【推荐1】After spending 589 days picking up litter or rubbish at one of Los Angeles County’s most popular hiking spots, 20-year-old Edgar McGregor says the park is clean of waste.

McGregor’s journey was sparked by an Olympic dream. When he learned Los Angeles would be hosting the 2028 summer games, he worried that its national forest with litter everywhere would become a “global embarrassment” and took it upon himself to start cleaning.

McGregor decided to start with Eaton Canyon, the closest of the Angeles National Forest parks to where he lives. It has miles of crisscrossing trails, popular waterfalls, eleven storm drains, seven homeless encampments, five entrances, four parking lots and more than two miles of streambeds. At the beginning, he thought that cleaning the park would take 10 to 20 days. It took 589 days.

On his largest solo cleanup day, McGregor spent 300 minutes clearing an area less than one acre in size. He filled a previously empty dumpster (垃圾箱) with more than 1,000 pounds of trash. He ventured out in extreme weather, including during the state’s record heat wave in September, after a January snowstorm, and even while the other side of the park was actively on fire.!

After months of park cleanliness, McGregor noticed several weeks ago that he was running out of locations to clean-even the spots that were usually reliable sources of litter were mostly empty.

“Not worrying about litterbugs and simply immersing myself in this work has made me more excited than ever to go out every single day and pick up,” McGregor said “There is nothing more satisfying than seeing brand new animals return to your park after months of cleaning up. I highly encourage anyone with any spare time to give this mission a shot. Your parks need you.”

【推荐3】Say No to Non-electric Cars

Most modern cities have taken action to reduce traffic jams and improve air quality. But if they want to become more livable, they should think about more ambitious goals.

Amsterdam has set a good example. As from 2030, driving a gas vehicle there will not be allowed. The Dutch capital wants its citizens to become healthier and happier.    1    Amsterdam isn’t alone; it joins Hamburg, Madrid and other cities in moving toward at least partial car bans to reduce pollution.

The advantages of such plans are clear.     2    It slows economic growth. Pollution from cars not only contributes to climate change but is also a threat to well-being. Amsterdam’s government says it reduces life expectancy of its citizens by a full year.

    3     Electric cars, after all, are more expensive. And for most people, giving up driving means life will become less convenient. Perhaps cities can help make this switch easier. For example, they can think about improving public transportation. They can also design appealing public spaces for pedestrians (行人).     4     Technology can also do its part. Cities can be more open to new ways of getting around, such as bike-sharing, driverless cars and delivery drones(无人机).

Saying no to non-electric cars or even all cars is hard.     5     Making our cities more livable has to become an urgent goal.

【推荐1】Today, we study literature from a young age—learning about our histories, faraway worlds and influential people. Whether we notice or not, these stories—both fiction and non-fiction—guide us throughout our lives. They allow us to see the world through another’s eyes, open up our world and teach us about every subject known to man.

Despite their importance, many people throw out their old books—laying waste the wisdom that lies on each page. In an effort to save this knowledge and share it with those less fortunate, a garbage man in, Bogota, Colombia has been saving thrown-away books for 20 years and sharing them with those in need.

“I hated to see all the books in the dustbins of wealthier neighborhoods. So I started to rescue them,’’ said Gutierrez. The first book he found was a copy of the classic novel Anna Karenina. The Tolstoy book was later joined by The Little Prince, Sophie's World, The Iliad and a number of novels. Today, he has collected around 25,000 books.

His growing collection didn’t go unnoticed. Gutierrez’s neighbors were soon borrowing the books to help with their children’s homework. “There was a lack of them in our neighborhood, so we started to help,”said Gutierrez.

The ground floor of Gutierrez’s home is now filled with books, from floor to ceiling. Over spilling with books, he opened it up as a free library, with the help of his wife Luz Gutierrez and their three children.

Word eventually spread around about Gutierrez and his books. Most of the books now come from donations. He now travels around the country, delivering free books to poor and remote districts. The library, named “The Strength of Words", has donated books to some 235 schools, institutions and community libraries across Colombia.

