2 . Wildlife conservation volunteer programs are a great way to join in the protection of endangered animals, as well as learn how you can help protect them.

Elephant Camp Volunteering Program, Thailand

As a volunteer, you will have the opportunity to spend quality time with the elephants and their trainers. This period allows volunteers to form a deep connection with these lovable creatures. The program is particularly well-suited for animal-loving volunteers willing to engage in outdoor work.

Duration: 1 Week

Cost: $800

Wildlife Conservation Volunteer Program, Australia

Be a part of the Wildlife Conservation Volunteer Program in Australia and work alongside the beautiful Australian animals. Volunteers will be engaged in activities such as animal feeding, cleaning, and food enrichment. This program provides a wonderful opportunity to get firsthand international work experience while making a meaningful contribution to the well-being of native animals.

Duration: 2 Weeks

Cost: $1,050

Wild Elephant Conservation &Research Program, Sri Lanka

Whether you’re a high school student with a love for animals, a gap year traveler looking for meaningful work experience, or a family looking for an engaging volunteering opportunity, this project fits you all. Explore the wonders of this South Asian island, and make a difference here!

Duration: 1 Week

Cost: $1,075

Sun Bear Conservation Volunteering Project, Malaysia

Volunteers’roles involve hands-on care for sun bears, the world’s smallest bears, such as cleaning their homes and making environmental and food enrichment. Beyond improving the living conditions of sun bears, you’ll understand how to send them back into the wild.

Duration: 2 Weeks

Cost: $1,226

3 . In a heart-pounding display of courage and quick thinking, a 65-year-old crane operator became an unexpected hero as he rescued a man trapped on top of a towering building engulfed in flames.

Glen Edwards, a crane operator from Egham, was expressing his gratitude after a tense rescue operation in Reading last Thursday. Edwards found himself in a challenging situation as he navigated circling winds to save a man trapped by smoke and flames on a building. The dramatic rescue unfolded amid thick black smoke, making visibility nearly impossible

When the alarm sounded, Edwards, who had a concrete skip on his crane, wasted no time the moment he spotted the distressed man waving his coat. Employing his experience and knowledge of the area, Edwards attached a metal cage to the crane, carefully considering his options for the rescue. However, the challenging conditions, with smoke sheltering his view, added an extra layer of difficulty to the operation.

With a colleague providing guidance and a concerned crowd watching from below, Edwards skillfully operated the crane to rescue the man. The onlookers erupted in cheers and applause as the man was safely lifted to the ground.

Reflecting on the intense experience, Edwards remarked, “It seemed to pass a long time until the man got inside. The adrenaline (肾上腺素) was pumping.” He admitted to experiencing shaking after the rescue, emphasizing the gravity of the situation.

Despite the successful operation, Edwards is yet to meet the man he saved, humorously noting, “He’s got to take me across the road for a drink!”

The heartwarming part of this story is the overwhelming support Edwards has received from well-wishers. A fund-raising page was set up to “buy Edwards a beer as a sign of gratitude,” initially aiming for £5,000 but now standing at an impressive ₤9,100. The community’s response has left Edwards deeply moved. He stated, “It means a lot; some of the comments have been absolutely fantastic.”

4 . “After snow is long gone, before plants begin to grow, roadside rubbish seems eye-catching. Who are these people with the thought, ‘Oh, somebody will collect it?’”

That question led Kevin Keehn, head of Bike Palatine Club(BPC), on a personal mission of cleanup along Northwest suburban (郊区的) roads where he cycles a couple thousand miles every year.

Since 2021, his club has scheduled its spring trail cleanup in the Paul Douglas Forest Preserve. The next one is starting next Saturday. Armed with work gloves and plastic bags, hundreds will snatch plastic bottles, glass bottles and energy drink cans along the Northwest suburban roads. The goal is to clean the entire trail. Volunteers registering on the BPC cleanup page indicate a preferred area along the main roads. One of over 20 site coordinators (协调员) then contacts the volunteers and provides plastic bags.

Keehn notes, “For the last few years, a couple hundred volunteers have registered online to collect garbage along the trails. Groups come from all walks of life, including schools, friends and family groups, and company workers. We do our best to spread out the effort to cover all areas.”

