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Five good things · Three minutes
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KINDNESS • Sunny Skyz
A box of Froot Loops started a whole movementAlan Thompson dropped a bag of groceries on a family's porch in Muskogee, Oklahoma, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a box of Froot Loops rolled out. One of the family's five children, a boy called Red, spotted the cereal and lost his mind with joy. "He did about a two minute dance over those Froot Loops," Thompson recalled. "That changed my life." He went on social media and asked neighbors to leave donated food on his front porch rather than send money. One Saturday, he and his wife came home to find the whole porch buried in groceries. That became the Miracle Crew, a community organization that now runs its own resource center, largely because people kept knocking at 2 and 3 in the morning. Nearly six years on, the group helps connect people with mental health support and jobs. "You don't need a million dollars' worth of equipment or beautiful buildings to help somebody," Thompson said. "Start by helping your neighbor." Read the full story → | |||
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MOTIVATIONAL • InspireMore
From a Brazilian favela to Yale on a full scholarshipHe wanted to quit for construction. His bosses had other plans.
Thalles De Souza got into Yale University ten years after arriving in the United States from Brazil, and he did it partly on money saved for him by his bosses at a Wendy's on Cape Cod. When De Souza said he wanted to quit and take a construction job to fund college, Usama El-Sehrawey and Terry Smily convinced him to stay and started setting aside money for tuition. "We've always helped our employees when they needed help," Smily told NewsNation. "It was a great opportunity to provide an opportunity to this young man who was going places." De Souza spent three years at community college on those savings before Yale accepted him on a full scholarship worth over 1 million reais. He wants to go to law school and become a public servant in Massachusetts. "The favela was born to win, too," he wrote on Instagram. "Where you come from does not determine where you can go."
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KINDNESS • Nice News
Six teens built 3D-printed hands for kids in EcuadorThey could have left. They left a printer instead.
Six Cleveland high schoolers spent ten days of their summer break at Hospital General Ibarra in Ecuador, fitting 3D-printed prosthetic hands onto pediatric patients. The teens built the devices themselves through the Great Lakes Science Center Robotics Initiative, using skills they had picked up making competition robots. Standard prosthetics run between $1,000 and $10,000, out of reach for many families. The body-powered versions the students designed cost under $150. The project, called Hands Across Borders, has delivered hands and arms to more than 80 children across four countries since 2022. On this trip, four Ecuadorian students spent two full days learning every step, and the team left them a printer and supplies to keep going. "Watching them smile, explore what they could do with it, and share that moment with their family was incredibly rewarding," said Sajayah Stephens, 16, who served as the team's spokesperson. The kids kept the printer.
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NATURE • Good News Network
A blind horse won Royal Windsor for the eighth yearHe lost both eyes. He kept winning ribbons.
Milo, a 15-year-old Appaloosa gelding in England, has returned to competitive dressage despite losing sight in both eyes to an incurable condition at age 13. He now navigates the ring using rider cues, hearing, and a technique his owner compares to braille. "He interprets my pressure on him, but he also uses his own pressure, hooves on the ground surface, for his spatial awareness," said Megan Share, 28, who runs Debdale Riding School in Worcestershire. She has owned Milo since he was three, back when she was still a schoolgirl. "We almost grew up together." His hearing sharpened after the blindness set in, and he reacts faster now. Milo won the Royal Windsor Horse Show for an eighth straight year, including last year, unable to see the ring. Share describes their bond as brother and sister. She talks to him like a human, and he trusts where she points him.
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DELIGHT • Nice News
He built a million buildings of cardboard and balsa woodA field trip promise at age seven. He kept it.
A 50-by-27-foot model of New York City is on display at the Museum of the City of New York through at least September, and it took a truck driver 21 years to build it. Joe Macken, 63, grew up in Queens and started the project in 2004 after moving upstate, working in his basement from paper maps and printed photos before switching to Google Earth. The model represents all five boroughs plus the New Jersey coast, with nearly a million buildings made of cardboard and balsa wood. Manhattan alone took a decade. The idea dated to an elementary school field trip. "I said, 'I'm gonna build one of these myself one day,'" Macken told Nice News. "It took long enough, but I definitely kept my promise." His daughter got him on TikTok in 2025, where he went viral. Visitors use provided binoculars to find their own blocks. Macken is already at work on Minneapolis, a city he has never visited.
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With love, The Editor
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