Creating jars of joy

In Unionville, Indiana, Kaia Francis is a fifth grader at the elementary school. She noticed that COVID-19 has made a lot of people not notice the good, but she saw many kind acts at her school that made people happy. So she went to her Principal, Lily Albright, to propose a Jar of Joy project, where jars could be placed in each classroom for students to write down what made them happy during the week.

The project recently started. At first, Kaia and the school's Student Advisory Board discussed the possibility of offering incentives for participating. They decided against it, wanting the notes to be genuine and from the heart. Each week, Principal Albright will empty the joy jars and select a few moments of joy from each classroom to feature on the intercom. The notes will also be posted on the bulletin board in the hallway."I hope it just makes the school a better place," said Kaia.

Creative use for an old dump truck

"This racist thing is stupid..."

There's no place for hate, and as people in the grip of hate groups or violent gangs begin to realize this, a pair of Kentucky tattoo artists are helping them start anew. Last year, Ryan King (left) and Jeremiah Swift started a campaign called "Cover the Hate" in which they offered to cover hate or gang-related tattoo symbols for free. At the time, they only received a few dozen requests. Now, as the world wakes to racial justice, that number has risen to hundreds.

One man who accepted their offer said he got tattoos of hate symbols when he was young and hadn't realized his intolerance. He's been ashamed of them for years, but could not afford to have them removed. "One day you just realize this racist thing is stupid," he said. "Everyone's equal."

"I love you, Mr. Brown"

When Amos Wood started school at White Oak Elementary School in Edenton, North Carolina, he wasn't yet speaking. He has autism, and it was hard for him to make friends with other kids. Sometimes they just ignored him, but school custodian Raymond Brown loved every student like his own grandchild, and that included Amos. When Amos was seven, he formed a bond with Mr. Brown. The custodian nicknamed him Famout Amos. Other students noticed the attention he gave Amos, since Mr. Brown is the most popular grown-up in the school. Now if you walk down the hall, you'll hear children saying, "Hi Famous Amos!" After Mr. Brown began calling him Famous Amos, Amos started saying, "Hey Brown." His mother remembers "he wasn't even saying Daddy at that point, so it was really something."

Amos' mother, Adrian Wood, was so grateful to the custodian for bonding with Amos that she nominated him for a North Carolina School Hero Award, but he was passed over. So she used her Facebook blog to earn Brown the kudos he deserved. Within a week, she'd raised $35,000 from nearly 2,000 people. March 20 was Mr. Brown and his wife's 38th wedding anniversary, and thanks to Amos' mother, it was quite a party. The custodian's grown children and hundreds of well-wishers including Edenton's Mayor, the police chief and even Miss North Carolina, sang the beloved custodian's praises. Then they gave him a $35,000 honorarium, dubbed "The Famous Amos Award." So it was fitting that the sweetest accolade for this small-town hero came from Amos himself, who simply said, "I love you, Mr. Brown."

Green energy is good, but a solar car?

On February 18, Aptera Motors announced it has received 7,000 orders for its new electric vehicle. The Aptera electric trike has three wheels. It costs about $25,000, and contains 34 square feet of solar cells which generate electricity to power the car for daily commutes. It can be plugged in, of course, for rainy days or nighttime, but unlike basic electric vehicles, it needs just 15 minutes to charge to drive 150 miles without stopping.

Even the simple act of parking it in the sun for a day can provide 40 miles of range all on its own -- the equivalent of your present car refilling itself with two gallons of gasoline. As part of a bid to get the car on the market this year, Aptera has moved to a new production and design facility near San Diego, California.

Teenager organizes village library

The village of Deora, India, has about 3,500 people. Child marriage is common there, and many kids don't attend school. Some families refuse to educate daughters, and other children work in the fields. But it happens to be the village where Sadiya Riyaz Shaikh was born. Now 18 years old, she's become educated and won public speaking competitions. When she returned to her birthplace to wait out the pandemic, she decided to open up new worlds for young readers.

As reported in The Christian Science Monitor, she convinced family elders to give her a dilapidated guesthouse. She used prize earnings from public speaking events to convert the building into a library with hundreds of donated books, and a tutor. Some neighbors were critical that a woman should be a leader, but Ms. Shaikh says, "If I continue to listen to others, I'll never be able to achieve anything." She now hopes to start children's libraraies in other states of India.

Honesty is the best policy

Andrea Lessing is a new worker at the Goodwill Industries charity shop in Norman, Oklahoma. Recently she was sorting through clothes looking for rips or stains when she found $42,000 stuffed inside two old sweaters. She reported the lost cash, and the shop was able to track down the owner using some ID bundled with the money.

The owners, who had forgotten about the money when they doanted the clothing, gave Andrea $1,000, which made her break down and cry. "Since we gave her the reward on Thursday, I spoke to her yesterday," said Lacey Lett, Director of Communications for Goodwill Industries of Central Oklahoma, "and she is still in shock and awed by their generosity."