“Groups don’t all come together until about 10 days before the event,” Keehn says, adding weather, not surprisingly, is a factor. “We put off this cleanup until next Saturday,” he continues, “hoping that more people will attend the event.”

“The funniest thing about all the cleanups is to see photos of smiling people surrounded by bags of rubbish,” Keehn says. “Funny, but true. We always compete to see who finds the most interesting rubbish. One year I found a case of model cars, hidden deep into the bush (灌木丛). Perhaps kids forgot where they’d hidden their treasure.”

5 . Charlie Jeffers, 17, a senior at Redwood High School in Marin County, Calif., has loved Lego since age 4. His room is full of Lego bricks. Noticing his friends start throwing away their old Lego collections, he hatched a plan. “Legos are pricey,” he noted. “Many can’t afford them.” He started collecting unwanted Lego parts from friends and neighbors, spreading the word through community notices and door-to-door visits.

The response was surprising. Donations of old Lego sets poured in, propelling Jeffers to formalize his efforts under the banner of Pass the Bricks. Together with a dedicated team of volunteers, Jeffers and his teammates carefully clean, sort, and repurpose collected Lego pieces into imaginative sets. These sets, each with roughly 20 to 60 pieces, are carefully made to create scenes such as blind dates or family photoshoots. Since its start in 2020, Pass the Bricks has made a significant success. With over 3,000 sets donated to date, Jeffers and his team are driven by two purposes: to reduce landfill waste and to provide Legos to children who might otherwise go without. Jeffers stresses the educational value of Lego, emphasizing its capacity to inspire creativity and learning.

Pass the Bricks has since expanded its reach nationwide, with volunteers in several states distributing sets to local charities. To ensure each set is presented with care, Jeffers uses donations and personal funds from his job at a gym to purchase affordable cardboard gift boxes online. These sets, accompanied by instructions and a photo of the finished product, are distributed to various organizations and directly to children at local schools.

Despite his approaching to college, Jeffers remains devoted to his commitment to Pass the Bricks. He plans to continue and expand the initiative, driven by a desire to share the joy and educational benefits of Lego with as many children as possible. “We’re grateful to share them with the kids and families we serve,” Jeffers expresses. Reflecting on his own Lego-filled childhood, he acknowledges its profound influence. “I aim to provide others with the same chance,” he emphasizes, echoing his ongoing commitment to sharing the joy of Lego with all.

6 . Raj Patel was 5, traveling with his family to India from England.A young girl, no older than 12, approached their car, carrying a crying baby, begging for money and food. “My parents embarrassingly pushed some money out to her from the window,”Patel says. “Since then, the journey has been to figure out why this stuff happens.”

Upon returning to England, Patel decided to rent out his toys and raise money to stop hunger. It didn’t take him long to realize his attempts would not fix the problem.While attending Oxford University, Patel had an idea to shift his major to mathematics, believing that mathematics could handle the crisis of hunger and poverty (贫困).But as he dived deeper into the topic, he learned the political and systemic side of the story. So he changed his undergraduate degree back to economics and added the study of philosophy and politics to his pursuits (事业).

After graduation, he worked for the World Bank and the United Nations. But even that, he says, didn’t lead to workable solutions (解决方案).

His first book, Stuffed and Starved, was a breakout work written for a general audience. While living in Africa, Patel created a number of documentaries but none gained much popularity until he met Anita Chitaya, an activist in Bwabwa, a remote village in Malawi. Anita works with a local organization that has fought hunger in Malawi for decades.She helps farmers to experiment with crops to grow more nutritious food. Her story evolved into an 11-year project -The Ants&the Grasshopper, which earned the Moving Mountains Award.

As the decade of research,filming and editing carries on, this drought-stricken village goes from being.self-sufficient through sustainable farming practices to struggling to grow enough nutritious food and access clean,drinkable water. Climate change ended up being another part of the story.

Patel knows that he needs to find other ways to reach audiences. He released a widely shared YouTube video about capitalism, chicken nuggets (鸡块) and the global hunger crisis. He’s given 20-minute TED Talks that summarize the intentions of his books. No matter what gets thrown his way, Patel seems to course-correct in order to continue pursuing his mission.

