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Five good things · Three minutes
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MEDICINE • Good News Network
In 12 days, 3,000 free eye surgeries restored sightYears on a waiting list they could never afford. Then, twelve days.
Volunteer surgeons performed 3,000 free eye surgeries over 12 days at a community hospital in Cocorite, Trinidad and Tobago, restoring sight to islanders who had gone years without care. The Church of the 7th Day Adventists organized the marathon between May 14th and 26th, partnering with the nonprofits Hands International and Eyes for India. Many patients had never been able to afford cataract surgery. Using a high-volume technique developed by Eyes for India founder Jacob Prabhakar, surgeons managed roughly 450 procedures a day. Most patients arrived having skipped pre-surgical screening, again because of the cost, so volunteers had to sort who was ready and who still needed checks. That sorting turned out to be the hardest part of the whole operation. "When we replace that lens, people see again. Colors become sharper. Night blindness improves," said Reynold Agard, the Tobago-born president of Hands International. The team had aimed for 4,000.
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KINDNESS • Good News Network
A library trip became a movement called Library DadsOne dad, one baby, one library card. Then the others came.
Khari Arnold took his 4-month-old daughter Ariah to an Atlanta library on a lark, and the weekly trips became the anchor of their relationship. Ariah started showing early literacy skills. Arnold started wondering if other fathers wanted the same thing. He began inviting dads in the community, with children of any age, to join him. The group is now called Library Dads, and events are free but fill up fast. Kassell Scott brings his 3-year-old, Amahle. "It was eye-opening to see other dads like myself who are engaged, and it was motivating as well," he told CBS News Atlanta. Derrick Lampkin has been coming for a year with his sons Dominique and Tristan, and recently added his 7-month-old, Madeleine Sophia. "We continue coming because it shows my boys that dads show up," Lampkin said. The message stitched into the whole thing is short. Dads show up. So they do.
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NATURE • Good Good Good
A bird lost since 1882 walked past the cameraResearchers set trail cameras in the mountains of Papua New Guinea hoping to photograph a pigeon last documented in 1882. For weeks, the cameras caught nothing useful. Then, on the final day of the expedition, one frame showed the black-naped pheasant-pigeon, a ground-dwelling bird with a fanned tail, walking calmly past the lens. The team had spent a month searching a single remote island, following tips from local hunters who said they still heard the bird's low call. Jordan Boersma, a researcher on the project, said the group wept when they saw the image. The species had gone undocumented so long that some feared it was extinct. It was not. It had been on Fergusson Island the whole time, unbothered, doing exactly what ground pigeons do, which is mostly walk. Read the full story → | |||
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NATURE • Positive News
He once feared lions. Now he tracks them to save them.He grew up hearing lion legends. He feared he'd never hear a roar.
Saitoti Petro Lorkuta once wondered whether he would ever see a lion. Now 35, he tracks them across the Maasai pastures east of Tanzania's Tarangire National Park, reading paw prints in the morning dust from his motorbike. When he meets one, he no longer reaches for a spear. He stares. "I stay still, the lion looks at me, and I stare back," he says. "Eventually, the lion goes. The first time it happened, the lion was very close and I was scared, but not any more." Lorkuta is one of more than 160 Maasai 'Warriors for Wildlife' working with the charity African People and Wildlife, using GPS devices and a communal WhatsApp group to guide herders toward safer grazing. The shift in status is real. Co-founder Elvis Kisimir says the change did not come from uniforms and guns. "We solved it by sitting down under the tree and talking." Since 2017, the field teams have recovered more than 16,000 lost livestock and helped save around 150 lions.
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NATURE • GreaterGood
A greasy kitten in a forklift found her homeThe plan was to find her a home. It didn't hold.
A kitten named Jack turned up inside the engine compartment of a forklift at a Tacoma shop, covered in grease and fleas. Jocelyn, who works there, wrapped the kitten in a towel, fed her, and kept her in a box under her desk until closing. Jack slept through the rest of the workday. At home she got three baths with Dawn dish soap while Lucy the Labrador supervised, never once looking away. Somewhere in the process, Jocelyn learned that Jack, also called Peter Parker, was a girl. Once dry, the kitten ran beneath the dogs and started playing, showing no fear at all. The plan had been to find Jack a home. The shop sits among feral cats, and Jocelyn has placed around 20 kittens over two years. This one she kept. Jack now lives with Lucy, plus a coonhound named Finn and George, another kitten Jocelyn also failed to give away.
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With love, The Editor
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