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 —
A design lab invented a first-of-its-kind 3D-printed wheelchair for kids — and is giving them away for free
The team at MakeGood NOLA, a New Orleans-based adaptive design lab, has made something that can transform the world for disabled children: the world’s first fully 3D-printed wheelchair.
The lab’s design is “modular and easy to make,” and fully compatible with a regular 3D printer anyone can have in their home. And once the prototype is completely finished, it will be available as a fair-use download that anyone can use for free.
Because of its modular design, the wheelchair can be put together without any tools or glue. And if any part of it breaks or is damaged, users can simply re-print the single piece they need.
Why is this good news? The average pediatric wheelchair can cost thousands of dollars. And when children grow and their needs evolve — or a wheelchair gets damaged — those costs multiply.
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After fracturing his arm, this engineer hated his fiberglass cast — so he ‘4D-printed’ a better one
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Cycling in the city of London has increased by more than 50% — the shift is improving air quality
Over the past two years, cycling in the City of London has grown by more than 50% — with a record 139,000 people cycling every day in October 2024, up from 89,000 in 2022.
That also represents the largest increase since the city started recording cycling data in 1999.
People cycling now make up 56% of all traffic during peak community hours in the city, and the shift has also helped massively improve air quality, reducing toxic nitrogen dioxide emissions. Where 15 locations exceeded air quality standards for nitrogen dioxide in 2019, now only two do.
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The US FDA approved the country’s first at-home cervical cancer test as an alternative to the Pap smears
One year after it received “breakthrough status,” the Teal Wand has officially been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, making it the first at-home alternative to the Pap smear in the U.S.
In addition to offering a “much preferred experience” to the dreaded and often painful traditional cervical cancer test, the Teal Want also aims to increase screening rates by making it more convenient. Tests like this already exist in countries like Australia and Sweden.
The approval follows a U.S.-based study that found the at-home screening was just as effective as the one done in a doctor’s office. It also found that women overwhelmingly preferred to self-screen at home, and said they’d be more likely to stay up-to-date.
Why is this good news? Every year, about 13,000 cervical cancer cases are diagnosed, with more than 4,000 dying from the disease — a figure that also has a large racial gap, with Black and Native American women more likely to die from cervical cancer than white women.
And while rates have dropped dramatically since the Pap smear became more common, about a quarter of women in the country are still behind on their screenings — the Teal Wand is likely to help lower that even further.
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Mushroom scientist puts ‘The Last of Us’ fears to bed: We’re using fungi ‘to eat pollution,’ not ‘our faces’
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Grandmothers are knitting sweaters for penguins on an Australian island impacted by oil spills
The Knitting Nannas is a group of grandmothers at a care home in Australia, and their latest project is helping protect penguins on Phillip Island south of Melbourne.
The grandmothers knit small sweaters that are used to prevent penguins caught in oil spills from getting sick while they try to clean their feathers.
The island is home to 40,000 penguins, and the sweaters are stocked in the event of an oil spill, so they can be placed on a penguin until its feathers can be cleaned by rescue workers.
The Knitting Nannas have inspired knitters around the world to join their efforts, too.
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Illinois returned 1,500 acres of stolen land to the Prairie Land Potawatomi Nation
A law signed by the governor of Illinois transferred the 1,500-acre Shabbona Lake State Recreation Area to the Prairie Land Potawatomi Nation, keeping a long-overdue promise to the tribe’s leaders.
The land was promised to the tribe’s leader in 1829, but was then sold to white settlers by the federal government 20 years later, when then-Chief Shab-eh-nay and his people left for several years to visit family in Kansas.
While it’s not the original soil that was stolen, the boundaries of the original 1,280-acre now comprise hundreds of acres of privately owned land, including a golf course. Returning the land would result in an unending legal battle.
Why is this good news? The theft of Native lands, stolen to create the U.S. and generate private wealth for white people, is at the root of countless systemic injustices. Beyond being legally and morally the “right” thing to do, returning stolen land is critical to the health and survival of Native people, the planet, and really, all of us.
‘Shock, disgust, and deep pleasure’: Engineers created espresso using water from the canals of Venice
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After struggling for decades with her own mental health, a Wisconsin woman’s ‘little hearts’ are helping others
Kathleen Jensen battled severe depression, anxiety, PTSD, and thoughts of suicide throughout her 40s and 50s. With support from her husband and therapy, she survived and eventually got to a place to help others.
