Every day the Good Good Good team collects the best good news in the world and shares it with our community. Here are the highlights for this week!
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The Best Positive News We’re Celebrating This Week —
A new trail network is the first in Vermont, and possibly the entire U.S., to be fully accessible to adaptive mountain bikes
Situated on 256 acres, a new mountain biking trail network called the Driving Range just opened in Vermont, and it’s the first in the state — and potentially the country — to be fully accessible to adaptive mountain bikes.
The Driving Range is a collaborative effort from nonprofits, a donor who supplied the land, hundreds of volunteers — and it was spearheaded by two mountain bikers, including Greg Durso, who rides an adaptive mountain bike.
The “most critical volunteer” to the project, Durso personally test-rode each of the trails, which are open to all mountain bikers — and are by no means easy.
Why is this good news? As one volunteer said, while there are so many issues in the world we can’t fix, “We can have an impact here.” Their efforts opened up a world of access and opportunity for outdoor enthusiasts of all abilities to experience and enjoy adaptive excursions — and charted a (literal) path for others to do more of the same.
Florida is building a freshwater reservoir that will supply clean drinking water to millions of people
At the heart of Everglades National Park in South Florida, a new, 10,100-acre freshwater reservoir is being built. Once completed, it will be larger than Manhattan and Staten Island combined.
The “largest restoration project in the world,” the Everglades Agricultural Area reservoir will help to reduce harmful discharges to the St Lucie River, the Caloosahatchee River, and Lake Worth Lagoon.
Those discharges harm coastal communities, and cleaning them up will provide fresh, clean water to millions of people who depend on getting clean water from the Biscayne Aquifer, which is supplied by freshwater from the Everglades.
What’s the nuance? Longtime challenges like agricultural runoff, climate change, and pollutants like phosphorus that lead to devastating algae blooms all pose a problem for the reservoir. Still, the environmentalists and experts working on this project are familiar with the challenges and are working overtime to ensure that the restoration project is successful on multiple fronts.
A group of Benedictine monks are helping prevent forest fires to protect the planet and their community
The Benedictine monks at Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery carry with them a deep reverence for their work: “To love as God loves.” Residing in a community right beside the Gila National Forest in New Mexico — that love isn’t just for their fellow man, but for the planet.
This has led them to serve as volunteers in the national forest, where they are behind an effort to bring community members together for one mission: To reduce the risk of wildfires.
They tend to the forest with divine care, removing vegetation through controlled burns and fuel reduction efforts, which lessen the threat of wildfires on the property.
And their example has been monumental in helping “teach [the community] the importance of fire hardening around their homes by thinning and clearing brush.”
A cutting-edge new community center in Tanzania will be 3D-printed using locally sourced soil
The Hope Village in Tanzania is soon to be home to a brand new, cutting-edge 3D-printed community center. What makes this center unique, though — is it will be created using locally sourced soil rather than layered concrete.
The soil will all be sourced within 25 kilometers (or 15.5 miles) of the build site, reducing the need to transport materials for construction. To account for the climate of the region and flexibility of use, the interior will feature an interior floor plan.
The center is part of a larger plan to provide housing, a school, childcare, and training to young girls in the community.
→ Read more
More good 3D-printing news:
- Faster, cheaper and greener than regular construction, 3D printing schools could help African countries close education gaps.
- A single dad in England creates custom, one-of-a-kind 3D-printed toys for kids with disabilities.
- Saving it from the trash bin, a YouTube creator figured out how to recycle “printer poop” waste from his 3D printer.
- Extending the lifespan of damaged items, a maker, fixer, and content creator provides free, mobile 3D-printed repairs.
This week, Apple is donating $10 to national parks for every qualifying purchase made with Apple Pay
To celebrate the 108th birthday of the U.S. National Park Service, Apple is donating $10 to the National Park Foundation for every purchase made with Apple Pay through its stores until August 25.
When you shop at the Apple Store, in the App Store, or on apple.com using Apple Pay, a portion of your purchase will go towards stewardship and programming for the country’s national parks.
The initiative comes alongside the rollout of a number of new national park tech features, including a “Nature Awaits” playlist on Apple Music, as well as its annual National Parks Apple Watch Activity Challenge.
→ Read more
More good national park news:
- The Inflation Reduction Act gave national parks $700 million in funding to fight climate change.
- New entry permit requirements at six national parks are making them easier to visit and preventing overcrowding.
- The National Forest Foundation has reforested over 21,000 acres of land in the last year and planted over 8 million trees to combat climate change.
- Two of the newest national parks (importantly) celebrate painful, darker times in U.S. history: the Blackwell School and Amache National Historic Site.
To prevent floral waste and brighten others’ days, two Virginia women make bouquets from discarded flowers
Both discouraged by the nationwide problem of floral waste and excited by the idea of being able to use those discarded flowers to brighten someone’s day, Rebecca Shelly and Laura Ruth started a nonprofit called Friendly City Florals.
They reuse arrangements donated from weddings, funerals, floral shops, and even local gardeners to refresh bouquets for senior care homes, hospitals, mental health agencies, schools, and more in the Harrisonburg, Virginia area.
Shelly and Ruth meet at least a few times a week at each others’ homes to collect, refresh, and deliver their repurposed bouquets, which they noted can help alleviate stress and depression.
They even drop off loose stems at one senior care home so that residents can create their own bouquets.
A collaborative initiative between two Oregon counties successfully housed over 5,500 formerly homeless individuals
Two counties in Oregon, Portland and Multnomah, just proved how effective a collaborative effort to address homelessness can be. In the last fiscal year alone, they moved nearly 5,500 individuals out of homelessness and into housing — a 28% increase over the previous year.
