Saturday, September 19, 2015
Friday, September 18, 2015
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Monday, September 14, 2015
The woman who designed 3D printed prosthetics for Derby the dog
The woman who designed 3D printed prosthetics for Derby the dog - who was born with deformed front legs - enabling him to run and play.
Sunday, September 13, 2015
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Chinese Father Carries His Disabled Son 18 Miles To School Every Day
A parent’s devotion to their children can sometimes be one of the strongest natural forces in the world, and Yu Xukang, a proud and loving father in Yibin county in China, is no exception. Every day, he travels a total of 18 miles to ensure that Xiao Qiang, his disabled 12-year-old son, can go to school.
Xukang’s day begins at 5 A.M., when he wakes up to make the day’s lunch for his son, Qiang. He then carries his son 4.5 mi (7.2 km) to the nearest school that would accommodate him and walks back home to work, making the same trip again to pick him up and take him home.
Qiang cannot make the trip because his legs and arms are twisted. ‘My son with his disabilities is not in a position to walk on his own and it also means that he can’t ride a bike,” explains Xukang. “Despite being 12 he’s just 90 cm tall. But I am proud of the fact that he is already top of his class and I know he will achieve great things. My dream is that he will go to college… I know that my son is physically disabled but there is nothing wrong with his mind.”
The Chinese government, having heard of the distance Xukang travels every day, has offered to rent out an apartment closer to the school, and the school has begun preparations for accepting boarding students.
Friday, September 11, 2015
Two Friends Turned Their Van Into A Mobile Laundromat To Wash Clothes For The Homeless
Two ingenious 20-year-old good Samaritans created a brilliant way to help the homeless – they’ve outfitted a van as a mobile laundromat to give the homeless the opportunity to clean their clothes safely.
The two creators of the Orange Sky Laundry project, Lucas Patchett and Nicholas Marchesi, started with an old van and a generator. With the help of donations, they were able to secure two washing machines and driers, allowing their van to process 20kg of laundry an hour.
The project was launched in July and is now in its trial period, during which the van will operate 5 days a week in Brisbane. If the van is successful, the organization might spread throughout Australia.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
Blind Man And His Armless Friend Spend 10 Years Planting 10,000 Trees In China
A blind man named Jia Haixia and his friend, a double amputee with no arms named Jia Wenqi, have spent more than 10 years replanting trees to revive the once-barren environment around Yeli Village in northeastern China.
Haixia was born blind in one eye and lost the other in 2000 in a work-related accident. Wenqi lost both of his arms in an accident when he was only 3 years old. Together, they’ve leased 8 acres of land from the government and have begun replanting the land with trees to protect the village from flooding.
After they went viral in China, Haixia may receive surgery for his blinding, congenital cataract
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
What Happens When People Realize How Their Loved Ones Rate Them
We are often our own harshest critics, but that can sometimes hold us back. By asking people’s loved ones to rate their level of “success,” this social experiment shows us that we often seem more successful to others than to ourselves.
The video, which was created by Strayer University and Aplus, is part of a campaign to literally redefine the word “success” by petitioning the Merriam Webster English dictionary. According to Strayer University, 90% of Americans associate success with happiness rather than “the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame,” which is the current Merriam-Webster definition of success. If you agree with their campaign, be sure to sign their petition!
The people in the video were often surprised to see how their loved ones rated them, so remember – we should let our loved ones know what we think of them more often and we might often be more successful than we realize!
Anti-war activist Jane Rose Kasmir
Anti-war activist Jane Rose Kasmir, 17, holds a flower above a guard's bayonet during the 1967 March on the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War.
When this police officer learned the Day Center was closed, he bought food for 20 people who had come there to eat.
A police officer handcuffs himself to a woman threatening to jump and saves her life.
This is the heart-stopping moment a police officer saves the life of a suicidal woman by handcuffing himself to her and throwing away the key. The desperate woman had climbed to the top of a bill board on a concrete wall in Beijing, China. But her plight quickly attracted the attention of bystanders and police arrived to try and talk her down.
When one of the officers was talking to her, he decided the only way to make sure she did not jump was by handcuffing himself to the woman. As the woman hung from the ledge the officer put the metal cuff across his wrist and the connected it to the woman. And in a determined bid to make sure she realised he was serious about saving her, he then threw the key over the ledge so they could not be separated.
'She knew then that if she died she'd take someone with her and that seemed to bring her back,' said one officer. Police then used a length of rope to pull the woman off the sign, as she dangled above a sheer drop to the concrete pavement held by just her wrist. They then pulled her back onto the building as anxious onlookers watched the scene unfold. 'It was a very brave act. We had no idea if she would jump or not,' said a police spokesman after the rescue. They did not reveal why the woman wanted to kill herself.
