A photo of three adorable little girls from Oklahoma is touching countless lives. And the story behind the photograph will really tug at your heartstrings.
As KOCO reports, Scantling Photography and Goodger Photography found the girls — each battling a different type of cancer — on Facebook and brought them in for a photo shoot. The result is a moving image of three angelic girls sharing a special moment together with the fitting caption, “Sometimes strength comes in knowing that you are not alone.”
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“I just wanted something that showed the strength and the bond and that they weren’t alone,” photographer Lora Scantling told the television station.
According to their respective social media pages, three-year-old Rylie has stage 5 kidney cancer; six-year-old Rheann is battling a rare form brain cancer called mucoid spindle sarcoma; and four-year-old Ainsley has acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
The picture has since gone viral, drawing thousands of comments, likes and shares. “The photo literally made me cry,” one commenter wrote on Rheann’s page. “Too often we take so many things for granted. The picture of these girls is very humbling to me. Tonight, I will hug my sons a little tighter, snuggle them a little longer, and pray for them a little harder.”
Watch the video below to learn more about the girls and their fight.
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Category: Moving America Forward
These Survivors Give New Meaning to Reaching the Finish Line
On April 15, 2013, an act of terror at the Boston Marathon claimed the lives of three people, injured 260 more, and locked down an entire city with the ensuing manhunt. But it’s in times of tragedy that the human spirit shines through: People ran towards the explosion to offer help. And now, one year later, survivors who lost limbs are not only back on their feet, but even dancing.
In a moving photo and video project called Dear World, photographer Robert X. Fogarty captures the resilience and strength of Boston marathon survivors and first responders a year removed from the tragedy. “What happened that day was terror. Terror happens when love is absent. Boston is a city of love stories now. Thank you for sharing yours here,” Fogarty writes to the survivors. “As you heal, know you inspire the rest of us to be better, still.”
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Roseann Sdoia, who lost a leg, writes for the project: “We have deformities to our bodies, but I think it makes us stronger to be so open with it. I think it’s part of our therapy to get through what happened to us. I feel like it was supposed to happen. I feel like my life was supposed to change. I don’t know if it’s to help others, but I feel like there was a reason for it. It happened to help bring some sort of awareness to disabilities or amputations. You definitely look at the world differently.”
The Dear World team also released the moving clip below featuring survivor and double amputee Celeste Corcoran, who returned to the finish line for the first time since the tragic day. “I had never been back, and it was about reclaiming [it]. That finish line has been a negative space since the marathon,” said Celeste, who along with her daughter Sydney, was injured last year. “This was about reclaiming that space in a positive way. I chose to be there. I took back control. I chose to do this.”
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As the Chicago Tribune reports, 36,000 runners have registered for this year’s marathon, 9,000 more than last year’s total. The newspaper writes that the number also includes runners who weren’t able to cross the finish line last year but are racing again in solidarity with the city.
Can Peer Pressure Stop Violence Against Women?
Who can offer support to the 25 percent of American women who experience violence or abuse during their lifetime? Perhaps the best advocates to fight against this mistreatment are the majority of men who never think of hurting a woman.
That’s the idea behind Te Invito, a new program of the National Latin@ Network that reaches out to Latino men in Spanish and English to encourage them to speak out and work for an end to violence against women. Their website offers an Engaging Men and Boys toolkit that includes resources on programs throughout the country that have been proven to work. The campaign kicked off with a video they hope will reach Latino men to introduce them to the program.
One such program is Coaching Boys Into Men, which teaches techniques to athletic coaches that engage their team members in discussions about domestic violence. The goal? Preventing teenagers from ever abusing a partner. A study by Elizabeth Miller of the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC suggested this program increased teenagers’ recognition of abusive behavior, reduced their likelihood of abusing a girlfriend, and often led them to intervene in stopping such abusive behavior in others.
“As with every other culture, there have always been Latino men who oppose violence against women,” Juan Carlos Areán, Director of the National Latin@ Network told Pierre R. Berastaín for the Huffington Post. “Te Invito is an opportunity for those men to lift their voices and make it clear that this [violence] is unacceptable behavior.”
Men and boys who have engaged in domestic violence prevention are invited to share their ideas with Te Invito so they can increase their list of resources throughout the country. The idea is if more men become aware of how many men are opposed to abuse of women, it won’t be culturally acceptable to engage in this violence. Which sounds like a pretty terrific idea to us.
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Meet the Brilliant Team of Scientists Taking 3-D Printing to Heart
Organ printing may sound like a plot line out of a science fiction movie, but it’s anything but. In fact, a team of doctors and researchers from the University of Louisville in Kentucky have taken great strides in 3-D printing a working human heart.
