random act of kindness

From the Huffington Post:

If a Facebook friend posts something that you feel indicates he or she could be thinking about self harm, you'll be able to click the little arrow at the top right of the post and click "Report Post." There, you'll be given the options to contact the friend who made the post, contact another friend for support or contact a suicide helpline, the University of Washington reported on Wednesday.

After that, Facebook will look at the post. If Facebook feels like the post indicates distress, it will contact the person who posted it. That person will be greeted with the following pop ups when he or she next logs in.

On February 14, Zlatan Ibrahimović scored a goal against Caen and then proceeded to take off his shirt.

The move may have gotten him a yellow card, but it also got him a lot of attention for a much bigger issue: world hunger.

The Paris Saint-Germain striker had 50 names temporarily tattooed on his torso of starving children around the world to help promote The World Food Programme’s initiative “805 Million Names.”

“If I could, I would write all the names of people suffering from hunger on my body. But they are 805 million. It is a disaster,” he says.

The WFP is part of the United Nations, and the organization reaches more than 80 million people with food assistance in 75 countries each year.

“I had a dream that someone could convey this message in a simple way. We thought of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is always asked for his autograph,” said Marina Catena, director of the WFP in France. “So why shouldn’t it be Zlatan who has the autographs on his body this time? We’re proud that he accepted to convey this message.”

As a result of his charitable stunt, Ibrahimović is suspended and will not be playing in their game against Monaco on March 1.

You can donate to the cause on the WFP website.

From the Greenfield Firefighters Facebook Page:

Yesterday, Greenfield Firefighter/Paramedics responded to a person shoveling that had a sudden cardiac emergency. Upon successfully transporting the patient to the hospital, Greenfield Firefighters returned to the scene and finished shoveling the drive.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and in this case, it’s also now worth over a million dollars.

The popular photo series “Humans of New York” highlighted a young boy from Brooklyn last week named Vidal Chastanet, whose inspirational quote about his principal evolved into an online fundraising campaign of epic proportions on Indiegogo.

Chastanet, and eighth grader from Mott Hall Bridges Academy in Brownsville was asked who most influenced him in his life.

His response: “My principal, Ms. Lopez,” he said in the original Facebook post (which now has over 1 million likes. “She tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter.”

Brandon Stanton, the photographer behind “Humans of New York” later spoke with the principal, Nadia Lopez, and featured her on the site as well.

“This is a neighborhood that doesn’t necessarily expect much from our children, so at Mott Hall Bridges Academy we set our expectations very high,” she said. “We don’t call the children ‘students,’ we call them ‘scholars.’ Our color is purple. Our scholars wear purple and so do our staff. Because purple is the color of royalty.”

The area of Brooklyn where they are situated has some of the highest crime rates in the city, and Stanton wondered how he could use this opportunity to help the kids. Thus the Indiegogo campaign was launched.

Initially the funds raised on the site were to simply go towards an annual field trip where her students would get to visit Harvard University, but after the huge response (it’s at just over $1 million with 8 days left as of Thursday) the project has morphed into something even bigger.

All proceeds above $700,000 will be put into a scholarship fund for the students at Mott Hall Bridges Academy called “The Vidal Scholarship Fund,” Stanton announced this week, with Chastanet as the first recipient.

In addition to all of the monetary support, some people have even been sending Ms. Lopez flowers.

Well done Internet. Well done.

From the Huffington Post:

"He opened his rucksack and had a gas mask and spray paints inside. He got out a piece of paper and had colors marked on it of what he had been trying out, and he dropped his colors," Ben told England's North West Evening Mail.

"I picked them up for him and after that he started signing it in weird letters and numbers," Ben continued. "He said, 'Do you know who Robin Banks is?' I said, 'No,' and he said, 'This will be worth about £20,000 -– have a good life, brother.'"