【推荐3】A little change is always in need in everyone’s daily life. For Ali, the change was much bigger. Just this past January he immigrated to Canada from Pakistan at the age of 18. The reasoning? “A voice in me was shouting to go somewhere where there are opportunities,” Ali said.

While it was a hard decision to leave his hometown, his native country, and his loved ones, Ali is excited about his new life. “In Canada you will find yourself surrounded by more opportunities, more ways to accomplish what you want, and people are very helpful.” Months after changing around his whole life, Ali dove right into helping the community. In March, he worked with Be the Change. Ali describes the organization as “a youth program which gives confidence and skills of making a negotiation (谈判).”

“The most impressive part of Be the Change is that we don’t just work with pen and paper,” he said. “You are given a task to go out and ask people for the problems in the community, work on it, and then make a proposal for the authority to work on it.”

Now Ali has a new project he is working on. He was inspired to get involved with the organization because it is a platform for him to do good for the world. One of Ali’s most favorite parts of working with the Peace Welcome Club is that it allows face-to-face interaction rather than just the use of social networking sites.

“This gives me opportunity to spread the message of Peace Welcome Club. It enables me to hear something from other communities and to work on something they want to change in their community.” Another added benefit? Ali has met a wealth of new people and has made many new friends.

【推荐1】Mary Dickins had been a member of the audience at poetry nights before and knew “the poetry clap”. She made a polite tapping of fingers. But when she made her debut (首次演出) as a performer at the age of 62 at the legendary Bang Said the Gun night in south London, she said, “It was so wild — like nothing I had ever seen before.” The audience stamped their feet and shook shakers. “It felt transformative. I thought, ‘I’ve got to have more of this,’ ” Dickins said. Becoming a performance poet has given her a place on a stage of her own making.

All her life she has written is mostly without being seen or heard. Her mother died when she was nine, and, after she went into a care home at 13, Dickins’ writing stayed in notebooks. Really, she says, a lot of her adult life has been about getting over childhood shyness. At university — she studied education — she met her husband of 40 years, but in three years of seminars she did not say a word. Some of these results from her years at the children’s home. She says, “It gave me a sense of what it’s like to be excluded. I never fitted in anywhere.”

After she graduated, she discovered that she loved working with people with learning disabilities. She became an expert in inclusive education. “That was my niche (称心的职业),” she says. She published books and returned to the University of North London as a senior lecturer in early childhood studies.

Dickins now sees that in adulthood she has been giving herself permission to be silly. “The sillier I allow myself to be, the better the writing is,” she says. Her observations are humorous.

“Putting things into words and giving shape to your emotions is an important part of coming to terms with the things that happen in life,” she says.

Does she still feel like an outsider?

“I think I’ve made it into a virtue. I celebrate the fact that I don’t fit into a box. Finally! You have to wait till you’re 62 to feel confident!” she says. “But I have a sense of who I am and I’m proud of it. I wouldn’t be anyone else now — and it took me a long time to say that.”

【推荐2】On September 2nd, BUAA (北京航空航天大学) welcomed its first 2021 student. His name is Xing Yifan, coming together with his parents ahead of time.

"Yifan is 18 years old, but he weighs only 18 kilograms. When 6 months old, he suffered from LAMA2 (渐冻症), a type of disease that no more than a hundred people have got in the country. However, with his strong will, he made one amazing achievement after another in learning. In this year's college entrance exam, he entered BUAA with a score of 645.

Because of the illness, Yifan can only sit alone for a while, unable to stand and walk like other children. In class, he could only put his head on the table and his eyes can only scan half the pages of the book. He couldn't turn over the book with one hand. And he could only sit and listen to a class for up to 30 minutes, with the remaining 15 minutes to lie down to listen to his teacher.

But these did not scare Yifan, with only a little muscle strength left in his hands, he finished one test paper after another, more than 20 a day, often till one or two o'clock in the morning. Finally, he successfully completed the 2021 college entrance examination.

To live is much more difficult than others. Why does he have to learn? The family said because of the serious disease, he was deprived (剥夺) of the right to walk, run, jump, but he can no longer be deprived of the right to education. Xing Yifan decided to let himself be Hawking of China, and change his life with knowledge.

He came to BUAA and stayed in the love dormitory on the first floor. Xing Yifan said he was feeling particularly warm with all the help. He was expecting new college life and hoped to know more students, and take part in lots of activities. Life kisses him with pain, but he sings.

【推荐3】A teenager has realized her dream of becoming a model—just three years after a car accident left her with a broken back.

Marita Davies, was in a wheelchair for a year and had to learn to walk after she suffered terrible injures. She feared her dream of a modeling career was over but just three years on, she is now n the running to be crowned (加冕) Miss Great Britain. She said, “I was shocked when I learned how serious my injuries were. I thought my dream of becoming a model was over. My leg was seriously injured and my back was broken. The accident had broken my confidence.”

But she turned a corner when she finally came out of the wheelchair. Marita decided she would still try to follow her dream, and sent her photos off to some modeling agencies. She did a few unpaid jobs while studying at college, and soon, paid commercial modeling jobs started coming in. Marita was a bit doubtful at first, because the accident has left her with huge scars on her leg and back. She was worried people wouldn’t want her to model for them, but it didn’t stop her.

She has done amazingly well to overcome everything, which has been thrown at her in the last three years. Within months of learning to walk again, Marita was signed up for advertising campaigns. She has also appeared in a TV ad. Marita was crowned Miss Nottingham City earlier this year, and is now competing against 59 other girls to be crowned Miss Great Britain.