April 10, 2025

Alaska Church Builds Tiny Homes for Homeless Seniors

Show Notes
Transcript

In this episode, Johnny Mac shares five uplifting news stories, starting with a church in Anchorage, Alaska that built tiny homes for homeless seniors. Next, we hear about two 90-year-old nuns in Chicago who have spent four decades advocating for immigrant rights. Also highlighted is the creation of 400 British sign language signs for environmental science by a group of deaf scientists and educators. A teenager wins the Princess Diana Award for developing an app that detects ticks and assesses disease risk. Finally, London reports a significant drop in air pollution due to the expansion of its ultra-low emission zones.

00:10 Alaska Church Builds Tiny Homes for Homeless Seniors
01:18 90-Year-Old Nuns Advocate for Immigrant Rights
01:59 Deaf Scientists Create Environmental Science Signs
02:31 Teen Wins Award for Tick Detection App
03:24 London's Air Pollution Decline

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Callaroga Shark Media. Hey there, I'm Johnny Mack with five

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good news stories. A nice job by a church in Alaska.

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In Anchorage, they average seventy five to eighty inches of snow.

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Temperatures can drop down to around eleven to fifteen degrees fahrenheit.

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That's why the Central Lutheran Church built six tiny homes

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in their parking lot and welcomed homeless seniors to take

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shelter from the cold. Mark is one of the seniors

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and said, I'm just happy here. The project was founded

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by Our Backyard, a nonprofit founded by members of the

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Central Lutheran Church. Their mission statement is to live in

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God's abundant grace through acts of service and compassion. On

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their website, they write in Our Backyard as an opportunity

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to be proactive and addressing the needs of our unhoused neighbors.

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With support for multiple faith based organizations, community groups, nonprofits,

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and local agencies, the project will serve as a model

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for other organizations to support unhoused community members in their

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own neighborhoods. The plan is to help people for six

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to nine months. One of the leaders of the group says,

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I feel it successful when you see people have already

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made changes in their lives. They're already being more responsible,

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They're already taking care of themselves better than they were before.

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They have hope, and I think that's huge. The rooms

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come with a single bed, a trash can, a mini fridge,

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and a microwave. Meanwhile, in Chicago, two ninety year old

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nuns have spent the last forty years advocating for immigrant rights.

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Sister Joanne and Sister Pat have been peacefully and respectively

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fighting for immigrant rights for forty years. Initially, they took

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a mother with five children who was seeking asylum that

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turned into seventeen apartments filled with seventeen asylum seeking families,

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and established nonprofit to fund their work. In the last

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three years, they've housed twenty five families, paying rent in

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utilities for a year, providing food, assistants, legal connections, and more.

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Great job by them. Sister Joanne's ninety sister Pat is

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ninety five. I hope someone else picks up this work

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for you, and I hope you continue to do it

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for another twenty five years. A group of deaf scientists

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and educators have created four hundred British sign language signs

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related to environmental science. As time marches forward, new words

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enter the lexicon and we need to figure out how

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to sign for such things like In twenty twenty four

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signs for global warming, deforestation and another two hundred terms

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related to energy, sustainability and environmental impact were created. That

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gives us a total of four hundred signs developed by scientists,

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educators and sign linguists from the project at the University

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of Edinburgh's Scottish Sensory Center. A teenager has won the

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Princess Diana Award for an app that detects ticks and

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Oteona grew up in Connecticut, where she learned that tics

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were no joke. She grew a paranoid of the tics,

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and then she got sick. After a year of fainting

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and dizziness, she was misdiagnosed several times before test confirmed

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she had two rare, potentially life threatening tickborn illnesses. She

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started working on an app which is called d ticked

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It d tick t The app analyzes user submitted photos

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of ticks and generates a comprehensive risk assessment of the

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most prevalent tick borne diseases in the region. The app

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uses your geographic location connects with the Centers for Disease

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Control and Preventions TICK and Pathogen Surveillance Statistics. In December,

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she was one of thirty four US based winners honored

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with the Princess Diana Award for her work and is

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now studying at Harvard. Good News if you're in London,

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there's a dramatic decline in deadly air pollutants. London had

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expanded its Ultra Low emission zone. A new report shows

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that the air is much cleaner and that greenhouse gas

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emissions have been dramatically reduced by roughly the equivalent of

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nearly three million one way passenger trips between Heathrow and

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New York. When they first started, the program was estimated

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it would take one hundred and ninety three years to

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bring the city's air pollution within legal limits. It might

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actually happen this year after just two years. Wow, that

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is amazing. And those are your five good News stories

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