Month: July 2021

A 6-year-old was diagnosed in May with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and her sister is doing her part to spread more awareness.

Violet Jackson is undergoing treatment at Omaha’s Children’s Hospital and has received two blood transfusions since her diagnosis. Her mom, Wendy Jackson, told CBS News that she was thankful that blood was available for her child, and wanted to “pay that gift forward.” With that in mind, she scheduled a blood donation of her own.

Violet’s older sister Eden was inspired by her mom’s initiative. She decided she would find a way to educate others about leukemia, and ultimately organized a community blood drive with the American Red Cross. The 16-year-old saw this as an opportunity to get more people to donate blood, and also to teach people about how that blood saves lives. It didn’t take long for all the slots to be filled.

“It was great to see it all fill up so fast and know that we brought awareness to the need for blood and that it can help people,” she said.

A woman with cerebral palsy has decided to climb as many stairs as she can on July 22, for a nonprofit organization raising money to help people with disabilities.

Becca Neels, 24, has cerebral palsy, a brain disorder that is usually present from birth. It leaves a person’s limbs rigid, weak, or floppy, making it very hard for a person to maintain their balance or coordinate their limbs in other ways.

Neels decided she’d take on this challenge to raise money for a cause she feels connected to. The nonprofit — called Adaptable Outdoors — helps people with cerebral palsy overcome the physical and mental barriers that keep them from spending time outside. For Neels, it means she can continue enjoying some of her favorite activities, like kayaking, fishing, and hiking.

“I’ve come to realize that God has created me the way he’s created me for a reason… To be a voice for people with disabilities and to help people in general,” she told The Morning News. “The reality is, everyone has a disability, the difference is that some are visible and some are not.”

Millions of people struggle with mental health each year. In an effort to relieve some of their struggles, people look for ways to communicate in a safe environment. And for many, that safe space can be with their hairstylist at a salon.

Lisa Lady Barbher, the owner of Crown-N-Glory Family Hair Studio in Conway, Arkansas, has started an initiative to help create the country’s first mental health barbershop.

Barbher understands the feeling of having a safe space. As a barber, she understands that the relationship between client and stylist “is almost like girlfriend and boyfriend relationship. You’re not going to cheat on each other, you’re going to share different things with each other,” she told ABC’s The Denver Channel.

As the owner of her salon, there are clients that have been coming to her for more than eight years. In fact, many have become family. And over the past two years, she’s made an effort to deepen those connections as part of The Confess Project – an initiative that was started by fellow Arkansas native Lorenzo Lewis.

“We’re taking advantage of a simple visit to go get a grooming service and turning it into an impactful service to change someone’s life,” Lewis said.

Lewis told The Denver Channel that The Confess Project started at his aunt’s beauty salon. He realized how powerful the connection was between barbers and their clients, and he knew he wanted to build a positive culture for young men of color. So, he thought, why not train barbers like Barbher to be mental health advocates?

“I can notice different things with clients now because they teach you to be able to pick up on signs of when they are going through something,” Barbher said of the training she received from the project. She says that the movement has taught her about self-care and how to become mentally healthy.

Lewis wishes he had something like The Confess Project when he was younger. “I went through a list of my own issues, depression and juvenile incarceration,” he told The Denver Channel. And he says that The Confess Project is just getting started. The movement is looking to train 1,000 barbers by the end of this year.

“By doing that work, we’ve now been able to expand to 25 cities, and [realize] that this was a national problem and a global crisis,” Lewis said.

A Labrador-retriever dog is tidying up a local park in his hometown of Leeds, U.K.

Ever since Harley was just six months old, he loved picking up discarded plastic bottles during his morning walks. He’s now being praised for his efforts to clean up the park in Pudsey, Leeds, U.K.

During his walks with owner John Evans, the lab would pick up plastic bottles and leave them by a trash bin, at which point Evans would toss them in.

Then one day, Evans thought of posting a picture of Harley — plastic bottle in his mouth — to Facebook. Within a few hours, the post had more than 150 reactions and hundreds of positive comments.

Below, watch the video of Harley picking up plastic bottles while his owner speaks with the BBC.

The government of Tanzania has announced that teenaged students who have dropped out of secondary school due to pregnancy will now have the opportunity to return to school.

Back in 2017, the previous president of Tanzania — the late John Magufuli — banned pregnant girls and teenage mothers from attending schools, a decision that forced thousands of girls to drop out. According to the World Bank, around 5,500 girls each year were forced to stop their educations abruptly due to pregnancy.

The country’s new policy will ensure that by January of next year, all of the fifty-four training Folk Development Colleges in Tanzania will offer secondary education to girls who dropped out.

This program is another move by new President Samia Suluhu Hassan, whose aim is to reverse the most controversial policies of the previous president.