positive news

The Daily Positive: Man Gives Kidney to Neighbor

healthy-eating-quote

Nice story, as the title would suggest.

Shad, a 42-year-old father living just around the corner from Charlie in Derry, donated a kidney to his neighbor in May. Charlie and Shad met about 13 years ago through Shad’s wife Amy, who grew up in Belmont, Mass., with Charlie. The pair lost touch following high school, but discovered they were neighbors again — this time in Derry — when they ran into one another at a doctor’s office around the time of Charlie’s first transplant.

Quite a story in the link.

The Daily Positive: Girl Saves Grandfather’s Life

life challenge

Ten year old Sophia noticed her grandfather was having a stroke. She, her mom, and her mother’s father (Sophia’s grandfather) were together. Take a look:

“He dropped a bag of apples, my mom tried to ask him what was wrong,” she said. “He looked confused and his face was strange. It looked like he could not pick anything up. When he tried to say something, we couldn’t understand what he was saying. I knew what was going on when it started happening.”

Sophia learned the signs because she did a school project on it.

“She worked really hard on a science project for about six months and learned all she could about strokes and the different types. When she told my daughter I was having signs of a stroke, she knew more than my daughter,” Bolderson said.

Steve Bolderson is the grandfather. Anyway, it’s a great story and I love it when kids are able to step up to get stuff done.

The Daily Positive: Chicago Woman Fighting Violence

making a difference

Diane Latiker is one woman who had decided to do something about the gun violence in Chicago. It has grown into Kids Off the Block.

So, let’s look at this story a bit, but you will need to hit the link to go deeper. Just sharing some key points.

Latiker decided to invite the children in and figure out what interested them. She wrote them corny rap songs to perform. She took them skating, swimming and to the movies. The kids had a blast. The next week, three or four others showed up. Then two or three more.

“Within a couple of weeks we had 30 kids coming to the house,” Latiker said.

Latiker said she’s seen young people change their lives, leave gangs, stop carrying weapons, and go to college. Despite the success, space is a challenge. Latiker is still mainly running the program from her house.

And a bit from one of the kids:

Among this year’s kids is Daqwon Hargrove, 12, who began coming to Kids Off the Block in the spring and is enrolled in the summer basketball tournament.

“In Roseland, there’s a lot of shooting and stuff. It’s not safe to walk around at night. Around like eight o’clock, be in the house,” he said. “Miss Diane treats me like I’m her own son. And I treat her like she is my own mom. That makes me feel like somebody cares about me, other than my family.”

HIT THE LINK.

The Daily Positive: Family Pays for Strangers’ Meal

act of kindness

Huh, this was an odd story as I began reading. But, it’s a good one.

25-year-old Lisa McConnell had just finished a meal at the Barbican Pasta Bar on Saturday evening with her two friends, Amiee and Amanda, and was about to pay her bill at the bar when staff informed the trio that the tab had already been picked up by another customer.

While staff withheld the identity of the mystery diner, it was only when the three girls exited the restaurant that a woman revealed it was her husband, sat at a nearby table with his family and friends, who had generously paid the bill.

The woman later explained why they decided to pay for the dinner:

Choosing to remain anonymous, she said: “We don’t want anybody to know who we are, but I saw the story and I just thought what a wonderful thing for them to try and do to reach us.

“But it was thanks enough just seeing their faces on Saturday evening. The reason we decided to pay the bill was because we were out with our children and, as has happened before, we were concerned other people might use bad language.

“The girls were just so pleasant the whole evening and it was refreshing to see a group of youngsters enjoying their evening in such a polite manner.

Read the whole story.

The Daily Positive: Boy Scout Raises Money to Donate Oxygen Masks

away from negativity

If you’re been following this blog for a while, you may have picked up on an interesting fact: I’m not a big fan of animal related stories. However, I decided to go with this one today.

Duncan McGee, a 12-year-old Boy Scout who attends Endeavour Middle School in New Haven, has questioned his father David McGee, a firefighter and EMT at the New Haven Fire Department, for the longest time about how the department rescues dogs.

“I told him that it’s not usually in the budget to buy things like that because, again, we have limited resources and we spend them on human lives and not pet lives,” David McGee said. “He thought it would be a good idea if he could find a way to help rescue pets.”

So of course, Duncan decided to do something about that. After starting a campaign on GoFundMe, he spread the word.

He put flyers up at places in town, including the fire department and pet grooming salon, and shared the link to the page on Facebook.

The page received 88 shares and raised $500 from 21 donors in two months.

The donations allowed him to purchase five animal oxygen kits from the Wag’N O2 Fur Life Program, an educational and public safety company located in Virginia that provides pet oxygen masks to first responders across the country.

That’s great. Duncan himself has a dog and would hope someone would be able to help her if something happened. So his drive came from a personal place.

The Daily Positive: Students Build Home After Custodian Loses it to Fire

giving

Brenda Hurst lost her home to a fire. So here’s what happened:

A group of teens enrolled in the school’s career center knew exactly what to do, and decided to put the construction skills they were learning to good use.

Working alongside volunteers from a group called “Carpenters for Christ” and making use of donations that poured in from the school and the community of Campobello, they were able to rebuild Hurst’s house in a little over a year’s time.

That’s an amazing story right there. Read all of it.