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 —
After Ms. Rachel gave a shout-out to a Black-owned bakery, they earned a month’s rent in just 24 hours
On August 11, Rachel Accurso (better known as beloved children’s entertainer Ms. Rachel) asked Black entrepreneurs to share their craft for Black Business Month.
In the following weeks, Accurso shared five social media posts highlighting the work of Black authors, journalists, and artists — including Ashley La Bomme-Benson, baker and founder of the Los Angeles cookie company The Bomme Sweets.
La Bomme-Benson, who has five children, says the orders received in 24 hours covered her next month’s rent of $3,650. She said, “It gave me a boost of confidence that I can do this.”
Even better: Accurso’s advocacy extends far beyond social media shoutouts. She has also used her massive platform of 11 million followers to demand transparency and justice in the investigation of 18-year-old Nolan Wells, and continues campaigning for peace in Palestine and the safety of children worldwide.
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Here’s what Olivia Rodrigo’s $20M ‘Daisy Chain’ donation will actually do for nonprofits
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India’s power system just passed a major clean energy tipping point
Long portrayed as one of the greatest growth markets for coal, India’s power system just reached a major milestone. Clean energy sources now account for 331.7 gigawatts of installed capacity, surpassing fossil fuels’ 302.0 gigawatts for the first time.
While coal still accounts for around 70% of India’s electricity system, this shift indicates that the future of the country’s electricity system will likely look a lot different.
In 2010, India had 0.07 gigawatts of solar capacity installed — today, it’s 211 gigawatts and makes up 33% of total installed utility-scale capacity. It’s on pace to overtake coal in the coming years.
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A principal in Nepal saved 900 students before the school was washed away by floods
After receiving a phone call warning him that flash floods were headed toward his school, principal Rajendra Dawadi immediately stopped classes to evacuate the 900 students on campus to higher ground.
Around 13 minutes later, water, mud, and debris swept through the area, destroying the school in seconds. Dawadi also called the bus drivers transporting more of his students to tell them to stay away from the area, likely saving even more lives.
The latest reports say the flash floods in Nepal have now killed more than 1,000 people, and thousands more are still missing.
Even better: Dawadi said rescuing his students didn’t make him a hero, it was his responsibility. He’s urging the government to now provide the students with counseling and get them back into school as soon as possible, even if it means relocating temporarily.
→ Read more (Gifted link)
13 young people sued Hawaii over climate change. Here’s what happened next
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Nearly 100 students from all 50 states created a national policy framework for AI use in schools
People have varying opinions about what AI use in schools should look like — or if it has a place at all. A group of 98 students hailing from all 50 U.S. states spent three days in Boston creating, debating, and voting on a national policy framework.
Their conclusions: It should emphasize human relationships and judgment, protect the learning process, allow students to build skills for appropriate use, and preserve students’ and educators’ right to refuse to use it.
The student-crafted guidance comes at a time when districts are creating their own policies and guidelines, and the framework will be distributed to a network of over 10,000 school and district leaders. The student creators will also have the opportunity to personally present the group’s findings.
California passed a bill to make plug-in solar easier and cheaper to install
Lawmakers in California passed the Plug and Play Solar Act to legalize balcony solar, which is already abundant in places like Germany. Gov. Gavin Newsom still needs to sign the bill, which had bipartisan support.
Balcony solar, which is sold by a few businesses in the U.S., makes home solar more accessible for renters and homeowners who are unable or can’t afford rooftop panels.
Once it becomes law, it would allow households to install systems up to 1,200 watts without utility approval or interconnection typically required of rooftop systems. A 400-wat system could cover 14% of an apartment’s energy use.
Why is this good news? While so many aspects of the large clean energy transition are out of an individual’s hands, balcony solar gives some (literal) power back to consumers to decide where at least a portion of their electricity comes from. We should be making it easier and more affordable for people to adopt this if they want to.
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☀️ You may also like: Over half of US states considering laws allowing balcony solar
A breathtaking new museum dedicated to whales is shaped like a breaching humpback. It will open next year in Norway
A California mom sends $10K a week to a Texas immigration detention center so parents can feed their children
After hearing about the conditions detainees were experiencing in a Texas detention center, including parents finding cockroaches in their food and children vomiting after drinking the tap water, Casey Revkin wanted to do her part to help.
The self-described “California mom” had already been helping immigrant children for around a decade. Now, she sends more than $10,000 a week through her nonprofit to families being detained so they can buy food and other necessities at the commissary.
She’s helped families purchase things like candy bars for a birthday and nasal sprays to help children adjust to the dusty landscape.
→ Read more (Gifted link)
Decades after they were hunted to near extinction, black bears are now rebounding in southern US states
Black bears were once abundant across most of the United States, including the lower Mississippi River basin. But decades of habitat destruction and overhunting in the 1800s and 1900s threatened to wipe out the population altogether.
But local policies and actions have helped the species rebound in the region. Mississippi stopped black bear hunting in 1932 after its populations dropped to an estimated 12 bears; Arkansas banned hunting and seen its population surge from 40 to 50 bears to around 5,000; Louisiana banned bear hunting in the late 1980s; and more.
Even better: Both residents and visitors are learning simple ways to safely coexist with the rising population of black bears, like transitioning to bear-resistant trash cans, and using safe deterrents that don’t “cause long-term harm, but enough that it makes that bear uncomfortable.”
How Gloria Steinem helped shape feminism and gender equality
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Indigenous “turtle women” are helping vulnerable reptiles recover in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Seven Indigenous Siekopai women in Ecuador’s Amazon call themselves Tari Nomiowa’i — the “turtle women.”