As the Associated Press reports, cell biologist Stuart Williams is leading the ambitious creation of a so-called “bioficial heart,” that’s both and artificial and natural because it’s made from a recipient’s own fat cells. Williams told the AP that he and his team have already printed simpler parts — such as human heart valves and small veins. He said they have also successfully tested the tiny blood vessels on lab mice and other animals.
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Williams said the goal is to print parts and assemble an entire bioficial heart in three to five years. The organ should be ready for human trials in less than 10 years.
We’ve already seen how the remarkable technology of 3-D printing is being used to create medical devices and prosthesis. Now, 3-D printing has the potential to revolutionize global organ shortages. How so? Since bioficial hearts are built from a recipient’s own cells, it’s unlikely the patient would reject the transplanted organ.
Watch the video below to learn more about this exciting (albeit, weird) new science.
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This Bride’s Gown Was Stolen Just Weeks Before Her Wedding. What Happened Next Will Inspire You.
The groom had asked for her hand. The date was set. And the dress had been purchased. Kelly Cays was just an ordinary bride-to-be with a June wedding planned until something happened that shook up her dreams and restored her belief in human kindness.
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On March 14, Cays of Colorado Springs, Colorado, picked up the wedding dress she’d ordered four months earlier from Danielle’s Bridal Boutique. Here is where the story then deviates from normal into unthinkable territory: Someone stole Cays’s 2006 Jeep Liberty from the parking lot of her apartment complex. But it wasn’t just her wheels that disappeared. So did her wedding dress.
Ten days later, the car turned up abandoned, but the dress was gone. And Cays’s auto insurance didn’t cover the theft.
Relatives had paid for Cays’s $1,800 dress, and she and her fiancé Zach Rose couldn’t afford to replace it. What’s more, they didn’t have four months to wait for a replacement, as their wedding date loomed just three months away. After the Colorado Springs Gazette ran a story on the pilfered dress, people throughout the city stepped up to help.
“So many people offered me their dresses and their stories,” Cays told Stephanie Earls of the Gazette. She still loved her original wedding dress, though, so she contacted the store to see if they could do a rush order. The store agreed, and allowed her to put down only a small deposit, while Cays and Rose hoped they could come up with the rest of the money in time.
They shouldn’t have worried. Sarah Steinmeyer, who works at the dress shop, told Earls that a Good Samaritan came in and anonymously paid for the dress. “It had been a very busy day working on prom when this woman came in and wanted to know if anyone had paid for Kelly Cays’ wedding dress yet. We said, ‘No,’ and she said, ‘I’d like to do that,’ and whipped out her checkbook. I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “We all want to be able to do that someday, just make someone’s day like that.”
Cays describes the act of generosity as a “breath of angelic awesomeness.” It restored Cays’ belief in the goodness of people. “After my car was stolen, I was thinking people are awful. Then throughout this, so many people have helped me and been really sweet and tried to make things easier for me to deal with. There are so many amazing people out there,” said Cays.
Thanks to the people of her community, Cays’s wedding day will be unforgettable.
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The First Lady’s Advice is Something That Every Young Person Should Take to Heart
They’re both tall. And lean. And wear their hair above their shoulders. When it comes to having things in common with Michelle Obama, Nene Sy, an 18-year-old student at The Young Women’s Leadership School of East Harlem, is strikingly similar to the First Lady. But perhaps most significant is the fact that they are both first-generation college students.
Sy recently got the chance to interview Mrs. Obama for the fifth annual Women of the World Summit, Yahoo Shine reports. The bright-eyed young lady, whose parents are from Mali, is headed to Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania on a full scholarship to fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor and was able ask Obama about her pursuit of higher education.
“I grew up in a working class family, and I knew from an early age that I had to get a good education and I had to be serious about it if I wanted to achieve my goals,” Obama (who grew up in the South Side of Chicago and attended Princeton and then Harvard Law) told Sy. “I know how important it is for other young people, particularly young people of color, to know that they have to own their education.”
“Know that you can do this,” Obama added. “I want you to push all the doubt out of your head…it starts with how confident you feel about yourself…You can’t do this alone, nor should you…Don’t be afraid to ask for help.”
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As the Daily Beast reports, Sy has had her share of adversity. At 11-years-old, her mother gave birth to premature twins who eventually died. Sy told the site that watching the doctors trying to save her baby siblings was what inspired her to become a surgeon.
