Reading through the BBC yesterday and today, there's a lot of doom and gloom, despite being so close to Christmas, which is one of our most festive seasons!

So, I went on a search for GOOD news to share with you all. Here are my favourites (edited to be shorter, but you can search their titles on Google for more info!)

Once homeless Miami man earns a Masters degree
After several arrests, drug addiction and being homeless, a Miami man has overcome the odds to graduate from FIU with a Master's degree in social work.

Out of thousands of graduates, only one -- 50-year-old Aaron Alvin Sr. -- got a standing ovation at Tuesday night's graduation ceremony.

"I wanted to make sure I was in a position to help people and so I went ahead and got my Master's," Alvin said. "I just continued to pursue something that was bigger and better and ended up here."

Alvin was arrested several times for drugs, grand theft auto, and domestic violence. He was also homeless for a time.

He said he never, in a million years, imagined himself sitting among his peers graduating, earning his Master's degree in social work with a 3.73 G.P.A.

After seven years of school, he said he is ready to move on and help people - just like a judge helped him turn his life around by putting him in a drug treatment program.

"I know that today, without drugs and alcohol, I can have fun, I can laugh, I can play, and I can succeed," he said.

Now, Alvin works with the homeless at Camillus House. He hopes to have his own clinic in a few years helping drug addicts.



Bali-based US midwife named CNN Hero
A Bali-based midwife providing free health service to thousands of poor pregnant women through her clinic in Ubud has been named the 2011 CNN Hero of the Year.

Hemmerle Robin Teresa Jehle, a native of Arizona who has been living in Bali for about 20 years and is known to the locals as Robin Lim, was selected as the winner after nine months of online voting.

The finalists were all social activists who were selected from over 10,000 nominees in more than 100 countries. Lim's clinic, the Bumi Sehat Foundation, was granted US$250,000.

Since 2003, the foundation has provided medical treatment for thousands of pregnant women in Bali and Aceh.

"The very best way that I know is to support your midwifery with care, so that midwives can help lower the risks of motherhood. We can be safe together, mothers and babies," she said in her speech.

When The Jakarta Post met Robin several months ago in Ubud, she said that if she won, she would use the prize to build another clinic on land she owned. The clinic she currently operates in Ubud is built on rented land. The clinic's facilities are limited, particularly in childbirth and treatment rooms.

"I plan to build another clinic in Nyuh Kuning village. I already have the land," she said, explaining that she wanted to build a clinic with more comprehensive facilities for mothers and babies, including a vegetable plantation.

Robin said her clinic focused on gentle birth and exclusive breast feeding. She believed that gentle birth would give better impacts both physically and mentally to both mother and baby. She has also written books in Indonesian and English to campaign for gentle birth.

The clinic also provides scholarships for dozens of young women who want to be midwives in their respective villages in order to expand midwifery services to remote areas.


Baby seal wanders into New Zealand home
See the video here: [link]

A New Zealand woman has had an unexpected visitor; a baby fur seal wandered into her house and was found resting on her sofa.

The fur seal, nicknamed Lucky, managed to walk across a busy road, through a cat flap, and up some stairs into the kitchen before climbing on the sofa in Annette Swoffer's lounge.

Conservation workers managed to get Lucky off the couch, and he was released back into the sea.





These are a result of my quick search whilst waiting for a phone call. Share your good news stories back with me! They can be local to you, or from the other side of the world!

Thanks to ~Ariyaunna for the avatars!

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