|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
1
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
An officer rented the whole theater so 144 kids could goSchool Resource Officer Sean Reavie paid out of his own pocket to rent an entire movie theater for 144 seventh and eighth graders in Phoenix last month, after funding for their end of summer field trip fell through. The students at Greenway Middle School, a Title I campus where many families struggle financially, got a private showing of Toy Story 5 with popcorn and candy. For a lot of them, it was the first time they had ever been inside a theater. Program coordinator Katie Jenkins called Reavie when she ran out of options. The rental cost less than $2,000. "You can't break a promise to a child," said Reavie, a twenty-year veteran who last year spent over $3,000 to take students to Hurricane Harbor. Before the lights went down, he asked only one thing of them. "As you get older in life, help other people, as a payback to me. Would you do that?"
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
2
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
DELIGHT • Upworthy
She built the coffee shop. Ten years later, her son worked it.Amy Wright opened Bitty & Beau's Coffee in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 2016, hoping that one day her son Beau, who has Down syndrome, might want to work there. This month, he did. Wright shared a video of his first day at the company's original shop, where Beau stood behind the counter in his uniform and made her a drink. "I've spent the last 10 years hoping to create more opportunities for people with disabilities," Wright told Upworthy. "Today, I got to see what that looked like through the eyes of my own son." His manager, Sarah, said Beau had just completed his first order, calling the customer's name loudly. The room clapped, and Beau jumped up and down. Asked what he liked most about the job, he said making strawberry smoothies. Asked whether he planned to save his money or spend it, he had clearly thought about this. "Spend, and I'll save it for my trips. For both."
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
3
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
PROGRESS • Good News Network
50 million Africans got electricity for the first timeFifty million Africans across 40 countries now have electricity for the first time, the result of a $15 billion push by the World Bank and the African Development Bank Group. The initiative, called Mission 300, aims to halve the number of people living without reliable power by 2030, and it works through National Energy Compacts that get ministries and investors lined up behind a single plan. More than 30 countries have signed on. In Tanzania, 7.5 million people gained access, a five-fold jump over the pace before the program started in 2024. Ethiopia connected 4.6 million, helped by reforms that made hookups cheaper. Households are now getting stable power twice as often as they were in 2024. "Electricity is not just about power," said Ajay Banga, president of the World Bank Group. "It is about what it enables: jobs, business, health care, education, and opportunity." Roughly 600 million people on the continent are still waiting.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
4
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
DELIGHT • Upworthy
He coded a proposal and waited four years for yesGame developer Mike Mika hid a marriage proposal in the code of every commercial copy of Klax, the Atari puzzle game he engineered for the Game Boy Color in 1999. His girlfriend, Micki, loved puzzle games. The logic, he figured, wrote itself. The plan had one flaw, which revealed itself immediately. Micki would not play the game. "I leave the Game Boy out, I urge her to play it, and she never picks it up," Mika told WIRED. He nudged. He waited. This went on for four years, during which the couple shared a house and a dog, and Mika never devised a backup plan. Rescue came in 2003, when an editor at Tips & Tricks Magazine asked him for unpublished secret codes. The magazine printed the code in a section addressed to Micki by name. Mika left the issue out and drove around the block until she came home, entered the code, and called to say yes.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
5
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
DELIGHT • Upworthy
An 11-year-old built a bin-cleaning business for $10An 11-year-old in York, Canada, named Ashton has launched a garbage-bin cleaning business called Your Bin Cleaning, charging a flat $10 to scrub out the bins his neighbors would rather not think about. He started by simply wheeling bins back into garages after pickup, then began going door to door to find clients. His mom suggested he film the pitches. "We posted on Instagram and the response has been unbelievable," she told Upworthy. The videos show the no's as well as the yeses, which Ashton takes in stride. "Don't take the no's personally and the first 'no' is the hardest," he said. A local contractor, Antonio from Aqua Stop Waterproofing & Construction, signed on as a mentor and gifted him an electric pressure washer, a 50-foot hose and a leaf blower. Antonio's reasoning was simple. He would happily pay someone $100 to wash his bins, a chore he ranks among the things he hates most. Read the full story → | ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
With love, The Editor
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
honeyletter
|
