocketed and the need became greater, businesses, nonprofits, and individuals offered financial and distribution support to expand the existing food security network, including increasing the number of open-air markets and restaurants available to distribute food to those in need.
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Wilma Rudolph outran poverty, polio, scarlet fever and the limits placed on black women by societal convention to win three gold medals in sprint events at the 1960 Olympics in Rome. By the time brain cancer caught Rudolph, leading to her death Saturday at age 54, she had achieved a stature that made her legend and her sport greater in the long run. The 20th of 22 children of a porter and a cleaning lady, Rudolph lost the use of her left leg after contracting polio and scarlet fever at age 4. Doctors told her parents she never would walk again without braces, but she refused to accept that prognosis and began to walk unassisted at age 9. It wasn't long before she was outrunning all the girls and boys in her neighborhood. At 16, already under the tutelage of Tennessee State University coach Ed Temple, Rudolph won a bronze medal on the 4 x 100-meter relay at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. Four years later, when she was the mother of a 2-year-old, Rudolph won the three golds despite running all three events with a sprained ankle. After being voted Associated Press female athlete of the year in 1960 and 1961 and the Sullivan Award as the nation's top amateur athlete in 1961, Rudolph retired at 21, a decision that reflects an era in which lack of financial incentives kept most Olympic careers short. She turned to a variety of humanitarian projects, including goodwill ambassador to West Africa, coaching at DePauw University and working for underprivileged children through the Wilma Rudolph Foundation.
Note: The remarkable woman once commented, "My doctors told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother."
Thanks to the internet and MOOC (massive open online courses) culture, it's not hard to find courses from prestigious universities such as Yale online for free or cheap. Counter to the Ivy League's legacy of exclusivity, MOOCs are designed to remove traditional education barriers: price and location. In fact, Yale offers access to a handful of recorded in-person courses such as African American History: From Emancipation to the Present via Open Yale Courses, a platform where anyone can access the lectures. However, lecture-listeners won't earn course credit, degrees, or a certificate of completion. If you're looking for a classroom-like educational experience with more structure, feedback, and peers, you'll want to turn to Coursera. The online learning platform features more than a dozen Yale courses that range in topic from economics to parenting to happiness. Coursera classes typically include video lectures, resources, community discussions, and quizzes. They're free to enroll in, but you'll have to pay a low fee (starting at $49) for features like graded homework assignments or certificates of completion, which can be added to a LinkedIn page. Based on the most popular course in Yale's history, [The Science of Well-Being] combines positive psychology with the real-life applications of behavioral science to increase your own happiness using concrete, productive habits. Read our full review of The Science of Well-Being course here.
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Dr Abhay Bang does not look like a pioneer. And yet ... this is the man who has revolutionised healthcare for the poorest people in India and who has overseen a programme that has sent infant mortality rates plummeting in one of the most poverty-stricken areas of the world. Medical experts now believe that Dr Bang's radical beliefs hold the key to tackling the myriad endemic health problems that blight the developing word. Instead of accepting the traditional hospital-based treatment model, Dr Bang has spent the last 26 years training up local volunteers in Gadchiroli, one of the most deprived districts in the Indian state of Maharashtra, to treat simple maladies at home. The World Health Organisation and Unicef have recently endorsed his approach to treating newborn babies and the programme is currently being rolled out to parts of Africa. In 1988, 121 newborn babies were dying out of every 1,000 births in the area. The newborn death rate in Gadchiroli has now fallen to 30 per 1,000 live births. Dr Bang's solution was simple: he trained a group of local women in the basics of neonatal care. They were taught how to diagnose pneumonia (using an abacus to count breaths), how to resuscitate children and how to administer some basic antibiotics. Instead of villagers having to walk for miles to get to the nearest hospital, these health visitors (called arogyadoots, which means "health messengers") went to where they were most needed.
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Celebrity investor Mark Cuban is receiving praise on social media after he launched a new company that provides patients access to affordable medications. Cuban launched the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company (MCCPDC), a direct-to-consumer online company that offers more than 100 generic medications at discounted prices. The investor said ​​he aims to "be the low-cost provider of medications to patients." He continued: "If you don't have insurance or have a high deductible plan, you know that even the most basic medications can cost a fortune. Many people are spending crazy amounts of money each month just to stay healthy. No American should have to suffer or worse–because they can't afford basic prescription medications." The company's low costs are achieved by working directly with partners, which "allows us to only markup our costs by 15 percent," Cuban explained. Explaining the business model, Cuban cited the drug prescribed for hookworm, Albendazole, which can cost as much as $500 per course. "Our cost for Albendazole is $26.08 per course. We mark that price up by 15 percent so we can continue to run the company and invest in disrupting the pricing of as many drugs as we possibly can," he explained. "That makes the base price of the drug $30. Then we add on the actual cost, $3.00, that our pharmacy partners charge us to prepare and provide your prescription to you. "That makes the sales price on this website $33. Far, far lower than the pricing available in the marketplace."
