【推荐1】Growing up, Espino may have been better at sports than he was at graffiti(涂鸦), but his memories of hanging out with graffiti-writer friends and looking through graffiti books have stayed with him. After college, he went into the world of real estate, but continued to collect art.

A few years later, Espino began selling prints and creative objects at local events. In May 2022, he opened a Culture Gallery. “I wanted to see what it’s like to run a gallery and I wanted to help artists learn and make money from their artworks,” he explains.

The space caught the attention of Lou Jiménez, who is now the gallery’s director. Jiménez shares Espino’s vision to support local artists. “He comes from a different background and is leading by example,” she says of his real estate background. “He’s taking a huge risk because it requires a lot of investment and there is no art market here, so I appreciate the fact that we’re trying to expand that.”

Espino admits he initially underestimated how challenging sales can be. Even with this realization, his sights are set on success, and he’s already put himself in a “bigger mindset” to steadily accomplish that.

Espino hopes taking artists to other cities will provide the encouragement they might need to pursue a career in the arts. From his businessman’s perspective, Espino feels people need to be taught on the value of supporting local talent. “A lot of people in the community need to be explained to how much difference it makes to the community to invest in local art and as sad as that is, they just don’t see it or hear it,” he says.

Not one to back down from a challenge, Espino and his team have the passion and determination to construct a platform that will help local artists and, if all goes according to his plan, they hope to have a significant impact on the local arts community and culture for many years to come.

【推荐3】In 2023, the UK SpoGomi competition was scheduled for August, with the world cup in Tokyo in November. I formed my team with Alex Winship, and my brother Jonny.

SpoGomi is a sport involving litter-picking by teams of three. Teams collect litter in given areas within a strict time limit, scoring point s for the weight of collected items, with some items awarded more points than others. One gram of cigarette butts is worth three points versus only 0.1 per gram for burnable rubbish. The team with the most point s wins.

Initially we were drawn to taking part because of the prize of a trip to Japan. There were about 20 teams in the UK competition, which took place in London’s Hackney marshes. We won by only 33 points, which is equivalent to just one glass bottle.

We were then heading for the world cup. The competition was intense. After the first half, Japan came top and we were second. My muscles were aching and I felt completely worn out from the heat of Tokyo on a sunny day. I didn’t have much more energy, and Iremember Alex and Jonny saying the same, but we had this feeling of being on the edge of something amazing. We had to just keep pushing. We pulled ahead in the second half while carrying several kilos of litter over two miles at a time. We ended up coming first,ahead of Japan, with 57 kg of rubbish collected.

I wouldn’t have been someone who would have picked up litter off the street. At the early stages of our training, we were so bad at finding litter. Then, just after the London competition, on the way home, we saw so much. We were just much more aware of it.Once you’re drawn into SpoGomi, your attitude towards litter and how you contribute completely changes — it certainly has for us.

【推荐1】Dentler was born in Mumbai, India in l978 and suffered from polio (小儿麻痹症) at six months. At age three and a half, she was adopted by a couple in the US. She says, “I spent the first few years in America just going through a number of operations to basically straighten me out so I could then be fitted for leg braces (支架) and walking stick.”

“In the early years, it was just me trying to be like my siblings (兄弟姐妹),” she says. “I didn’t want to take the disabled bus to school. I wanted to be able to take the bus with my sister. And so I had to learn how to go up the stairs.”

Later, when she was in her late 20s in New York City, a friend introduced her to a running club for athletes with disabilities where she learned how to use a handcycle: Push a three-wheeled low-to-the-ground bike using only her upper body (上肢).

Within seven months, she learned to swim and to compete using a racing wheelchair. When Dentler finished the triathlon (铁人三项赛), she was motivated to go farther. She soon took up half-Ironman distance triathlons, a distance of nearly 70 miles. And she kept meeting people, mostly able-bodied, with extraordinary athletic ambitions, which led her to attempt her first Ironman in Hawaii. Thar’s a distance of 140.6 miles.

