Education
Great minds lead to great solutions. Our education section features solutions and innovations directed at strengthening educational systems around the world.
Youth Paving the Way
photo credit: Shutterstock By Optimist Daily Editorial Team Youth activism is proving a promising channel for authentic, positive change in our world today. Anthony J. Nocella II, the National Coordinator for the Save the Kids Foundation has worked with young people for years and is an expert Read More...
This great-grandmother just earned her college degree at the age of 93
It’s never too late to learn something new! If you don’t believe us, then you have to read this story about Joyce Lowenstein, an unlikely graduate of Georgia State University. Lowenstein's pursuit of a degree began in 1943, but it was interrupted for nearly 70 years after becoming a mother, Read More...
To get adults to care about climate change, teach their kids about it
How do you get adults to become more invested in solving climate change? According to a new study, one of the best ways is to educate their kids about climate change. The study, which was published earlier this week, followed 238 families in North Carolina over two years. The researchers from Read More...
A positive from the protests in Sudan? Beautiful new murals across the capitol
Sudanese artist Rashid Drar used to work from home. Now the 44-year-old’s canvas is any empty piece of wall he can find nearby a month-long sit-in outside the Defense Ministry in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. Rashid is one of the many protesters who have embraced art as a form of revolutionary Read More...
An Ode to the Marvelous Mushroom
By Amelia Buckley August 14th marked the first day of the sold-out 39th annual Telluride Mushroom Festival in Aspen, Colorado, which sold more tickets this year than ever. Mushrooms gained a reputation in the 1970s as a vehicle for psychedelic exploration, but these fungi friends are not just Read More...
How the laundromat can help shrink the literacy gap in America
The average US family spends more than two hours a week at their neighborhood laundromat, and many bring their kids with them. That’s downtime that experts say could be put to better use, which is why 600 laundromats across the US are installing family-friendly literacy spaces for kids under Read More...
You have to see these photos of ancient trees bathing in starlight
In one giant sequoia’s lifetime multiple generations of humans will be born and die. These enormous trees, native to California, can live for thousands of years. Though that time frame is considerable, writes photographer Beth Moon in her book, Ancient Skies, Ancient Trees, “compared to the Read More...
A South Korea school is enrolling illiterate grandmas to save it from closing
South Korea’s birthrate has been plummeting in recent decades, falling to less than one child per woman last year, one of the lowest in the world. The hardest hit areas are rural counties, where babies have become an increasingly rare sight as young couples migrate en masse to big cities for Read More...
These off-the-grid “Earthships” are the most eco-friendly rentals on Airbnb
Sustainability is a hip buzzword in travel these days, which means, of course, that the term is overused and nobody knows what it really means anymore. Reusing hotel towels and ditching plastic straws are small steps in the right direction, but there’s strong evidence that travelers are eager to Read More...
How books can be a powerful ‘punishment’ for those who commit hate crimes
In 2016, an old schoolhouse in Virginia that was once used for teaching black students during the era of segregation was sprayed with offensive graffiti. From the moment Prosecutor and Deputy Commonwealth Attorney Alejandra Rueda heard about the racist and anti-Semitic graffiti scrawled across the Read More...