She’d picked up crocheting 15 years ago to help keep her hands and mind busy, and it led to her creating The Little Heart Project in 2022.
Jensen crochets little hearts, attaches encouraging notes, and leaves them around her town. Now, people around the world have followed her example, making and leaving hearts around their towns, too to reach someone in need.
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After farmers sued the administration, the USDA is putting climate change information back on its website
When President Trump took office, the administration deleted web pages that contained information that farmers say helped them make time-sensitive decisions about business risks related to climate change, like heat waves, droughts, floods, and wildfires.
The purge included resources like the U.S. Forest Service’s “Climate Risk Viewer,” which included maps showing how climate change could impact national forests and grasslands.
A group of farmers sued the administration over the deletion, and now the Agriculture Department is restoring the information, including pages on federal funding and loans, forest conservation, and rural clean energy projects.
Why is this good news? Climate change is impacting all of our lives, and farmers feel this perhaps most intensely. They need accurate, up-to-date information on how climate change-fueled extreme weather events are impacting their livelihoods — and ultimately, we *all* need them to have that in order to literally have food to eat.
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While this country slows down climate action, its capital city is stepping up — and is taking its job as a role model seriously
Instead of attack ads, a Gen-Z congressional candidate is using campaign money to feed people
Kat Abughazaleh is a 26-year-old running for Congress in Illinois — and she believes politicians need to do things differently.
A journalist, social media influencer, and political commentator, Abughazaleh is leveraging her established online platform and campaign dollars to help people in her community long before their ballots are cast.
Seeing “how much money gets wasted in politics,” she wanted her run for office to be “dual-purpose,” in which she can get her message out and help people in the process.
For example, her kick-off event’s entry “fee” was a box of period products — it collected over 5,000 — and she hosted a food drive that’s actively “feeding people right now” in the community.
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Less than one year after dams and reservoirs were removed, wildflowers are blooming along the Klamath River
Four dams and three reservoirs were removed from the Klamath River as part of the world’s largest dam removal project that wrapped up last year.
Already, the surrounding environment is showing remarkable signs of recovery with wildflowers blooming along the now free-flowing 420-mile river near the border of Oregon and California.
The return of local flora is thanks to a crew of primarily Yurok tribe members who began collecting seeds from native flowers and trees in 2019, growing them in nurseries, and producing more flowers and seeds to prepare for the “over 2,000 acres that needed revegetation.”
Why is this good news? After the dams were built between 1918 and 1962, the surrounding ecosystem started to collapse, and by 1997, coho salmon in the river — once the third-largest salmon fishery in the country — were listed as endangered.
Local tribes like the Yurok have been fighting for decades for their removal, and to see the surrounding ecosystems already recovering thanks to their efforts is inspiring.
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A former USAID worker is connecting big donors with overseas programs that have lost their funding
Beginning in 2023, economist Caitlin Tulloch worked for USAID using data to achieve the biggest “bang for your buck” when it comes to humanitarian aid: saving as many lives, educating as many children, and lifting as many people out of poverty as affordably and effectively as possible.
When her work was “just wiped off the map” by DOGE this year, including Tulloch being let go and reinstated multiple times before she ultimately resigned, she and some colleagues started Project Resource Optimization.
With donors wanting to continue supporting global aid initiatives, PRO connects these big givers to former USAID projects and humanitarian needs like basic sanitation programs in Ghana, tuberculosis control initiatives in Malawi, STD control projects in Nepal, and more.
And PRO offers advice on where to invest their money to have the biggest impact.
More good news of the week —
Chemists identified a new molecular label that could lead to simpler, faster tuberculosis tests. The scientists overcame a major obstacle in testing for tuberculosis, identifying complex sugar molecules found in the bacteria’s thick cell wall, which helps make tuberculosis the world’s deadliest infectious disease.
Forest managers and public health experts are joining forces to protect people from the health impacts of intensifying wildfires. Around 44 million people around the world are exposed to unhealthy air quality every year due to wildfires alone, and these exposures cause more than 670,000 premature deaths annually, more than one-third among women and young children.
The Missouri state legislature voted to ban child marriage by raising the minimum age for marriage to 18 in all instances. Supporters of a full ban on child marriage say that allowing teenagers to marry leaves them vulnerable to abuse and human trafficking, and since married teenagers still lack the legal rights of adults, they cannot initiate divorce or access resources for victims of abuse.