Note: As big Pharma rakes in the huge profits, Marc Cuban has created a new company called CostPlus which brings many expensive drugs to you at a fraction of the price. Sadly, very few of the major media are reporting on this. Cuban says, "Everyone should have safe, affordable medicines with transparent prices."
It was a small trial, just 18 rectal cancer patients, every one of whom took the same drug. But the results were astonishing. The cancer vanished in every single patient, undetectable by physical exam, endoscopy, PET scans or M.R.I. scans. Dr. Luis A. Diaz Jr. of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, an author of a paper published Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine describing the results ... said he knew of no other study in which a treatment completely obliterated a cancer in every patient. "I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer," Dr. Diaz said. Dr. Alan P. Venook, a colorectal cancer specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved with the study, said he also thought this was a first. A complete remission in every single patient is "unheard-of," he said. These rectal cancer patients had faced grueling treatments – chemotherapy, radiation and, most likely, life-altering surgery that could result in bowel, urinary and sexual dysfunction. Some would need colostomy bags. They entered the study thinking that, when it was over, they would have to undergo those procedures because no one really expected their tumors to disappear. But they got a surprise: No further treatment was necessary. "There were a lot of happy tears," said Dr. Andrea Cercek, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a co-author of the paper. Another surprise, Dr. Venook added, was that none of the patients had clinically significant complications.
Note: Will this amazing treatment be suppressed, like so many others before it? Explore a treasure trove of concise summaries of incredibly inspiring news articles which will inspire you to make a difference.
Scientists have developed new technology that can turn seawater into clean drinking water in less than 30 minutes. Researchers based in Australia used a metal-organic framework (MOF), a type of lattice-like crystal, to desalinate water. The hollow framework of pores separates the salty solute within the brackish water or even saltier seawater, in a process known as molecular sieving. Under dark conditions, the framework absorbs salts and other impurities in the water in 30 minutes. The MOF itself is then regenerated for reuse in just four minutes, using sunlight to remove the adsorbed salts. The light-responsive MOF was used to filter harmful particles from water and generate 139.5 litres of clean water per kilogram of MOF per day. Scientists say their technology is more energy-efficient than current desalination practices, including reverse osmosis, and could provide potable water for millions globally. Water scarcity is one of the largest global risks in the upcoming years, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Thermal desalination processes by evaporation using solar energy are widely used to produce fresh water, but can be highly energy intensive. 'Sunlight is the most abundant and renewable source of energy on Earth,' said Professor Huanting Wang ... at Monash University in Australia. 'Our development of a new adsorbent-based desalination process through the use of sunlight for regeneration provides an energy-efficient and environmentally-sustainable solution for desalination.'
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Research shows that acts of kindness make us feel better and healthier. Kindness is also key to how we evolved and survived as a species, scientists say. We are hard-wired to be kind. Psychology professor Sonja Lyubomirsky has put that concept to the test in numerous experiments over 20 years and repeatedly found that people feel better when they are kind to others, even more than when they are kind to themselves. “Acts of kindness are very powerful,” Lyubomirsky said. In one experiment, she asked subjects to do an extra three acts of kindness for other people a week and asked a different group to do three acts of self-kindness. The people who were kind to others became happier and felt more connected to the world. The same occurred with money, using it to help others versus helping yourself. Lyubomirsky said she thinks it is because people spend too much time thinking and worrying about themselves and when they think of others while doing acts of kindness, it redirects them away from their own problems. Oxford’s [Oliver] Curry analyzed peer-reviewed research like Lyubomirsky’s and found at least 27 studies showing the same thing: Being kind makes people feel better emotionally. But it’s not just emotional. It’s physical. Lyubomirsky said a study of people with multiple sclerosis ... found they felt better physically when helping others. She also found that in people doing more acts of kindness that the genes that trigger inflammation were turned down more than in people who don’t.
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Dogs have such exquisitely sensitive noses that they can detect bombs, drugs, citrus and other contraband in luggage or pockets. Is it possible that they can sniff out even malaria? And when might that be useful? A small pilot study has shown that dogs can accurately identify socks worn overnight by children infected with malaria parasites even when the children had cases so mild that they were not feverish. In itself, such canine prowess is not surprising. Since 2004, dogs have shown that they can detect bladder cancer in urine samples, lung cancer in breath samples and ovarian cancer in blood samples. Trained dogs now warn owners with diabetes when their blood sugar has dropped dangerously low and owners with epilepsy when they are on the verge of a seizure. Other dogs are being taught to detect Parkinsons disease years before symptoms appear. The new study ... does not mean that dogs will replace laboratories. But for sorting through crowds, malaria-sniffing dogs could potentially be very useful. Some countries and regions that have eliminated the disease share heavily trafficked borders with others that have not. For example, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the island of Zanzibar have no cases but get streams of visitors from Mozambique, India and mainland Tanzania. And when a region is close to eliminating malaria, dogs could sweep through villages, nosing out silent carriers people who are not ill but have parasites in their blood that mosquitoes could pass on to others.
