Every day the Good Good Good team collects the best good news in the world and shares it with our community. Here are the highlights for this week!
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The Best Positive News We’re Celebrating This Week —
Religious leaders run powerful ‘Choose love, not ICE’ ad during holy season — including on Fox News at Mar-a-Lago
The multi-faith group Interfaith Alliance just released a 30-second video ad that contrasts ICE’s violent raids against “the holy season’s religious calling to ‘love thy neighbor.’”
In the ad, viewers see images of ICE raids interspersed with clips of families joyfully gathering for Christmas. In the background, “O Holy Night” plays, with simple text on-screen: “In America, we love one another. Choose love, not ICE.”
The ads will appear across digital, broadcast television, and streaming services, particularly targeting media markets that have seen intense crackdowns from federal immigration agents, as well as on Fox News in the West Palm Beach, Florida area, where Mar-a-Lago is located.
Even better: The ad also urges supporters to sign a petition to amplifying this message: “This holy season, ICE cruelty is threatening our religious calling to love our neighbors … As faithful Americans, as an expression of our values, we demand that the federal government stop the attacks on our neighbors and we call on our political and religious leaders to stand in solidarity against their cruelty.”
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Florida removed colorful sidewalks in the name of ‘safety.’ This city in Greece proves that painted roads save lives
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Hundreds of surfers paddle out to honor and remember victims of Bondi Beach terrorist attack
Since the terrorist attack on a Hanukkah celebration that claimed the lives of 15 people, Bondi Beach has become a large vigil site to honor and remember those killed.
On Friday morning, hundreds of surfers and swimmers in the community joined in a “paddle out” to “spread light, love, compassion, and unity” and to honor the lives lost. Hundreds more gathered on shore for a memorial.
In the surfing community, a “paddle out” is a way surfers honor a loved one who has passed away.
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Atlanta opened a first-of-its-kind modular rapid-housing project for residents experiencing homelessness
Atlanta just opened a 100-unit housing development called Waterworks Village that will provide a permanent place to live for residents experiencing homelessness.
As part of a larger effort to address homelessness across the city, it’s the third rapid housing development the city has opened in just under two years, and the first modular multifamily development.
Thirty of the Waterworks units will be dedicated to people receiving on-site medical and mental health care offered through Project HEAL, which is being supported by six area hospitals.
What’s the nuance: Atlanta’s efforts to “create pathways out of homelessness” come as the federal government is planning to end financial support for permanent supportive housing, which threatens to derail the city’s goal to build 20,000 affordable housing units by 2030.
19 Buddhist monks (and a rescue dog) are walking 2,300 miles across the US. This is their message
Thanks to Dolly Parton, 1 in 7 US children under the age of 5 receive free books every month
According to Dolly Parton’s father, the singer’s biggest, “most important” accomplishment has been the Imagination Library. And according to Parton, her father’s “inability to read probably kept him from fulfilling all of his dreams.”
Now 30 years since its inception, the Imagination Library has grown enormously. Every month, approximately 3 million children across the United States and Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom receive a free book in the mail — so far, it’s delivered over 270 million books.
The Imagination Library also works with local governments, libraries, and schools to implement its programming and reach as many children as possible.
A 16-year-old just donated 800 Christmas presents to the hospital where she spent her childhood in
Lydia Brown spent the majority of her childhood on the pediatric floor at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, Maine — so the 16-year-old knows what it’s like to spend Christmas in a hospital bed.
That’s why, for four years straight, Brown has donated Christmas presents to kids on the pediatric floor. She calls it the Lydia Project.
This year, she donated over 800 presents, making it her “most successful year” yet. Most of the gifts are donated by neighbors in her community — and she and her mom do the rest, making sure no children go without a gift.
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This family’s holiday tradition of donating Christmas trees to nursing homes has grown into a full nonprofit
10K strangers respond to woman’s request for Christmas cards after announcing she has terminal cancer
Based in Wales, United Kingdom, Clare Jones was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2022. While she underwent treatment for a while, she was recently told her chemotherapy was no longer responding and was given about 10 months to live.