Krishnan Was An Award-Winning Chef, He Quit His Job To Serve Homeless And Mentally Disabled.
Krishnan was an award-winning chef with Taj Hotels, Bangalore and was short-listed for an elite job in Switzerland. After witnessing a distressing incident in 2002, he quit his job and began feeding the homeless and mentally disabled in his hometown. He said, "I saw a very old man, literally eating his own human waste out of hunger. I went to the nearby hotel and asked them what was available. They had idli, which I bought and gave to the old man. Believe me, I had never seen a person eating so fast, ever. As he ate the food, his eyes were filled with tears. Those were the tears of happiness."
The community who not only helped clean racist graffiti off this mosque, but also posted messages of support.
Dozens of community members in Cold Lake, Alta. came together on Friday afternoon to clean up a local mosque after it was vandalized.
The vandalism at the mosque, which included smashed windows and racist messages, was discovered Friday morning. The words "Go home" were written multiple times across the outside of the building in red spray paint.
Volunteers on Friday afternoon cleaned up the façade and removed the racist scrawlings. A poster with the phrase “Love your neighbour” was also seen in a window.
Mosque board member Mahmoud Elkadri said he spotted the vandalism when he arrived to open the doors for prayers. Elkadri has lived in Cold Lake since 1996.
“My kids saw it and they started crying and I said: ‘Why are you crying?’ They said: ‘We were born here and raised here and this is our home,’” Elkadri told The Canadian Press.
Elkadri doesn’t believe the vandalism is linked to any anti-Muslim sentiment.
“I am very sure whoever did this could be just a drunk random person at nighttime or it could be … someone not from Cold Lake,” he said.
The vandalism comes just two days after a Canadian soldier was shot and killed by a radicalized Canadian at the National War Memorial in Ottawa. It's also four days after another attack on Canadian soldiers in Quebec, which left one soldier dead and another wounded.
Both individuals responsible for the attacks were Canadian-born men who had recently converted to Islam. Ottawa shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, and Quebec attacker Martin Couture-Rouleau, 25, were both shot dead.
Investigators say the two men had each been radicalized by Islamic State ideology.
Muslim leaders in Canada have repeatedly condemned the radical Islamic State militant group, which has seized territory in Iraq and Syria and recruited hundreds of Westerners to its cause.
Prominent Muslim cleric Imam Syed Soharwardy of Calgary on Thursday urged mosque leaders across the country to be wary of converts who show signs of radicalization.
"They should take on the responsibility of checking backgrounds and staying in touch and make sure this person is not being recruited by any radical organization or terrorist organizations," Soharwardy said on Thursday.
"I'm not saying don't convert them, but we have to be aware of those activities and work with police intelligence to make sure that a criminal person who just converted to Islam does not commit a major crime."
The town of Cold Lake is home to the military base where Canadian CF-18 fighters departed from earlier this month to participate in airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq.
Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, said the incident doesn’t represent the sentiment of the “vast majority” of Canadians.
“It’s kind of ironic that the word Canada was printed (on the mosque) because I think the vast majority of our fellow citizens would say this is un-Canadian,” Gardee told CTV’s News Channel Friday.
Ajaz Quraishi, president of the Cold Lake Islamic Society, told CTV Edmonton he is hopeful that the vandalism was an isolated incident.
“I know just about everybody in the city of Cold Lake, and people are good,” said Quraishi, who’s lived in the city for the past 30 years. “I don’t know who did it, very hard to say, but I’m very surprised to … see this happen in Cold Lake.”
The 12-year-old boy who offered free hugs at a Ferguson protest
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An African-American boy holding a "Free Hugs" sign stood crying in front of a police barricade at a Ferguson rally in Portland. A white police officer motioned for him to come closer. The officer then asked the boy for a hug — and they embraced, the boy's anguished face streaming with tears.
A photographer captured the encounter earlier this week, and the photo has become popular on social media. It's an unusual image as people around the country protest a grand jury's decision to not indict a white police officer in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri.
In Portland, both the boy and the officer — 12-year-old Devonte Hart and Portland Police Sgt. Bret Barnum — took unusual steps when they met on Tuesday.
The boy's mother Jennifer Hart, who is white, wrote on social media that her son had been struggling with issues of police brutality and racism.
Devonte is one of six children adopted by Hart and her wife, Sarah Hart of West Linn, a suburb of Portland.
A day after the decision on officer Darren Wilson in the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown, the Harts went downtown "with the intention of spreading love and kindness" by holding signs such as "You Matter" and "Free Hugs," Jennifer Hart said. The family then joined the nearby Ferguson rally.
