Building Community
Our Theme in November 2019
This Santa Cruz farm is helping the homeless gain stable employment
After spending a night in Santa Cruz’s first homeless shelter, local philanthropist Paul Lee realized residents were deprived of an environment that allowed them to dream of a better future. That’s why he founded the Homeless Garden Project in 1990, a project that gives homeless people the Read More...
This veterinarian walks the streets to treat the pets of homeless people
At the Optimist Daily, we love to spotlight people who go the extra mile to help out their communities. With that in mind, we bring you the story of Kwane Stewart, a veterinarian who walks around the streets of California treating animals owned by homeless people—for free. When Stewart first Read More...
This urban farm has revived an impoverished community in Dallas
Dallas may be one of the wealthiest cities in the world, but its wealth is unevenly distributed amongst its neighborhoods. In the Bonton community in South Dallas, 48 percent of residents suffer daily from the effects of urban poverty. Rates of incarceration and joblessness are highly Read More...
Optimist View - Movie Review: Honeyland
How an Oscar-nominated documentary illustrates the power of resilience BY AMELIA BUCKLEY Wild honey smells of freedom. The dust - of sunlight. The mouth of a young girl, like a violet. But gold - smells of nothing. -Anna Akhmatova Our first introduction to Hatidze Muratova is watching her Read More...
This program uses rock climbing to help new refugees adapt to life in America
Every Wednesday, about a dozen children, meet up at Vertical World, an indoor rock-climbing gym in Seattle. A few weeks prior, they were living in places like Africa, India, or Afghanistan. Now, as refugees in America, new to the country and often even the English language, Stone Masters, a program Read More...
Feeling lonely? Here are 3 doctor-approved ways to deal with loneliness
What can we do when we feel lonely and utterly disconnected from the rest of the world? As it turns out, the antidote for loneliness is all around us. It’s in our homes, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, our schools, and our broader community. Decades of public health research show that if we Read More...
How this LA community kicked an oil drilling facility out of their backyards
Los Angeles is a city pockmarked with oil facilities. There are about 1,000 active wells in the city, and in some places, the oil facilities are so close to people’s homes that you can put one hand on a bedroom window and the other on the facility wall. The oil site on Jefferson Boulevard, Read More...
A community-designed solution: restorative justice arrives in Oakland
The United States has the largest prison population in the world and the highest per capita rate of incarceration. The punitive justice that lands people behind bars often hits communities of color and poverty much harder than other groups. In Oakland, California, one of the most diverse cities in Read More...
Football is reuniting the Paradise community one year after fatal Camp Fire
Few things can invigorate a community like sport. A true testament to the community-building power of sport comes from Paradise, California, where firefighters finally extinguished the Camp Fire that all but destroyed the town one year ago. Although hardly anything in Paradise has been rebuilt, Read More...
OPTIMIST VIEW: Circles of Compassion, an exclusive look at The Way of the Rose
“We as a species have got to learn how to surrender to the miraculous and the magical.” - Perdita Finn INTERVIEW By Kristy Jansen I was raised by parents who had rejected their childhood faiths long before I was born, so I never did receive much in the way of religious education. If Read More...