For years, they have patrolled riverbanks, collected and recorded turtle eggs, and moved them to a protected incubation facility. After they hatch, the baby turtles are hand-raised by the same women.
Without their hands-on intervention tactics, the turtle eggs would be poached by hunters, crushed by boats, or washed away by climate-change-driven flooding.
In the 2025–26 nesting season, the turtle women collected 235 eggs, successfully hatched 208 turtles, and released them into the Aguarico River with the help of local schoolchildren.
More good news of the week —
Thanks to abundant sunshine and smart policy, New Mexico’s electricity prices are some of the lowest in the U.S. The Public Service Company of New Mexico, or PNM, said it delivered 80% carbon-free electricity in 2025 after investing in solar energy, batteries, and wind.
The Coast Guard saved a massive sea turtle — and the 100 eggs she was carrying — from a fishing line. So far this year, Florida has documented tens of thousands of loggerhead sea turtle nests statewide.
New research shows floating wetlands can help decrease wastewater emissions. Treating dirty wastewater solves one environmental problem, but as microorganisms break down sewage, they release carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide – three potent greenhouse gases.
U.S. troops can get up to $10,000 a year to freeze and store eggs or sperm under a new pilot program. The three-year initiative will test the feasibility of funding cryopreservation for certain service members facing combat deployments, hazardous orders, or long separations that could affect their plans to have children.
A high school student received 40 scholarships to fulfill her dream of attending college. Saying price was her “number one constraint,” Adeola Adeyemo applied for more than 200 scholarships to help make college more affordable.
A new “conservation deed” is protecting tree kangaroos, forests, and people in Papua New Guinea. The deed shields the area’s exceptional biodiversity, including the critically endangered tenkile and weimang tree kangaroos, after a long-stalled effort to secure formal protected status left it exposed to logging pressure.
Amid scrutiny, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott blocked agencies from spending money on Flock. The order came as The Texas Tribune was preparing to publish an investigation detailing how a state agency has devoted at least $30 million to building the state’s Flock surveillance network.
A wildlife crossing in Idaho is almost complete, giving migrating deer a place to walk under a busy highway. The wildlife crossing features three underpasses, as well as extensive fencing on either side of the project to direct animals to the wildlife crossing.
A Washington zoo welcomed a baby porcupine for the first time in 121 years. First-time parents Nigel and Quillow’s porcupette even has its own “emotional support log.”
Beating the entire field, a Colorado mountain marathon had an all-women podium. Brier Youngfleish covered the 26.2-mile course in 4 hours, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds, easily beating the other 55 runners in the race—39 men and 26 women.
A small town in Finland is home to the world’s largest sand battery, addressing clean energy’s core downfall: intermittency. The giant sand battery can cover almost one month of the town’s heating demands in the summer and as much as one week in the winter.
The National Park Foundation is investing nearly $5.5 million to support service corps projects around the U.S. Service corps projects engage youth, young adults, and veterans while advancing critical projects that improve recreation access, protect parks from wildland fires, and maintain and preserve parks.
After months of specialized care, a manatee with a collapsed lung was airlifted back to the sea in Florida. In January, Citron was rescued after she was found swimming on her side following a boat strike injury, and veterinary staff at SeaWorld Orlando quickly assessed that she had a pneumothorax.
Inmates in a UK prison’s carpentry class make and donate “hedgehog boxes” that help save the animals. Other vocational programs at the prison have led to incarcerated individuals refurbishing bikes, restoring memorial benches, and more.
The Spanish Football Federation announced plans to cover the cost of egg freezing for members of its women’s national team. Once finalized, it would be a landmark change and a first for an international football federation.
For the first time ever, a nurse shark filmed a great white shark swimming around a reef. The footage was recorded in 2025 from the dorsal fin of a nurse shark, which repeatedly passed by the great white as the pair hung out around an artificial reef.
“Sweat bees” in Fiji evolved to withstand human environmental changes climate change. (Listen) Extreme weather and habitat changes can spell doom for many native animals including insects but it seems the bees in Fiji are built a little different.
Former NOAA scientists are reviving a critical El Niño blog after the U.S. government took it offline. The ENSO Blog tracked all things El Niño and La Niña, offering newly available data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to the public in digestible language.
The student team behind the world's first solar-powered ambulance just proved it works. They tested the vehicle in Kenya to see if it could manage long distance travel across tricky terrain, and found that even while stationary, it generated more energy than it consumed while using all its onboard medical equipment simultaneously.
Microphones at 12 ecovoltaic solar farms heard nearly twice as many grassland bird species as the fields beside them. Crews also logged more than 230 active nests on or inside the solar panel infrastructure, and another on bats from the same sites found activity roughly 50% higher over the arrays than over the neighboring fields.
A critically endangered bird in New Zealand just had a record breeding season. The population of the world’s heaviest parrot, the kākāpō, has surpassed 300 birds for the first time in 75 years.
Scientists in London invented the world’s first fully biodegradable party balloon. Standard balloons can take years to break down and can release harmful chemicals, but this one biodegrades within nine months.
A rare butterfly was spotted in Cornwall as warmer weather draws more migrant species to the UK. The Queen of Spain fritillary was spotted at the Eden Project in what was believed to be one of only a handful of sightings recorded in England this year.
The final two beluga whales arrived at the Shedd Aquarium from Marineland in Canada. Ten whales total were brought to Shedd from the closed Canadian park, an alternative to potentially euthanizing the 30 belugas that were left behind when the park closed last year.