Barnum, who works for the traffic division, had been dispatched to a downtown intersection to help with traffic and crowd control. In the middle of the block, hundreds of protesters listened to speeches about the relationship between police and black residents.
Earlier that week, when an officer posted on Facebook a badge of the Portland Police Bureau with an "I am Darren Wilson" banner, Barnum had "liked" the post. The officers were later ordered to remove the images and the matter is under an internal investigation.
Barnum said he "liked" the image out of solidarity for the police profession, not because he supports Wilson.
A couple days later, Devonte Hart stood on the outskirts of the Portland rally, about 10 feet away from Barnum. He was trembling, his mom said. Tears were rolling down his cheeks.
"Devonte was struggling. He wouldn't speak. He was inconsolable," his mother wrote. "My son has a heart of gold, compassion beyond anything I've ever experienced, yet struggles with living fearlessly when it comes to the police... He wonders if someday when he no longer wears a 'Free Hugs' sign around his neck, when he's a full-grown black male, if his life will be in danger for simply being."
Barnum told The AP he noticed the boy and wondered what was wrong. So he motioned for him to come up to his motorcycle.
The officer asked for his name and shook his hand. He also asked Devonte where he went to school (he is homeschooled), what he did this summer (he traveled around the U.S. with his family), and what he likes to do (art). The tears stopped.
Barnum has two teenage sons and has worked for Portland's police force for 21 years. While continuing to talk to Devonte, he looked at the "Free Hugs" sign on the ground and asked if he might get a hug as well.
Devonte put his arms around the officer.
"Knowing how he struggled with police, his bravery and courage to catch my eye and approach me were impressive," Barnum said. "And it's a blessing for me that I didn't miss an opportunity to impact this child."
Hart said the moment was about "listening to each other, facing fears with an open heart."
The commuters who worked together to free a man wedged between a train and the platform.
Commuters and railway staff teamed up to free a man by rocking a train carriage to free his leg after he became trapped between the platform and a carriage on Wednesday morning. The man was boarding a rush hour train at Stirling station, 9km northwest of Perth, Western Australia, at 8.50am when he slipped and one leg became wedged in the gap. Quick-thinking passengers and staff saved the man's leg, as it was being squeezed by the 90-tonne of train, by collectively rocking the carriage.
'He stood in the doorway and as he was sort of taking up his position there, one leg slipped outside the door, slipped outside the gap, and he was stuck,' Transperth spokesman David Hynes told the ABC. 'We alerted the driver, made sure the train didn't move. 'Then our staff who were there at the time got the passengers, and there were lots of them, off the train, and organised them to sort of rock, tilt the train backwards away from the platform so they were able to get him out and rescue him.'
The #Illridewithyou Campaign
The #Illridewithyou campaign that aimed to help Muslim commuters feel safe in the wake of the Sydney siege.
Officer is reunited with suicidal man he talked down from from the Golden Gate Bridge eight years ago
A San Francisco man who almost took his life eight years ago by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge has been reunited with the hero who saved his life.
Kevin Berthia was perched on the iconic bridge ready to take a fatal leap on March 11, 2005, when he heard the voice of California Highway Patrol officer Kevin Briggs calling out to him from above.
Over 60 life-changing minutes, Briggs managed to convince Berthia, as he has done with hundreds of suicidal men and women, to climb back over the rail and give life another shot. Since that significant day Berthia hasn't looked back and is now happily married with two children.
Every Sunday, This New York Hair Stylist Gives Free Haircuts To The Homeless
Mark Bustos is doing something great for the homeless population living on the streets of New York city. On Sundays the hairdresser takes the day to roam the streets of the concrete jungle he calls home, always in search of the next homeless person that needs a haircut but can’t afford to come into his barbershop Monday through Saturday.
In 2012, Bustos traveled to the Philippines to visit with his family. During this trip he thought up a way to help the needy children flooding the region, all in need of a fresh haircut and style. He rented a barber shop and set up a booth open for free haircuts. The results of this idea changed him in unexpected ways, as he met a collection of people he couldn’t forget. His journey in the Philippines inspired him to do something similar for the people in his hometown of New York.
Bustos’ most memorable client is a man named Jemar Banks, the man was quite throughout most of his haircut, but when Busto handed him a mirror to check out his finished results, the man said: “Do you know anyone that’s hiring?”
When your down on your luck and not looking your best it’s easy to get discouraged and fall into a trap of negativity. You can’t always blame homeless people if they develop a hopeless mind set. Judging by Jemar’s reaction, sometimes all that it takes is a little care and compassion, and a good looking haircut, to breathe new confidence and hope into someones’ day.