Jones loves the holidays and wrote on Facebook, “After finding out last week that this is probably going to be my last Christmas, I am looking for ways to make it super special.” Her request: Send her a Christmas card.
She expected to get 10 or 15 extra cards from friends and community members. But her post went viral, and over 10,000 people shared it. Thousands of cards have arrived, as well as flowers, chocolates, personalized gifts, and theater tickets.
More good news of the week —
An engineer is powering his entire home with the batteries from 500 discarded vapes. Single-use vapes, or e-cigarettes, contain lithium batteries and liquids, encased in plastic, that when discarded, can leach chemicals into the environment or even explode and cause fires at waste plants.
Canada announced long-anticipated new rules to dramatically reduce oil and gas methane emissions. (May require login) The new regulations lay out a path for the world’s fourth-largest oil producer to cut its overall emissions of the highly potent greenhouse gas by 75% by 2035.
Scientists in South Korea are fighting to give dolphins the same legal rights as people to help save them. For years, Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphin populations have been declining due to runoff from fish farms, coastal erosion, noise pollution from construction sites, and entanglements from abandoned fishing gear.
In a win for animal rights activists, a major Indonesian city banned the sale and consumption of dog and cat meat. In one of the country’s most sweeping measures yet to curb rabies and regulate its controversial meat trade, Jakarta’s new regulation bars the sale of any rabies-transmitting animals for food – a category that includes dogs, cats, monkeys, bats, civets, and similar species.
Gracie Abrams released a new song about mass shootings, and all proceeds support reducing gun violence. She wrote the single “Sold Out” with producer Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon. Its lyrics speak to rage and despair in the face of seemingly unending gun violence, and all proceeds from the song will go to Everytown for Gun Safety.
Two dozen endangered sea turtles are recovering in Florida after being cold-stunned off Cape Cod. The 24 Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are expected to remain at the facility until spring, when they'll be released into the Atlantic Ocean to make their way back to New England.
Researchers in Canada witnessed a rare polar bear adoption, capturing a female caring for a cub that was not her own. While they currently have no information as to what happened to the adopted cub’s biological mother, the researchers said having a maternal figure increases the chances of the cub’s survival into adulthood.
Michaela Benthaus just made history as the first wheelchair user to travel to space. The 33-year-old German aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency was aboard a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule that lifted off from Texas over the weekend.
For 40 years, a dental franchise has offered free care to anyone in need for the holidays. Comfort Dental’s tradition started in 1984 and now includes more than 300 dentists and 1,300 team members giving away their services for free on December 23. In 2023, it saw over 3,500 patients.
Pet owners can donate a pound of food to a shelter animal just by writing a letter to “Chewy Claus.” Pets (and their paw-rents) are encouraged to submit their wishlists to Chewy Claus up until December 24 this year. For every letter submitted, Chewy will donate one pound of food to its nonprofit partners — up to 600,000 pounds.
Strippers are now the No. 1 donor of toys to a Portland children’s hospital — this year, they broke their own record. Over the past 14 years, Portland, Oregon-area strippers have donated $183,000 worth of toys to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital during their annual holiday fundraiser: Tatas for Toys.
FedEx has delivered 325K free Christmas trees to military families as part of the annual “Trees for Troops” program. The program started in 2005 by a nonprofit called Christmas Spirit Foundation, and it’s been growing with the support of Christmas tree farmers across the country.
With thousands of national park workers still without jobs, people are “adopting” a park ranger this holiday season. A grassroots “Adopt-A-Ranger” program has been connecting donors with rangers in need of support during the holiday season — within a few days of launching, over 500 people had signed up.
When you “pet” dogs in this mobile game, you provide food and vet care to real-life shelter animals this holiday season. From December 15 through December 24, “Hay Day” players can build farms and barns, fish, and raise crops — while also finding and petting virtual huskies and Alaskan Malamutes to support real-world rescue animals.
Giant holiday “giving machines” in over 100 cities around the world $50 million for charity even before the holiday season began. Light the World Giving Machines, giant vending machine-style kiosks found in 126 cities across 21 countries and on six continents, make giving back easy by letting users pick a specific dollar amount or item to contribute to a specific charity.
