【推荐2】Still dressed in their sleepwear, Dian Turner’s kids couldn‘’t wait to get outside. But they didn’t go far — they stopped at the footpath outside their Melbourne home, armed with a box of chalks.

Max, seven, and Lenny, four, have been away from their friends since coronavirus physical-distancing rules came into force and the Victorian school holidays were brought forwards a week. They’re just two of the many children who have been spending their shutdown time drawing rainbows (彩虹) and encouraging messages like “We’re all in this together” across Australia. “It was something for the kids to make them feel connected to other people, because obviously they’re feeling a little bit uncertain about staying at home and what this means, and not being able to go to the playground and the park,” Ms Turner said.

Ms Turner first saw the idea when she was added to a Facebook group called the Rainbow Trail, which documents children and their parents drawing rainbows for others to spot. Ms Turner, a lawyer who has been spending much of her time working from home amid the shutdown measures, said it was “something positive to talk about” with the family. “You’re not breaking any of the social-distancing rules but it’s something that you can do and you can be happy and show that there’s a connection.”

University of Melbourne public health researcher Lisa Gibbs said it was important to provide children with age-appropriate ways to make them feel active and capable during the pandemic. “It’s easy in times of danger, which essentially this is, to be so concerned with protecting children, which obviously is of great importance,” Professor Gibbs said. “But in protecting children we can sometimes treat them as vulnerable (脆弱的), which makes them feel useless. So these sorts of activities are really helpful in providing a sense of agency in children that they can make a contribution to others.”

Professor Gibbs said in times of disaster, two patterns were very common — community mobilization, where people banded together, and community deterioration (恶化), where social supports fell apart. “So what these activities from children are doing is really contributing to social mobilization,” she said. “And people respond really positively to children’s messages, because they spread joy.”

【推荐1】Collette Divitto, 31, was born with Down's Syndrome (唐氏综合征) but she is far from disabled. This woman channeled her passion for baking into a cookie business with a global mission to change the world, one, cookie at a time.

Based in Boston, Massachusetts, her company was founded in 2016. Although she didn’t plan on being a business owner, she really created jobs for disabled people with all types of abilities. She said that she opened the bakery after receiving numerous job interview rejections, often being told she was not “a good fit” for the company. “It was sad and it was hard,” she said. “To me, it felt like they didn’t like me at all because of who I am. No one would hire me, so I decided to open my own business.”

The path to success wasn’t easy. Divitto’s mother Rosemary Alfredo didn’t raise her daughter to think of herself as different from her classmates. But this changed when Divitto was in the fourth grade and she was bullied by a boy in her class who started calling her “Down Syndrome”. Her mother had to have a conversation with her about what it meant and from then on, Divitto worked hard to be fully accepted at school.

Divitto is not resting on her laurels (荣誉). A big part of her company’s mission is to help people with disabilities find jobs. She is also the author of two children’s books and she was featured on the documentary Born for Business, about pioneers with disabilities. Divitto also runs a nonprofit organization, Collettey’s Leadership Org.

Her first priority is to let people start seeing abilities in the physically disadvantaged and to employ the 82 percent of the people with disabilities who are capable of working but cannot find jobs. With her drive and vision, Divitto is sure to be a success.

【推荐3】In 1955, when Rosa Parks refused an order to give up her seat to a white passenger and moved to the back of the bus, her incredible act of resistance became the fuel for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Led by none other than Martin Luther King Jr., it led to the civil rights movement in America.

Known as “the Mother of the Modern Civil Rights Movement”, Parks moved to Detroit in 1957 where she continued to fight for civil rights. In 1994, at the age of 81, Parks was attacked and robbed in her home.

When word of the attack got out, Judge Damon Keith contacted Mike Ilitch, a real estate (地产) developer. Upon hearing of the incident, Mike Ilitch offered to pay for safer housing for Parks until her death.

Hidden from public knowledge, and known only to a select few individuals, Ilitch’s kindness towards Rosa Parks remained a secret for many years. It wasn’t until an article was published in the Sports Business Daily in 2014 that the secret came out. And it didn’t gain popular attention until it resurfaced after Ilitch’s death in 2017.

The article contained a photograph of Keith holding a copy of a cheque.

“It’s for $2,000, dated November the first, 1994,” Keith said. “It’s from Little Caesars Enterprises to Riverfront Apartments. It’s important that people know what Mr. Mike Ilitch did for Ms. Rosa Parks because it’s symbolic of what he has always done for the people of our city.”

It wasn’t Ilitch’s only act of giving. Throughout his life, the billionaire made significant contributions to various charitable causes. In 1985, he established the Little Caesars Love Kitchen which provides food for those in need.

Mike Ilitch and Rosa Parks may have come from two completely different worlds and lived very different lives, but there is one common thread that ties them together—commitment to creating positive change.