People that make me happy

[delphipsmith]

I thought today I'd share two news stories that made me really happy in the past couple of weeks.

First, an eleven-year-old Masai boy from Kenya named Richard Turere. He's invented a cheap low-tech lion repellent -- a way to keep lions from chowing down on his family's herd of cattle. Lion predation on livestock is the number one reason locals kill them (Kenya's lion population has dropped from 15,000 ten years ago to about 2,000 today), so anything that keep them away is good for the cattle, good for the humans, and really good for the lions, though they may not know it. He wired up a bunch of LEDs to an old car battery powered by a solar panel, and the moving lights make it look like somebody is out roaming around and the lions stay away. Is that brilliant or what?? Many other villages are now installing these things, and it's working like gangbusters. He's now 13, and the Kenya Land Conservation Trust has gotten him a scholarship to go to school and study engineering. Yay!!

Second, the men of Phi Alpha Tau at Emerson College in Boston. They fund-raised on IndieGogo to help one of their brothers pay for his gender change from female to male, when his insurance company declined to cover the surgery. A fraternity, can you believe it?? They raised $16K; the extra is being donated to the Jim Collins Foundation, which helps fund sex change surgery (they call it "gender-confirming surgery" -- new phrase? never heard it before) for those who can't afford it. You guys rock, man. Best fraternity ever.

It's things like this that give me hope :)

Comments

[squibstress.livejournal.com]

Yay.

These stories are a nice antidote to everything else on my newsfeed today.

[delphipsmith]

Aren't they though? It's kind of depressing when it's the good stories, not the bad ones, that jump out at you as unusual, but still they are quite cheering :)

[aalia7.livejournal.com]

:)

My first undergrad year was at Emerson. My roomie and I were delighted to find that instead of a Homecoming dance in the fall, we were in for 'Dragtoberfest'! It's just that kind of school. :)

[delphipsmith]

Ah, well then, that explains it a bit. Very cool!

[dreamy-dragon73.livejournal.com]

Yay for good news. Definitely things to give one hope.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that men from a fraternity (about whom I have all sorts of preconceived notions) would collect money a gender change.

[delphipsmith]

I know, isn't that just amazing? Apparently Emerson College is that sort of place in general (see aalia7's comment above), which is lovely -- wish we had more colleges like it!