“Put in the work and don’t be afraid to fail or make mistakes,” Obama said. “I say this to my girls all the time: Greatness comes from learning from those mistakes. Walk proud, work hard, and be confident.”
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A Man, His Van and a Mission to Help the Homeless
Aaron Reddin will never forget the night he choose sleep over service. In addition to his full-time job, he had just launched a non-profit, The One, Inc., which delivers food and supplies to the homeless seven nights a week. That evening he was too exhausted to check up on a local homeless man, who he had regularly visited. “I went for the 15 minutes of extra sleep, and he died…that night.”
A Van That Tweets to Help the Homeless
Reddin says the incident motivates him. “It’s a reminder that fifteen minutes of sleep is not worth someone freezing to death right here in our own community.” Reddin now works full-time for The One, Inc. (Read our previous coverage here). The nonprofit, which began with a donated van and a few supplies in 2011, now serves four cities across the country. “There are heartbreaks and there are huge victories,” Reddin says. “You keep rollin’.”
6 Ways We Can Make America Home to the ‘Smartest Kids in the World’
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Author Amanda Ripley readily admits that as an investigative reporter for Time, The Atlantic and other publications, she avoided covering education for years, considering it too “soft.” Fast forward six years and the author of The Smartest Kids in the World has become a leading voice on the American education system, its problems — and ways to fix them.
While covering Michelle Rhee, the controversial superintendent of schools in Washington, D.C., Ripley started to feel the urgency many teachers expressed.
She soon embarked on a year-long investigation, following three American exchange students to Poland, Finland and South Korea from 2010 to 2011. Each country has a different approach to education — from the pressure-cooker model to the utopian one — and all three have made marked progress in their students’ overall performance. NationSwell spoke with Ripley recently after she headlined a panel at the fifth annual Women in the World conference in New York City. Here are six things we learned about recharging our education system.
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You’ll Never Believe What This Peace-Promoting Sculpture is Made Of
Does a work of art have the ability to reduce violence in America and inspire others to work for peace? That’s the hope of students at Centaurus High School (CHS) in Lafayette, Colorado, who are collaborating on a new piece of artwork.
The 2012 Sandy Hook shooting motivated CHS students to research gun violence for their political action class. They tracked U.S. deaths due to guns after Sandy Hook to the end of 2013, tallying a total of 12,400 reported gun fatalities. Last May, in the middle of the lesson, a 16-year-old student at Centaurus attempted to detonate a pipe bomb at the school. Thankfully no one was hurt, as a teacher discovered the device and administrators evacuated the building.
The shaken-up students wanted to do something to impress upon others what they’ve learned about violence in America, so they came up with the idea of inviting a local artist to create a sculpture from melted guns. “We figured what better way to bring awareness to the issue than build a memorial for those who died where people walk by it every day and think, ‘What is this about?'” 18-year-old student Kenny Sweetnam told Elizabeth Hernandez of the Boulder Daily Camera.
The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office donated surrendered guns, teaching the students how to disarm them and supervising the sawing of the guns so they no longer functioned. Sculptor Jessica Adams is guiding the students as they use the melted gun metal to create a sculpture out of 12,400 rods, one for each gun victim in 2013, with longer rods for younger victims, symbolizing the length of the lives they were not able to live.
Sheila Dierks, a priest at the Light of Christ Ecumenical Catholic Church who is volunteering with the project said, “By transforming these guns into art, we’re giving less power to the gun and more to the power of change we hope to see.”
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MORE: Is Learning About Guns the Solution to Youth Violence?
So Meta: Using the Power of the Sun to Create Solar Devices
Solar energy is now greener than ever thanks to an incredible breakthrough from Oregon State University researchers.
According to Clean Technica, the research team figured out a way capture the sun’s energy to produce materials used in solar technology. It’s solar-powered solar, if you will.
Chemical engineering professor Chih-Hung Chang, the lead author of the study, said the process is not only environmentally conscious but saves both time and money in solar manufacturing, too. “Several aspects of this system should continue to reduce the cost of solar energy, and when widely used, our carbon footprint,” Chang said. “It could produce solar energy materials anywhere there’s an adequate solar resource, and in this chemical manufacturing process, there would be zero energy impact.”
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You can learn more about the specific process in this release from Oregon State. It notes that this technology could enable builders to capture more solar energy by coating roof shingles and windows with thin films that previously have not been available at an affordable price.
For the country to reduce its unhealthy and unsustainable dependence on fossil fuels, there needs to be a real push to make alternative energy less expensive and more efficient. Perhaps truly bright ideas like this to will help move the country in a more environmentally-friendly direction.