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"Agrihoods" [are] communities designed around a central farm. Like a garden in a big city, agrihoods promise to boost food security, reduce temperatures, capture rainwater and increase biodiversity. As climate change intensifies heat, flooding and pressure on food systems, agrihoods could be a way to make urban living more resilient – not just more picturesque. "Developers have a hard time offering open space, because they would like to build more housing," said Vincent Mudd, a partner at the architectural firm Steinberg Hart, which designs agrihoods. "One of the few ways to kind of bridge that gap is to be able to use active open space that actually generates commerce." On paper, an agrihood is a simple concept: A working farm surrounded by single- or multifamily housing. Steinberg Hart recently finished two of them in California – one in Santa Clara and another, called Fox Point Farms, in Encinitas. Scale that food production up across a city, and the impact could be huge: One study found that Los Angeles could meet a third of its need for vegetables by converting vacant lots into gardens. These green spaces help cool the neighborhood because their plants release water vapor, making summer more comfortable for the surrounding community. An agrihood can also support local biodiversity. Planting native flowering species, for instance, simultaneously beautifies the landscape and attracts pollinating insects, hummingbirds and bats.
Note: The rise of urban food forests across the US are ensuring that communities belong to affordable, equitable and resilient local food systems. Communities from Los Angeles, Florida, Illinois, to suburbs in the Netherlands are growing organic vegetables and food in their own yards, sharing their resources, and transforming neighborhoods. "I can't think of a more generous gift to give to the community than to grow delicious, naturally organic food for the direct community," [says Crop Swap LA subscriber] Katherine Wong. "This is one of the noblest things anyone is doing today." Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing the Earth.
Every time somebody flushes a toilet in Mannheim, they contribute to ecological shipping. Since March 2025, the German city's wastewater treatment plant has been feeding an experiment of global relevance: Transforming sewage gases into green methanol, a cleaner, nearly-carbon-neutral alternative to heavy fuel oil. The pilot, known as Mannheim 001, is the first full case study of how human waste can be captured, processed and converted into fuel powerful enough to propel cargo ships across oceans. "It's the first time the entire value chain – from sewage to finished methanol – has been demonstrated," says David Strittmatter, co-founder of Icodos, the start-up behind the project. Wastewater plants produce sludge – the thickened residue left after sewage is treated and cleaned. Mannheim's plant ferments this sludge in oxygen-free tanks, yielding biogas rich in methane and carbon dioxide, which is usually burned for heat or flared off. Icodos' innovation is to clean and upgrade that gas. "The sewage gas is dried, desulfurized, and then the carbon dioxide is separated from the rest," Strittmatter explains. Using renewable electricity, the captured carbon dioxide is then combined with hydrogen through a catalytic process to form methanol – a liquid fuel that can run ship engines. According to Icodos, scaling sewage-to-methanol worldwide could cover the entire fuel demand of the global shipping sector.
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Insect-eating bird populations in France appear to be making a tentative recovery after a ban on bee-harming pesticides, according to the first study to examine how wildlife is returning in Europe. Neonicotinoids are the world's most common class of insecticides, widely used in agriculture and for flea control in pets. By 2022, four years after the European Union banned neonicotinoid use in fields, researchers observed that France's population of insect-eating birds had increased by 2%-3%. These included blackbirds, blackcaps and chaffinches, which feed on insects as adults and as chicks. The results could be mirrored across the EU, where the neonicotinoid ban came into effect in late 2018, but research has not yet been done elsewhere. The lead researcher, Thomas Perrot from the Fondation pour la recherche sur la biodiversitĂ© in Paris, said: "Even a few percentage [points'] increase is meaningful – it shows the ban made a difference. Our results clearly point to neonicotinoid bans as an effective conservation measure for insectivorous birds." Like the EU, the UK banned neonicotinoids for outdoor general use in 2018, although they can be used in exceptional circumstances. They are still widely used in the US, which has lost almost 3 billion insectivorous birds since the 1970s. Sustainable farming, which reduced pesticides and restored semi-natural habitats, would help bird populations recover.
