a Sufi dancer joyfully dancing in Egypt
I remember Thomas Friedman once saying something along the lines of when he opens up a newspaper, he sometimes feels like he is reading The Bible. And so often it’s true! When I wake up, the first thing I do is bring up the online version of the New York Times. So often it’s all the dark news about the crazy things that are swirling around in our world today–wars, economic crises, environmental problems…
Don’t get me wrong–we need to know the dark facts so we can all be armed with knowledge and then light our candles to drown out the darkness. But we need HOPE, and we need bits and pieces of good news to motivate us to light our candles; we need to be reminded that we CAN and DO make a difference. There IS a world of good news out there that often gets over-looked. That is the world that people like Thomas Friedman advocate, and write books about, like Hot, Flat, and Crowded. Books like Hot, Flat, and Crowded have the bad and scary news in them in order to inform you. And then they always go on to include news about the good being done to outweigh the bad, and of course offer up their advice to help guide us all to the more optimistic path.
the Young Global Leaders Dead Sea Summit, presided over by lovely Queen Rania of Jordan
So today as a little motivation to all my readers, I want to do a little re-cap of the really positive news stories I have read in the past week. I want the positive news to help remind our readers and Enchanting Challenge members and volunteers that our world is BEAUTIFUL, and that together we can heal all of its wounds.
the Pope and President Shimon Peres planting a tree of peace
First of all, I’d like to give a giant shout-out to IdealistNews. Idealist’s awesome collaboration with Reddit allows Idealist users to mesh together all their favorite news articles. What is the result? A beautiful and informative collage of nonprofit news. This week, IdealistNews told me two A-MAZINGLY beautiful news stories that I would like to share with you now:
1) The Obama administration has pledged $100 million towards microfinance! Such an investment stimulates small and socially-minded entrepreneurs…It lets companies like Kiva grow and expand, and increase the help they give to struggling potential business owners around the world. I think efforts like this give everyone a fair chance to live out their potential…
dancers in Brooklyn celebrating an anniversary of a seminal moment in the Fall of the Iron Curtain
2) The Ford Foundation has pledged $50 million to help struggling municipalities buy foreclosed homes in their area. This endeavor is such a grand gesture of giving towards one of our country’s most in-need areas–the housing market. This one gesture of goodwill has the potential to single-handedly help to alleviate the housing crisis…Its affects will be rippling, without a doubt.
jumping for joy in nyc
The other news source I would like to give a shout-out to is the New York Times Idea of the Day Blog. This blog is penned by Tom Kuntz, editor of Week in Review, and the idea is to start a dialogue regarding interesting ideas that are floating through the web. As a result, one cool idea gets published a day, along with a list of suggested reading from a variety of news sources spanning the ideological spectrum. Although it is fair and balanced and covers ideas good, bad, and ugly, the point of the blog is to start a conversation, which always brings along positive ideas to solve any dark realities. And many of the ideas of the day are indeed very bright and provide so much hope! Take for instance the idea of the day on Monday, May 4: White as the New Green. This was a fun and enlightening post about how simply painting roofs white in very warm areas can reflect tons of solar radiation, helping to offset carbon emissions from cars. Something so simple!! Thus, many scientists are asking that some of the government stimulus money be given to help paint roofs white, which would of course also create jobs for house painters and roofers alike! A really win-win-win situation!
a car-free zone in Germany
So, as you can see, there is tons and tons of lovely news floating out there. And I think it’s important that we take a minute to soak up all the good stuff so we are invigorated to make a difference, and then we can make a difference with the knowledge that we can and do help!