【推荐2】As a senior school graduate, with COVID-19 cases rising and lockdown hitting, I’ve had plenty of concerns. Losing my graduation ceremony was one of them. But being unable to lend a hand to my community at such a terrible time was the greatest concern. Except for wearing my mask, following the health officials’ guidelines, and assisting seniors to get their groceries, there wasn’t anything more I could do.

Then it struck me. Solving COVID-19 relied only on individual steps and the goodwill of human awareness. But the next challenge we have to deal with ahead is climate change, known as the silent pandemic without a vaccine (疫苗). So, all I could think of was: Why don’t we do the same for it, and try to deal with global warming through our everyday activities?

I have decided to take a gap year and created an app to help people reduce carbon emissions (排放) from their shopping and transport activities. Even though I’d never written any program before, my will was greater than any excuse I could think of. The first version was just a one-screen app. Through the lockdown, I’ve had only 70 people to test the concept with and barely created any impact. Plus, the process of leading a social organization seemed like a small boat in a rough sea to me. But instead of giving up, I chose to fill the gap. And the coolest thing was that the more I was learning, the more people got interested in the idea. Through every leadership program, I built a stronger user community where each person was equally passionate and brave to make a change. Their enthusiasm was my greatest fuel for innovation.

Today, through the app, over 4,000 people reduced more than 150,000 kg carbon emissions. The app turned into an international movement. I proved to myself that miracles really happen when you dare to make a change.

【推荐2】Lily, 17 and Evie, 15, love cooking and regularly practice their skills. “Both of us obviously love cooking and are very passionate about the state of our city in which we want to make a change for the better,” Evie told Yahoo Life.

Though the teens are too young to become politicians, they often used their baking skills to help with campaigns that try to make their city better. In their spare time, they baked cupcakes and then sold them to raise money. According to Yahoo life, they raised a total of 30 ,000 dollars (about 191,000 yuan) in their first fundraiser.

“Once you get a taste for making a difference in the world, you can’t stop,” Lily added.

After this success, the sisters continued helping others. New American Pathways is an Atlanta-based nonprofit organization that helps refugees (难民). Though the organization has tried its best to support newly arrived refugees, it’s unable to do everything for them. Many young Afghan refuges don’t have backpacks and other school supplies.

As teen students, the sisters understood how important school supplies are. So they decided to give a hand to these young refugees. At the suggestion of the organization, they started a bake sale to raise funds. Whenever they had the time, they would bake desserts by themselves or called for families and neighbors to join in with them.

With their great work, they ended up getting 240 filled backpacks.

“Knowing that each backpack would be held by a kid that might not have had a backpack at all felt really good, and I was excited to know that we could fuel their love of learning.” Evie told the website Inspiration Post.

They also hope to inspire others to make a difference no matter how small it is.“No matter how small you might feel your voice is,” Lily told Daily Viral News, “just know that you can make a difference in your community. You just have to go for it.”

【推荐3】Linda Brown, a real estate agent, believes that when it comes to solving homelessness, it takes a village. She spent nine years supporting homeless people in Springfield, Missouri, through a charitable organization called The Gathering Tree, which welcomed people a few times each week during daylight hours, providing a safe and welcoming place for them to take showers, socialize, or simply rest. But they had to close their doors for the night. “One cold winter night, I watched as my friends walked off into the darkness to a wet, cold camp, while we went home to a warm bed,” Linda said, “I realized I had to do something.”

She had an idea to create a village of tiny houses to make sure no one slept outside on her watch! Linda started fundraising. She began by appealing to her fellow estate agents in the area before branching out into local businesses.

Using these donations, Linda purchased a nearby abandoned area that already had the infrastructure in place. By February 2019, they’d built 31 tiny homes for their Eden Village and found residents for each one. All the residents must be good neighbors in order to stay in the village, and they certainly are! Linda was happy when she learned that the village actually increased local property values rather than lowering them as some people had feared.

Linda hasn’t stopped working since Eden Village began. A second village opened in the fall of 2020, and there’s a third location in the works as well! She hopes to have five villages across Springfield within the next five years, helping more than 200 homeless people get off the streets and into a new life.

To this day, Linda firmly believes that there are a million reasons someone can become homeless, but each of them can be solved with love and community involvement.