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In Finland, kindergartens are exposing children to more mud, wild plants and moss - and finding changes to their health that show how crucial biodiversity is to wellbeing. At Humpula daycare centre in Lahti, north of Helsinki, children are encouraged to get muddy. Across Finland, 43 daycare centres have been awarded a total of â‚Ź1m (Ł830,000) to rewild yards and to increase children's exposure to the microscopic biodiversity – such as bacteria and fungi – that lives in nature. We already know that access to the outdoors is important for children and their development. But this study goes one step further. It is part of a growing body of research linking two layers of biodiversity. There is the outer layer – the more familiar vision of biodiversity, made up of soil, water, plants, animals and microbial life, that lives in the forest, playground (or any other environment). And then there is the inner layer: the biodiversity that lives within and upon the human body, including the gut, skin and airways. Increasingly, scientists are learning that our health is intimately linked to our surroundings, and to the ecological health of the world around us. The plants, dead wood and soil in the daycare centre have all been specially selected for their rich micro-biodiversity. They have also dug up and imported a giant live carpet of forest floor, 20-40cm deep and 10 metres square. It has blueberries, lingonberries and moss growing on it, to encourage the children to forage, find bugs and learn about nature.
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After a decade behind bars, it wasn't the fields that stretched for kilometers around him that struck Nicolas when he first set foot on the farm. It was the smell. "I've been through six different jails and they all reeked. But you get used to it and forget it ever smelled bad – until you get out. Here, you can breathe in and out fully," he says, gesturing to the light-stone buildings and tractor parked in the courtyard. Located in Coucy-le-Château-Auffrique, a small village in the north of France, the Moyembrie farm hosts inmates through a detention program run by a small nonprofit. Along with nine others, Nicolas came to spend the last stretch of his sentence beyond prison walls. At Moyembrie, time is served differently. There are no bars, no cells, and inmates can go into town during their time off. All staff are social workers directly employed by the farm – the first facility of its kind to receive a contract from the Ministry of Justice to host inmates. Residents work four hours each morning. They tend to vegetable plots, lead goats from the barn to the field, or cook meals shared in the common room. All inmates at the farm are able to pursue classes and training programs. Some are even run on-site by volunteers, like lessons for the driver's license written exam. Nicolas, who has never had his driver's licence, attends these every week, hoping it will help him secure a job. Over half of the inmates who go there are working or in training three months after release and all leave with stable accommodation.
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It wouldn't be wrong to say Sam Shoemaker crossed the ocean on a mushroom. This August, the Californian artist launched his 14-foot kayak off Catalina Island and paddled for 12 hours across the 26.5-mile Catalina Channel to San Pedro. The brownish-white boat itself [was] "a boat made entirely from a single mushroom growing outside my studio," Shoemaker explains – the world's largest mushroom boat. He built it from wild Ganoderma polypore collected near his LA studio, propagated in a hemp-and-sawdust substrate for about four weeks, molded into kayak form and dried until it became "a strong, hydrophobic and inert, cork-like material." Mycelium, the interconnected root network of a fungus such as Ganoderma polypore, can grow to hundreds of acres. The boat was sealed with locally sourced beeswax, using no synthetic materials. Shoemaker's multiyear project wasn't commercial – he is simply interested in demonstrating mushrooms' potential. His invention is part of AquaFung, a term coined – and a movement inspired – by artist Phil Ross that hopes to one day replace Styrofoam and other materials that go into water with fungi, as part of the nonprofit Open Fung. In their quest, Shoemaker and Ross are members of a sprouting global community of artists, engineers, high-end designers and environmentalists, intent on producing sustainable inventions from mushrooms. For Ross, mycelium is not just a material but a mystery and companion.
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Walking into Brightworks could be a shock for helicopter parents. The K-12 school is alive with invention, autonomy and what founder Gever Tulley calls "the energy of a big multi-generational family household." Therefore there are no traditional grades or classes at Brightworks. Students are grouped into "bands" by interest and maturity, not by age. There are no teachers – just "collaborators," and parents are invited to visit and join as they please. Agency is woven into every part of Brightworks' ecosystem. Students move freely through the buildings. "The first instinct can't be, â€Where are you supposed to be?'" Tulley explains. "You have to assume they're on a mission – maybe to grab a wrench from the shop or to take a walk. That's part of the culture here." Students can't hide behind textbooks or screens; each semester, they must propose, plan and find collaborators for their own project – and eventually present it to the entire school, known as the "Brightworks family." Tulley believes this kind of learning – driven by curiosity – pays off for life: "We see students as heroes on their own journey." His aim is also to prepare kids for the future. "Twenty years from now, every industry will need small teams of highly specialized people solving complex problems," he says – people who can also communicate and collaborate well. Brightworks graduates have been accepted at top-tier universities, including Harvard.
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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.
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Important Note: Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.