【推荐2】Neudy Rojop, 29, looks across the rough, rocky road in the small rural village of San Rafael Pacayá. It leads to the home where she grew up and where she still lives today.

When she was about 10, her cousin, Carlos, was very sick. Without any local clinics (诊所), Rojop’s family couldn’t even figure out what the disease was. They could do nothing but wait. Growing up, she noticed how frequently many of those around her were getting sick. As a teenager, she started to realize her community needed better access to health care. So she determined to go to a nursing school.

But her vision was beyond being a nurse. After graduation, she realized one person was not enough to make the community better. “The people here may have common disease.” she thought, “Some are known, But there may be new diseases that we don’ t know about.” She wanted to do something to keep any illness from being a threat in the first place. She wanted to train people and do some research to monitor these illnesses and try to provide early actions, or try out new ways to prevent some of them.

Over the next few years, she and a small team brought her vision to life. They provided measures that could limit the possible risks. Olson, one of her colleagues, recalled, “She had zero clinical experience and zero research experience at first, but now she is a superstar here. Her working place is usually busy with about 300 patients per month.”

Now Rojop starts her days with a morning meeting, making decisions, solving problems and setting priorities with her teammates. “Before I was so young that I could do nothing for my community.” she says, “But now I can help because I know how.”

【推荐3】Do you raise fish in your classroom at school? Do you ever have classes while going down a river in a boat? Do you ever throw your school lunch leftovers (剩饭) into a compost bin (肥料箱)?

Probably not. But It’s all part of a normal school day at Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet School in Connecticut, US. The school is known as a “green” school. Being green means “everything in the building is designed with the environment in mind,” said Marjorie Drucker, who teaches at Barnard. For example, the lights go off when people leave the room. Then special windows provide light. It helps cut down on the need for electric lighting.

Saving energy is not all students do. Students found out there were fewer and fewer salmon (鲑鱼) in rivers. They decided to do something to help out --- they raised more salmon. In the classrooms there are big fish containers filled with salmon eggs. When the young salmon have grown, students put them into the river.

Composting is another part of taking care of the environment at Barnard. Students throw the lunch leftovers into a compost bin in a greenhouse. There the food becomes rich soil and can be used to help grow plants.

Most students’ dream jobs are about helping the environment.

“When I grow up I want to be a scientist, because I want to study different kinds of animals.” said Crystal, a girl.

【推荐1】There are emergency situations in life that require immediate actions, which makes the difference between life and death. Four American boys who were swimming in the stream of a local park knew this well. That day, they had fun as they had done so many times.     1    

With the rains of the previous days, the water level of the stream had risen, creating dangerous currents. A little girl who swam not far from the group of young people suddenly disappeared under the water.     2     Then one of the boys called Aiden noticed a little hand sticking out of the water near a bridge. The little girl was under the water and couldn’t get back to the surface by herself.

    3     The current was so strong that Aiden was unable to bring her to safety alone, so he called his friend Isaiah to help. He soon came close and was followed by the other two boys. All together they fought against the current and managed to pull out the little girl. She would surely have died without their help.

After getting out of the water，the girl was immediately taken to the hospital. The doctor gave her a detailed physical examination.     4     Everything ended well, and therefore a tasty and well-deserved reward arrived for the boys.

The girl’s parents were the owners of a hamburger shop. After they learned of what had happened and the heroic rescue carried out by the young people, they decided to give them a lifetime supply of hamburgers.     5     They were all glad to receive such a reward.

【推荐2】At 67, Joyce Faulkner thought she was looking for a holiday. Her husband, Jim, had recently died and exploring possible house swaps on the Home Exchange website felt less painful. In the end, it was not a vacation Faulkner found but a job. She left her home in Edinburgh to become mother’s help to seven-year-old twins in Varese, Italy.

“It’s halfway crazy,” she says. A house swap she was interested in didn’t work out, but the owner, Rachele, asked: “‘Do you know anyone who might help me with the children?’ I wrote back and said: ‘Tell me what that involves!’ She wrote me a little list, and I said: ‘I could do that!’ We seemed to believe in each other.”

Two months later, when Faulkner reached Varese, “the dad, Andrea, was walking towards me with the children hiding behind his legs, kind of shy, thinking: ‘Who is this woman in a long black coat?’ I don’t think it was quite Mary Poppins, but the atmosphere was immediately warm and friendly.”

Eighteen months on, Faulkner’s job no longer feels like a job. “I just feel like part of the family.” They joke: “You think you’re going back to Scotland? No, you’re staying here!” She gives English lessons, helps with the housework, meets the children from school, plays chess or table tennis with them, and takes them to the park. “It never feels like work,” she says. “It has been absolutely the perfect match.” Faulkner’s son, Steven, who lives in London, has visited her and they have cycled around the northern Italian lakes. She feels no more distant than when she lived in Edinburgh.

“You have to take the opportunity when it presents itself,” Jim once said.

“I’ll be 70 in January, but in my head, I’m 30. I still feel the same person, I have the same enthusiasm for life, the same interest in people and things. In that sense, I wish I had another 70,” Faulkner jokes.

【推荐3】Wearing a chef’s hat, Curtis Kimball, 43, hosted a pancake party on the front driveway of his home in San Francisco on Feb. 12. This was the second such event; he kicked off the first in late January with a few funny fliers. “My wife says I’m getting strange,” Kimball typed on sheets of paper, which he then taped to telephone poles around the Bernal Heights neighborhood. “She says I need to make friends. So I’m making pancakes.”

Then he saw nearly 100 neighbors gathered in front of his house, waiting for the first pancake party on Jan. 22.

“We haven’t been as social as before,” said Julie Zigoris, 42, who attended both pancake parties with her husband and two daughters, ages 4 and 6. To her surprise, one of the neighbors in attendance was in her PhD defense in Pittsburgh 15 years ago, and she had not seen him since, nor did she know he was living in the area.

At both events, Kimball covered the cost of the pancakes and toppings, and neighbors brought stuff to share. Many people asked to contribute funds, Kimball said, so he recently decided to start a GoFundMe to make future pancake parties more financially sustainable, particularly since interest seems to be growing. Kimball said roughly 300 people showed up at the second gathering.

Through starting a new neighborhood tradition, Kimball has learned a few life lessons, which he outlined on Twitter. The most important one, he said, is that “if you’re hungry to connect, chances are good other people are too.” “I’m hoping I can be the match and the fire spreads,” Kimball said. “I’m hoping my push will push others. Maybe people will see my little thing, and maybe they’ll do their own little thing, and then maybe all those things will add up to a big thing.” His ultimate goal is to start “a national neighborhood pancake day”.