“A Year Of Good News”: My 30 Wholesome And Uplifting Illustrations

A garbage collector in Bogotá, Colombia, has collected over 25,000 books people had thrown out and this year he opened a public library for poor children on the ground floor of his house.

After war broke out in Ukraine, José Andrés, a famous Spanish chef, traveled to the Polish-Ukrainian border. With his team, he prepared thousands of meals a day for refugees, supported by local chefs, restaurants, food producers and suppliers.

Brazilian skydiver Luigi Cani released 100 million seeds from 28 native trees while leaping from a plane over a deforested area of the Amazon rainforest.

A dog named Patron helped Ukrainian emergency services find 200 unexploded bombs. President Zelenskyy awarded Patron the Order of Courage.

When the 11-day war between Israel and Palestine ended, an Israeli kindergarten teacher donated a kidney to a three-year-old boy from Palestine.

A Japanese grandma, Masako Wakamiya, couldn’t find a game app for elderly people on her smartphone. At the age of 81, she took up a course in programming. After three years of studying, she designed a mobile game app, “Hinadan,” inspired by traditional puppet theatre. The game has since been downloaded by tens of thousands of users around the world. Today, at the age of 85, she is one of the oldest app developers in the world. She encourages other seniors to use digital technology to enrich their lives.

When students in Bristol learned that their school’s caretaker hadn’t visited his relatives in his native Jamaica for four years, they collected money for his air ticket.

A father who wanted to spend Christmas with his daughter bought tickets for all six flights she worked as a flight attendant so they could be together on the 24th and 25th of December while flying around the country.

The director of a zoo in New South Wales, Australia, brought home several red pandas, saving them from a blazing bushfire.

A hiker who was injured while climbing in Croatia’s mountains was saved from freezing to death by his dog. An Alaskan Malamute dog named North lay on top of him, keeping him warm for 13 hours until they were reached by rescuers.

A Finnish woman has been cleaning the grimy homes of strangers for free. Auri Kananen (aka Queen of Cleaning) has focused on people who are unable to look after their own homes because they have found themselves in difficult situations or suffer from mental health problems.

Valentina and Leonid Stoyanov, a veterinarian couple from Odesa, turned their house into a shelter for abandoned animals from Ukrainian towns affected by war.

Australian firefighters dropped tons of fruit and vegetables from helicopters to feed starving animals whose habitats have been burned in the bushfires. Australian rescue centers have helped kangaroos, camels, horses and alpacas to survive.

After a year of remote learning and socially distanced classrooms, one school in Spain decided to adapt to a new way of teaching and moved lessons to the beach. The children were socially distanced in the fresh air and the teachers could give object lessons in biology and geography near the sea islands.

For the second time in history, the International Refugee Olympic Team was competing in the Olympic Games. 29 professional athletes forced to leave their homes by war or oppression competed in Tokyo together under a joint flag. They act as a symbol of hope for refugees worldwide and bring global attention to the magnitude of the refugee crisis.

Female Afghan scientists who were forced to leave Kabul showed their robotic inventions at the World Forum in Doha. They have been taking part in science competitions around the world to help young Afghan women develop their engineering, science and technology skills.

A 22-year-old student with disabilities dreamed of climbing Mount Olympus. Her dream came true when an endurance runner Marios Giannakou carried her to Greece‘s highest peak in a specially modified backpack.

To give back to nature what it has taken from it, a Danish company has invented pencils that can be planted after use so that they grow into a herb, a shrub or a tree.

As flights from Italy were canceled due to the pandemic, a ten-year-old boy decided to walk with his father to visit his grandma in London. After 93 days, 2.800 kilometers and two weeks in quarantine, they made it to Trafalgar Square so the boy could finally give a hug to his grandma.

When the war in Ukraine broke out, twelve-year-old Gabriel Clarkie from England decided to help children caught up in the conflict by making a wooden bowl. His Bowl for Ukraine went viral, raising a quarter of a million pounds sterling, which he sent to the war-torn country.

Italian street artist CIBO has been fighting hatred in the public space by covering neo-Nazi graffiti with colorful murals depicting all kinds of foods.

An old man in Australia knitted woolen jumpers for penguins threatened by an oil leak to stop them from swallowing the toxic oil while cleaning themselves.

When the border between Český Těšín and the neighboring Polish city of Cieszyn was closed during the pandemic, residents of the two cities exchanged messages across the river to tell their neighbors how much they missed them.

Two-year-old Barrett from Texas accidentally ordered 31 cheeseburgers while playing with his mother’s mobile phone. Since the order couldn’t be canceled, she threw a cheeseburger feast for people in the neighborhood.

To protest against unequal Covid restrictions that forced museums and galleries in Holland to stay closed, leading cultural institutions were temporarily transformed into establishments not affected by the lockdown. For one day, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam turned into a nail salon, the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague into a gym, and concert halls across the country into hair salons.

The Slovak ultramarathon runner Lenka Vacvalová went to Peru where she ran 850 km along one of the most ancient trails in the world, raising money to buy unique equipment for the children’s oncology clinic in Bratislava.

After more than thirty years, women cyclists have returned to the Tour de France.

A French florist left bright bunches of flowers on cars parked outside a hospital to thank healthcare workers.

Many families adopted dogs during the lockdown, leaving dog shelters almost empty. Lonely people appreciated animal companionship which helped them overcome their fear of the pandemic and made them feel safer.

Children around the world who were stuck at home for months during the pandemic drew pictures of rainbows and put them up in their windows to cheer up their neighbors and spread hope by showing that after every rain the sun always comes again.