Words by Smiley Team
Checking the news on a Monday morning can be a dismal affair. But don’t fret. Not all is doom and gloom in the world, and to prove that to you, we’ve put together the top upbeat stories from the last few days to motivate you through the week.
If you’ve watched the heartwrenching footage of the world’s last two northern white rhinos in David Attenborough’s documentary, Extinction: The Facts, then you’ll fully appreciate the news that in Kenya zero rhinos were poached in 2020. This was partly thanks to Covid-19 travel restrictions, partly due to reduced poverty in the area that drives people to shoot rhinos to sell their horns, and partly due to better policing. Thankfully, the country has become a safer place for elephants too, with poaching levels dropping by 97 per cent since 2012. Only 11 elephants were shot for their ivory tusks in 2020, the lowest number in Kenya’s recorded history.
On the other side of the Gulf of Aden from Kenya, Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul was released from prison on Wednesday. Locked up under dubious Saudi laws that primarily serve to persecute activists, al-Hathloul had been campaigning for women’s rights to drive a car, before police arrested her and she was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison last year. Perhaps due to international pressure, she was released on Wednesday on probation, to the relief of her family and friends.
In other good news, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is using his platform as a religious leader to promote a more equal and caring world. He shared a message of hope for racial equality on Sunday, reminding listeners that Jesus “broke down the walls that divide”. He said to his congregation: "We pray for all those affected by the marginalisation of prejudice and the violence of racist words and actions. We pray that we might uproot its cancerous and systemic hold on our own institutions.” In February 2019 the church leader highlighted racism in the church and apologised publically for its contribution to the spreading of hate.
Tackling international inequalities, the charity of one of the UK’s first mountaineers to scale Mount Everest has passed the £6 million mark in funding. Doug Scott and his team climbed the world’s highest mountain in 1975, a feat which led him to dedicate much of his life to tackling the surrounding country’s high levels of poverty. In his last ever effort for the charity, he raised thousands of pounds for Community Action Nepal by climbing his stairs in lockdown, months before he died of cancer in December 2020. The charity’s funds go towards helping vulnerable Nepalese people whose lives have been devastated over the last decades by civil war and a major earthquake.
In an effort to help the homeless, American singer Jon Bon Jovi has been building houses and offering free meals via his restaurant, the JBJ Soul Kitchen just south of New York. His philanthropic organisation, The Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation has built at least 77 homes for veterans without shelter. The restaurant provides meals on a pay-it-forward basis, where those that can pay as much for their meal as they are able so that others can have a meal for free. Speaking on Channel 4 News on Friday, the rock star explained how he started the initiative: “I was looking out a window of a hotel room and I saw a man sleeping on a grate. He was homeless and he was just trying to get some heat.”
