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The best good news stories from December
December was filled with so much good news, it's easy to overlook some of it!
Today, we're highlighting the most-clicked stories from the past month — to help make sure you catch all the good news you might have missed.
Photo: via Knit the Rainbow Facebook page
A knitting collective is providing life-saving winter wear to homeless LGBTQ+ youth across the country
After Austin Rivers took knitting up as a hobby during the pandemic, the New Yorker soon launched a knitting collective for vulnerable community members.
During a 14-week applied science program, a middle schooler found a cancer-fighting compound in goose poop
The students collected and analyzed environmental samples from the Garfield Park Lagoon as part of a 14-week applied science program designed to bring STEM projects to underrepresented groups.
The World Wildlife Fund released a decade-long report on the Congo Basin, revealing the discovery of 742 new species
The researchers discovered one new mammal species a year on average, including a new monkey species, three mice, and two bats. They also recorded 25 new snakes, 101 fish, 121 insects, and more.
A new Roblox game donates a real-life meal to someone in need for each one served in a "virtual community kitchen"
This holiday season, one in five children in the U.S. will face hunger, and nearly half of all kids play Roblox every day — those overlapping statistics presented an opportunity to do good.
A new study shows that cancer-sniffing dogs and artificial intelligence successfully detected disease with a simple breath test
The largest clinical trial to date for cancer detection using both AI and trained canines, the test demonstrated remarkable accuracy, with up to 97% sensitivity for certain cancers.
With millions turning out to help, the number of Giving Tuesday volunteers increased by 4% in 2024
When people show up to collect trash in their communities, serve meals at a food bank, or lead read-alongs at their local libraries, they commit to improving the environment and social landscape of the places in which they live — which is especially important right now.
Photos: courtesy of American Express and Bitty & Beau's Coffee
Noah Kahan celebrated Small Business Saturday at a coffee shop staffed by workers with disabilities
Bitty & Beau's calls itself "a human rights movement disguised as a coffee shop." At its 20 locations across the country, it employs people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and has an incredibly inspiring backstory.
Offering an alternative form of mental health care, the world's first "poetry pharmacy" prescribes poems instead of pills
Customers suffering from "broken hearts" and "existential angst" are given poems by Mary Oliver and Derek Walcott in lieu of traditional prescriptions at the first-of-its-kind UK pharmacy.
A pair of orphaned cougar cubs were rescued and re-homed at the Oregon Zoo
The zoo is home to many animals found orphaned or injured in the wild, dubbed "second chance" residents like sea otters to black bears that serve as ambassadors for their species.
Solving a major conservation gap, a revolutionary lab is breeding bumble bee babies to save them from extinction
Years in the making, scientists at the Bumble Bee Conservation Lab are now celebrating a huge milestone. Over the course of 2024, they successfully pulled off what was once deemed impossible and raised a generation of yellow-banded bumble bees.
MIT engineers developed a biodegradable alternative to microplastics found in countless beauty products
Found across the planet and even inside our bodies, it is well documented that microplastics are a hazard impacting nearly every part of our environment — and countless consumer products.
Photo: via Wildlife Crime Control Unit Forest Department and Zoo Praha (CC BY-SA 3.0)
In a historic rescue mission, 1,000 endangered turtles were just saved from smugglers in Bangladesh
It was the largest-ever rescue of endangered freshwater turtles in the history of the unit — and they arrived just in time. Amazingly, all the turtles were still alive.
Thanks to a lack of human activity, the gray seal population at a remote UK coastline has doubled in three years
Orford Ness, a coastal nature reserve, is now home to Suffolk's first breeding colony of grey seals after the first 200 came in in 2021 when visitor access was significantly reduced following COVID-19 closures.
After years of warnings from environmentalists, the U.S. is extending threatened species protections to monarch butterflies
More than an iconic butterfly species, monarch butterflies are critical pollinators in the U.S. These protections will ensure that no changes to land or a landscape can occur without first considering and minimizing the impact on a key part of the ecosystems that plant, animal, and human life depend on.
Photo: via Dilettantiquity / Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Thanks to widespread conservation efforts, an Australian endangered species has returned to a national park
A huge win for numbats, conservationists spotted baby numbats running wild in Dryandra Woodlands National Park for the first time in years and estimated that the population had grown from 5 to 25.
Long-time activist Sheryl Lee Ralph was honored as the LGBTQ+ Advocate of the Year
The Broadway-turned-TV star was honored for over 30 years of efforts to fight the AIDS epidemic and uplift marginalized communities through her nonprofit, the DIVA Foundation.
Alongside the launch of her new virtual book club, Dylan Mulvaney donated thousands of banned books
In partnership with RuPaul's book marketplace, the book club will feature a selection of books including "fierce female leads, steamy rom-coms, empowering self-help, and amazing LGBTQIA+ reads."
After being struck by a boat, a paralyzed sea turtle can now swim again thanks to an innovative 3D-printed harness
A condition that can cause paralysis and make it hard to feed and avoid predators, cases of "bubble butt syndrome" are increasing, as more already-endangered sea turtles face injuries from human causes.
Hundreds of dentists around the U.S. provided free dental care to people in need on Christmas Eve eve
The tradition started in 1984 and now includes more than 300 dentists and 1,300 team members giving away their services for free on the "eve of Christmas Eve."
The world's largest volunteer network connected people with more than 39,000 ways to volunteer their time this holiday season
Heartwarmingly, Google searches for "places to volunteer on Christmas Day" doubled this December. With so many people looking for ways to volunteer their time and skill set, Point of Light helps remove a major barrier to actually taking action — finding the right opportunity.
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