Additionally, the Joint Office of Homeless Services said 7,900 people accessed its shelter services, an increase of approximately 35% over the prior year.
The Joint Office was able to serve thousands more individuals thanks to supportive policy programs, which directly helped around half of those it served.
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More good news in homelessness and housing:
- A building in Detroit was transformed into permanent housing for veterans experiencing homelessness.
- Instead of an inaccurate, once-a-year federal tally, cities are using real-time data to end homelessness.
- Different from the rest of Europe, Finland has adopted a housing-first model that’s helped solve homelessness in the country.
- A viral TikTok invention is providing a compact, portable, secure option for transitional housing — and aims to end homelessness for good.
If you can’t wait four years for more summer Olympics energy, we have good news for you: we are officially less than one week away from the start of the Paralympics!
It’s the first time that Paris (and all of France!) will host the Summer Paralympic Games, and there’s so much to look forward to:
- Similar to the Olympics, the Paralympics Opening Cermony will make history and will be hosted outside of a traditional stadium setting for the first time ever.
- Thanks to advances in disability awareness and inclusion, the Olympics were already built out with accessibility in mind — there are other reasons why there’s a two-week gap before the Paralympics begin.
- With more coverage than ever before, NBC’s Peacock streaming app will stream a record-breaking over 1,500 hours of live coverage across all 22 Paralympic sports.
- One news channel’s coverage will also feature the first-ever deaf person to host live sports coverage on television.
- If you’re tuning in to the Paralympics for the first time, or are new to adaptive sports: you need to understand classification!
- With eight athletes and two guide runners (representing more than 120 million displaced people around the world), the Refugee Paralympic Team is the largest in history.
- Sarah Adam will make history as the first woman to compete on the USA wheelchair rugby team.
- For one Paralympic sprinter, winning gold medals is great — but what the Paralympics stand for matters way more.
- And Flavor Flav is helping that sprinter’s parents get to Paris to watch him compete.
Banned from attending university in Afghanistan, 19 medical students just arrived in Scotland to complete their studies
Overcoming setbacks and bureaucracy, a charity organization called the Linda Norgrove Foundation just successfully coordinated for 19 women medical students from Afghanistan to complete their studies in Scotland.
The group of women were banned from attending university after the Taliban took over and restricted women’s rights.
Notably, the “incredible women” will be treated as home students in Scotland, meaning they’ll receive free tuition and living costs, too.
The foundation has raised more than £3 million to fund projects for women and girls in Afghanistan over the last 14 years. The foundation’s namesake was a Scottish aid worker who was kidnapped by the Taliban in 2010, and died during a rescue attempt.
→ Read more
More good news of the week —
The Interior Department announced a $46.7 million investment in community-led local park projects in eight U.S. states. The funding will go toward the redevelopment or creation of local parks in cities like Tuscon, Kansas City, Cleveland, and Houston.
An alternative to the pap smear, starting this fall women will be able to use a simple swab to test for cervical cancer. Eliminating the uncomfortable, and for some, painful speculum, doctors hope the new test will improve screening rates and address disparities in who gets the disease.
Shattering the previous high, sockeye salmon are returning to the waters of Washington in record numbers. At a single dam, there were 165,071 sockeye counted through July 31 far surpassing the previous record of 54,000.
Faster and safer than traditional methods, a new gel-filled syringe that stops severe bleeding in seconds just got FDA approval. Especially in severe situations where a patient has suffered a gunshot wound or deep cuts, this innovative alternative will save lives.
A job training and placement program for former coal workers in Kentucky just got $40 million in funding. The Shaping Our Appalachian Region plan will advance local industries, small business support, and job placement for people in recovery, former coal workers, and more.
Britain is experiencing a beaver baby boom in places where the animals had been considered extinct for centuries. Until about 20 years ago, beavers had been extinct from Britain for 400 years, having been hunted for their fur, meat, and scent oil.
Churches across the U.S. are using their land for affordable housing initiatives. The congregations are using their land in new ways that reflect their faith, and to help make a difference for the intensifying housing crisis.
Left out for decades despite their deep connection to the land, Yellowstone is pushing to re-indigenize the park. This year, the park hosted a week-long celebration honoring the ancestral cultures and traditions of Yellowstone’s Indigenous Peoples.
The Tulsa Zoo just welcomed five critically endangered Malayan tiger cubs. The national animal of Malaysia, there are currently fewer than 150 Malayan tigers in the wild due to threats such as habitat loss and poaching.
A simple, new treatment is helping stroke survivors who suffer from an invisible disability known as spacial neglect. More than half of stroke survivors do not receive rehabilitation after the first days of advanced stroke care, but new techniques can help improve their function and freedom.
Critical in fighting malaria in the country, Mozambique just introduced the vaccine into routine immunization. Malaria is endemic in the country, with prevalence in children under 5 years of age at 32% — this is a critical step forward to improve children’s survival using the lifesaving vaccine.
The FCC is launching a new alert system for missing and endangered Indigenous people in the U.S. The alert will help address disparities in searching for and locating thousands of missing Indigenous persons, who are at higher risk of being victims of violence, homicide, and of going missing.
Researchers found that toxins in one of the most venomous animals on Earth could help treat diabetes. The predatory marine cone snail’s venom mimics a human hormone called somatostatin, which regulates blood sugar and hormone levels in the body.
Denver converted all of its school playgrounds to green spaces and reaped incredible economic benefits. In addition to helping meet the developmental, social, and well-being needs of students, a report estimated that communities can see a more than $3 return for every $1 invested in green schoolyards.
Children in the UK will be taught how to spot extremist content and misinformation online. The country’s education secretary is reviewing curriculum in primary and secondary schools to help develop students’ critical thinking skills and to recognize misinformation spread online.