Fiji introduced ‘Loloma Hour’ to encourage tourists to spend an hour making a positive impact during their stay. Visitors can choose to give back to wildlife, the community, the reef, or the coastline with activities like guided nature walks, manta ray or iguana conservation, cooking classes, storytelling sessions or village visits, coral or mangrove planting, and more.
A new study has likely confirmed that a single HPV vaccine dose prevents infection just as well as two doses. The human papillomavirus prevents many types of cancer, the most common of which is cervical cancer, and the results of this study could transform efforts to reach the three-quarters of children globally who should receive the vaccine, but do not.
Visitors to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks say they support an added fee for wildlife conservation. Along with establishing support for paying conservation fees, a new study concluded that species population declines could have a greater effect on park visitation than imposing such fees.
A new app is helping support caregivers with neurodivergent children while they wait for a diagnosis. ADHD and autism diagnoses can take years, and in the meantime, the Hazel app uses AI to provide personalized strategies for supporting neurodivergent children because parents “shouldn’t have to wait years to understand their child’s needs and get practical support.”
New York is giving inflation refund checks to more than 8 million residents in the state. The governor’s office said that with inflation driving prices higher, it has also resulted in sharp increases in sales tax collections, and “that money belongs to hardworking New York families and should be returned to their pockets as an inflation refund.”
Students at the University of Texas hosted a ‘Day of Drag’ to protest the university system’s newly implemented drag performance ban. The event featured line dancing, a speech by Austin-based drag performer Brigitte Bandit, and a variety of stations where drag performers applied makeup for students to wear in solidarity on their last day of classes.
Broadening eligibility, Poland launched a free preventative healthcare program for people 20 years and older. With a goal of boosting earlier detection of health problems and promoting preventative health care, the expanded program is now available to be utilized once every five years for people aged 20-49, and every three years for those 50 years and older.
With rent and teacher shortages on the rise, a Colorado school district built an affordable on-campus tiny home village for teachers. Of the teachers surveyed in Harrison District 2, 75% said they wanted to stay in the district and “wanted to live in this village.” The creators hope it will serve as a blueprint for other school districts facing similar challenges.
The University of Oxford awarded a posthumous degree to its first female student from an indigenous community. Born in New Zealand in 1873, Mākereti Papakura is believed to be the first Māori woman to enroll at the university, where she explored the customs of her tribe from a female perspective before she died in 1930, weeks before she was due to present her thesis.
Oregon State University purchased over 3,000 acres of private forestland to be part of its new research forest. OSU leaders say this landscape will become more ecologically diverse under the university’s ownership, as it plans to research what effects different types of logging practices have on tree diseases, pests, and fire resilience.
After its population was decimated by brushfires and drought, Australia’s mountain pygmy possum is making a comeback. There are now estimated to be as many as 950 of the tiny mammal adults in the wild, up from 700 in 2020, as efforts to protect the endangered species from the threats of climate change continue.
Small-scale community energy programs are helping bring clean energy to remote villages in Latin America. More than 16 million people do not have access to electricity in Latin America and the Caribbean, despite often living in the shadow of fossil-fuel extraction projects, and these systems are tackling energy poverty while contributing to a just energy transition.
Hundreds of participants from more than 55 countries joined Italy’s first-ever “Dyke March.” The march was part of a four-day conference in Rome and served as a powerful moment of solidarity and visibility amidst a nation grappling with intensifying political conservatism and regular assaults on civil liberties.
With grocery prices on the rise, a home chef is showing people how to turn a $20 Dollar Tree trip into four full family meals. Throughout her videos, Rebecca Chobat continues to challenge herself again and again by making $20 Christmas dinners, recreating restaurant-style recipes on a budget, and stretching $100 of groceries into 30 days of meals.
Locals built a bridge made out of recycled fire hoses to help endangered monkeys cross a busy road in Malaysia. Since the bridge was installed on Penang Island, zero mammal deaths have been reported, and more than 7,000 wildlife crossings have been captured on camera — and it’s being replicated in more locations.
In an effort to reduce stigma around menstruation, three secondary schools in Malta are providing free period products for students. The Menstruation Pilot Project will impact around 900 secondary school students, who even helped choose the products that would be offered in the free vending machines.
A congressman from New York introduced a bill that would allow volunteer firefighters and EMTs to get student loan forgiveness. He says the dwindling number of volunteer first responders could be boosted if those offering their time could be eligible for student loan forgiveness, too.
