Little Free Libraries are spreading across the world! The first one was built in 2009, and now the movement has grown to over 50,000 libraries in all 50 us states and over 70 countries!
Guest blog by: Mirella Ferraz from the Network of Wellbeing
People are drowning in stuff. Many people have more stuff than they need and use, while others find themselves lacking useful goods that could help improve their lives. So this leads to questioning: Why buy when you can borrow? Why hold on to goods you don’t need when you can lend them to others? The recently launched Share Shed is one community-based response to these questions.
Welcome to Punta Mona, the land of freedom. It’s a tropical paradise off-the-grid in the Caribbean Jungle of Costa Rica.There are no roads here. You arrive by boat or hike 2 hours through primary rainforest. Stephen Brooks, who left suburban Miami to create a new way of life, founded the community in 1995.
Welcome to the Peace Academy, a K-12 school that creates change-makers and ambassadors of peace. They are part of the growing need for alternative and flexible education.
Meet Hillary Kearney of Girl Next Door Honey, a local hero for the struggling honeybees across the USA. Bee populations have been on the decline for decades due to pesticides, loss of habitat, and climate change. Hilary is working to raise San Diego’s bee population and spread awareness among her community. After rescuing the bees, she photographs them, teaches her community about them, and manages over 90 honeybee colonies!
Meet Debbra Arndt, the woman growing a garden to feed the elderly in her neighborhood. At the age of 4 she was abandoned at an orphanage. She remembers going to bed hungry because there wasn’t enough food for all the children. She went through 14 foster homes as a kid, and at the age of 16 she was on her own. She survived through help of total strangers, to find food to eat and places to sleep.
Now, for the last 25 years, she has been growing fresh fruits and vegetables to give to the elderly and homeless in her own neighborhood.
Meet “Dumpster Dan.” He has rescued $35,000 worth of food from grocery store dumpsters.
Recently he did the “Dumpster Diet Challenge” eating only food from grocery store dumpsters for a week. He puts on displays of food waste at his university and gives presentations to his fellow students. This is all to raise awareness about food waste and hunger, making a positive impact on his community and the environment.
Meet Jing Chen, Founder of JinBuCha. She’s serving up a healthy alternative to soda in her community. The average American drinks 45 gallons of soda per year, and over 1/3rd of Americans are obese. We all know soda makes people fat and contributes to diseases like diabetes, but many of us don’t know there’s a healthy and refreshing alternative!
Meet David Young, the urban farmer in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. He came here in 2010 from Indiana and stayed because of a “calling from god.” Since then he has started gardens on 30 abandoned lots leftover from Hurricane Katrina.
Animals are being driven out of their natural environment because of human development around the world. This group of everyday people is part of the solution. In their Community Nature Reserve, everyone makes a little space for wildlife.