“At the time, no female wheelchair athlete had ever made the time by the deadline to finish that race,” Dentler says. She missed the finish line on her first try. But a year later, she made it and finished the race in 14 hours, 39 minutes the first female wheelchair athlete to complete the Ironman World Championship. She covered all those miles in water and on land, pushed entirely by her arms and upper body. She says, “I think it’s important to stay physically active.

Now, she’s a mom. Dentler volunteered at the school to help kids learn to read, “The kids were very curious. They asked me a ton of questions and it was actually pretty fun to answer them. And the kids’ eyes would get really big when they heard that I could do all of these things.”

【推荐2】Besides regularly donating blood, Ashish, the 48 year- old surgeon also encourages others to do the same through Bloodline, a nonprofit association he founded in 2017.

According to Ashish, who has been a doctor at a United Family Healthcare hospital in Shanghai since 2007, Bloodline is aimed at creating a blood bank that can help the community as well as individuals with rare blood types who face an urgent need for blood.

“My father, a doctor who specialized in treating chest infections, only charged those who could afford the medical treatment. For those who couldn't pay, he never mentioned money and instead gave them the drugs for free." he says.

During his growing up years, Ashish was also exposed to social services, helping collect food and money for a local children's hospital.

Ashish first donated blood when he was 18. After arriving in China in 2003, Ashish learned mandarin at Fudan University in Shanghai before becoming a graduate student in general surgery at Shanghai Huashan Hospital. Here, he continued participating in blood donation drives as his way of giving back to society. In 2011, he became a volunteer at the Shanghai Blood Center where he helped raise public awareness about blood donations.

The idea of setting up an online community for this cause came in 2013 as he believed that there should be a group of expats who get together voluntarily to work with patients and organize regular gatherings to raise public awareness. In 2017, this community was officially registered as Bloodline.

“Our organization currently has a presence in 14 cities, including Beijing, Dalian, and Guangzhou. I's often a   small group of people in each city but they can help a great deal." says Ashish, who holds the roles of ambassador and director of the foreign volunteers group at the Shanghai Blood Center.

Ashish has also placed greater emphasis on raising awareness of their causes in children, noting that people from the younger generations are more receptive to the idea of donating blood. Bloodline is currently planning to launch a junior club within the organization where youth will get to tour blood donation centers, witness how the blood is processed, who the end users are, and the difference that they can make to the lives of those in need of blood.

“We come from different countries and have different skin colors but the blood streaming through our bodies is the same. When there is a need to roll up sleeves and save lives, we will step forward bravely." he says.

【推荐3】Jessica Long, from Baltimore, Maryland, USA, is a champion by all definitions of the word. She is one of the world’s most decorated swimmers. Jessica was the youngest athlete, at 12 years old, to win a Paralympics medal. But her path to becoming a champion has been anything but easy.

Jessica was born in Irkutsk, Russia with a serious and rare birth defect—fibular hemimelia. This means that part of her leg bones were missing or deformed. Fearing she could not care for Jessica, her young mother placed her in a Russian orphanage.

Fortunately, she was adopted by an American family when she was 13 months old. She required 25 different operations to help her leg condition. But unfortunately, both of her legs had to be amputated when she was just 18 months old.

Jessica learned to walk with man-made legs. As a child, she took to sports including gymnastics, cheerleading, ice skating, biking, trampoline, and rock climbing.

She began swimming at her grandparents’ house before she started competitive swimming. She was really good at swimming. Shortly after she started competing, Jessica was selected as Maryland’s Female Swimmer of the Year with Disability.

Then Jessica was encouraged to enter her first Paralympic Games in Athens, Greece. She won three gold medals in swimming at age 12! She was the youngest athlete on the U. S. Paralympic Team to ever do so. But she did not rest on her success. Jessica has gone on to win 23 medals for Team USA at the Paralympics! She is one of the most decorated athletes of all time.

She is now a positive force on a mission to encourage the next generation of Paralympic athletes! Jessica always believes she can do anything. She always gives 110%. She is always learning. And she never allows herself to quit. As she says, “The only disability in life is a negative attitude.”