Sammie Vance knows it feels bad to be left out. ________ she has been helping kids who feel lonely make friends.

Sammie is 14. When she was in the third grade, she started the Buddy Bench (友谊长凳) program. That was at her school, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Anyone ________ felt lonely could sit on the “buddy bench”. It showed others that someone needed a friend.

The bench ________ kids together. “There was one little boy at school, younger than me,” Sammie told TIME for Kids. “He would see me in the hallway and give ________ a thumbs-up (翘大拇指). That told me that what I was doing helped him.”

It costs ________ to build benches. Sammie decided to make them out of recycled material. This lowered the cost.

Sammie rallied (召集) her community. They collected 1,200 pounds of bottle caps (瓶盖). A company called Green Tree Plastics made three benches ________ the bottle caps.

Sammie has helped communities all over the country set up buddy benches. And she is spreading ________ around the world. “We ________ got a bench in Ghana, Africa,” she says. “That was cool. ”

Sammie reminds us that kids can help their community. Even small acts of kindness can be ________. “You don’t have to be an adult to make a difference,” she says.

Sammie wrote a book called Inspire the World: A Kid’s Journey to Making a Difference. It ________ the story of her buddy benches. Sammie hopes her example will inspire (激励) others. “I used to be really shy,” she says. “I’m more outgoing now. ”

A video of a black sun bear at the Hangzhou Zoo has become popular. In the video, the bear stands on its back legs and the fur (毛) on its behind is loose (松散的). Many people thought it was a person standing in a bear suit.

The zoo workers said that the sun bear was real. “If a person did wear a bear suit, they would be falling down within minutes because of the hot weather in summer. ”

Later, the zoo made a statement (声明) in the name of “Angela”, the sun bear. “Some people think I stand like a person. It seems you don’t understand me very well,” the statement said. “Let me say again to everyone that I am a sun bear—not a black bear, not a dog—a sun bear!”

Sun bears live in the forests of Southeast Asia. They are the smallest bears in the world. They are only about the size of a large dog. They can be 1.1-1.5 meters tall while standing on their back legs. They can weigh from 25 to 75 kilograms.

Sun bears are the least studied out of all the 8 kinds of bears. Maybe this is because they are shy and live far away from people. They are listed as vulnerable (易危的) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Their numbers in the wild have fallen by 35% over the past thirty years, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). They need more protection.