7 . Nearly 50 billion pieces of litter are thrown along US roadways and waterways, according to a 2020 study by the non-profit Keep America Beautiful (KAB). That estimate includes more than 800 million pieces of fast-food packaging, 2. 6 billion food-packaging-film items, and 207 million pieces of personal protective equipment, like masks and gloves. Not all litter, however, is intentional. A large volume of litter also comes from unsecured items that fall off the back of vehicles or out of trash receptacles (容器).

To address the country’s ongoing litter problem, some public libraries are creating kits to help people clean up their neighborhoods.

”We want people to be involved in the community, says Samantha Hanchett, marketing coordinator (协调者) at Thomas County Public Library System (TCPLS). “Doing something that benefits everyone, even though it’s quite quiet, is really what a library does all the time.”

The library system launched a litter clean-up program with Keep Thomas County Beautiful (KTCB), the local KAB chapter (地方分会), in 2020. Actually, the chapter had previously held group clean-up events and naturally inspired more individual or joint efforts. As a result, KTCB partnered with the library to create kits for people in the library to check out.

Each kit contains items such as trash bags, gloves, reflective vests, and a booklet with guidance-lines and suggestions for where to clean up in the community. Litter kits are housed at the library system’s main branch in Thomasville, but people can request they be sent to their local branch for pick-up.

Hanchett estimates that kits are checked out between 30 and 45 times each year, noting that they are most popular with groups and grade school students. “People like the convenience of the kits because it’s something they can do on their own time,” she says. “It’s an elastic way of getting involved instead of having an appointed time in which you take part in the activity.”

9 . The cost of living crisis is causing suffering for millions this winter. One in five people are worried about where their next meal will come from. Parents who live near you are burdened with anxiety about how they will afford to feed their children. Families are struggling and don’t know where to turn. Yet while people go hungry, three million tonnes of surplus(剩余的) food is being wasted every year.

Fare Share is a national charity working to get that food to people who are struggling—but we need your help. A gift of £90 could provide three meals a day to a family of four for a whole month. Plus, you may be entitled to recover 25p of tax on every £1 you give as gift money.

Your gift will help us redistribute food to our network of 8,500 local charities and community groups across the UK. You’ll also help people to access other services and support through these groups, strengthening communities and easing loneliness through food.

We’d love to keep you up to date on Fare Share’s work including fundraising updates. Please get in touch by calling us on 0300 302 3677 or emailing fundraiser@fareshare.org.uk

To give online, please visit fareshare.org.uk/community 1. For more information please scan the QR code.

10 . If you walk around Huntington Beach, California, you may spot a woman holding five leashes (绳套) with one hand and pulling a wagon (马车) with the other. A closer look will show she has seven dogs with her—and none of them are walking on all four legs. Her name is Debbie Pearl,and all of her dogs have disabilities and use wheelchairs or prosthetic limbs (义肢).

There is no doubt Pearl is a dog lover—she trains them for movies and said she has always had “quite a few” of her own dogs at home. In 2005, she created a nonprofit called Dream Fetchers, which helps rescue dogs from the streets. As part of the organization’s mission, members of Pearl’s personal pack work as therapy(治疗)dogs.

About nine years ago,she adopted her first dog with a disability, Fast Eddie. He had a spinal injury and was left on the street. Now, he runs around using a wheelchair.

“Eddie was definitely my inspiration for adopting other disabled dogs,” Pearl said. “He was so full of life.He never let anything slow him down. I mean, he truly was unstoppable.” About once a week, she gathers up her crew and takes them to hospitals, schools or the Easter Seals—a nonprofit that helps adults with disabilities.

“I look for dogs that have been through traumatic (创伤的) events, but they have this amazing gift of forgiveness,” Pearl said. “And that’s a powerful thing for a lot of people, because they can see the courage, the resilience (韧性) that these dogs have. And all of mine have been through the worst—and they’ve come out shining.”

She says all her dogs are here because they’ve gotten a second chance at life. And for other survivors of abuse, or those with disabilities, that can be a powerful thing to see.