All articles from Reasons to be Cheerful
What We're Reading: What Americans Can Learn From German Prisons
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at [email protected]. Opening up This past spring, U.S. prison officials from several states spent a week touring four German prisons “where inmates wore street clothes, m
Striding Into the Future on Solar Sidewalks
Kamloops, British Columbia, is a radiant place, receiving over 3,100 hours of sunshine a year. So it’s no wonder that in 2016, Thompson Rivers University (TRU) decided to harness all that luminescence and convert it to electricity. If the university’s solar array had been installed on a roof or moun
For Black Women, Seeds of Wealth Start With Homeownership
This story was originally reported by Eden Turner of The 19th. Meet Eden and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy. After she moved into her first apartment in 2021, a one-bedroom unit in East Baltimore, Saj Dillard realized her rent wouldn’t have gotten her much once her lease e
What We're Reading: Copenhagen Is Becoming a ‘Sponge City’
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at [email protected]. Soak it in Copenhagen is getting spongier to handle future flooding, with hundreds of nature-based and engineered flood mitigation projects either co
The Spark: Bringing Biodiversity to Your Own Backyard
Welcome back to The Spark, our monthly newsletter that’s all about how people just like you are creating positive change, one meaningful step at a time. Simple tips for restoring biodiversity to the land around your home How to start a seed library Help monitor coral reef health without ever putting
Pink City Rickshaw Puts Women in the Driver's Seat
Every morning, 33-year-old Poonam Devi sends her teenage daughters off to school in Jaipur, exchanges her sari for her uniform of salwar kameez, a more practical outfit consisting of a long shirt with baggy pants, and begins her day’s work in a bright pink electric auto rickshaw. Even today, people
Lessons for a Warming World From Kashmir's Cooling Caves
On a quiet June morning in Dudran, a remote village in the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, the stillness is broken only by the rustle of the breeze, the gurgle of mountain streams, and the lively chirping of birds. Amid this calm, Mohammad Aamir walks steadily, balancing a deaag, a l
Can Citizen Scientists Avert Australia's Biodiversity Crisis?
In 2023, a Queenslander noticed an interesting clam in the river waters of Ipswich, a town outside of Brisbane. She took a picture and uploaded it to the citizen scientist platform iNaturalist. The images were of freshwater gold clams, a highly invasive species that was, up to that point, found ever
How Fresh Fish From Monterey Bay Reaches School Lunch Trays
This story is published in collaboration with the Local Catch Network. With the 2014 school year in full swing, Jenn Lovewell, the then-acting director of the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, noticed something was conspicuously missing from her schools’ lunchrooms. “We were doing a lot of