A short-handed school cafeteria manager called into a BBC Radio 2 talk show asking for help in her kitchen and got the shock of her life. Tina Clarke had been listening to celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay talk about his latest TV show, Future Food Stars. She called into the show and told the host Vernon Kay she was “cooking on her own” at Edward Peake Middle School. One of her cooks was out sick and the alternate staff member was unavailable after testing positive for COVID.
She jokingly asked for Ramsay to come help her in the kitchen later that day to help her prepare school meals for 300 students. During the call to the radio show, Tina said: ‘I’m cooking here on my own. I’m working here in a school kitchen and my chef has gone off sick. I’ve got another one off with Covid and just wondered if Gordon would help me today, give me a hand after his interview?” Ramsay had to decline but said he’d make a call and get it all sorted out if she needed help.
Clarke said “When I phoned in, I really did not expect for him to send a chef. When I finally got a message saying, ‘Your chef will be with you in an hour,’ I thought, ‘Oh, my God. I’m going to have to fess up to the head teacher, I hope she doesn’t give me detention.” The Kitchen Nightmares star kept his word and sent one of his chefs, Rob Roy Cameron, to lend a hand. The school staff welcomed Rob Roy into the kitchen, which “sent a huge buzz around the school”. Roy got right to work and even put on a cooking demonstration for the pupils. He then helped Clarke serve the students their meal.
Later that day, the school tweeted: “We had a very exciting visitor today at Edward Peake. Rob Roy Cameron was sent to us by @GordonRamsay all thanks to our wonderful chef for asking Gordon Ramsey to come help her in the kitchen on @BBCRadio2 #TeamPeake #GordanRamsey #RobRoyCameron #HugeThankyou #BBCRadio2. Here’s an appreciation post for @GordonRamsay @BBCRadio2 and Chef Rob Roy Cameron for helping us out in the kitchen today! #TeamPeake #AppreciationPost #ThankYou”
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After two tornadoes touched down leaving a path of destruction in New Orleans, rapper and entrepreneur, Master P sent a crew from his foundation to help clean up his hometown. Team Hope helped clean the streets of New Orleans, retrieved items from homes that suffered damage, and provided assistance to senior citizens as they completed damage claim forms.
Master P, whose real name is Percy Robert Miller, is a proud New Orleans native and has consistently shown up for his city. This time was no exception, his crew was on site the morning after the tornadoes to help assist with clean up efforts. They also handed out water and food to displaced residents.
Master P said “It happens so much and you don’t want to get used to it, but it just happens so much. New Orleans is a place that we just have to keep getting back up and be thankful for everyday of life. Anybody else across the country that’s experiencing any type of thing where you say to yourself ‘I’m not where I want to be at..’ New Orleans is a place where you could have a house one day and then it’ll be gone and all your stuff is outside on the road. We are stronger together and we’re going to get through this.”
He added “It’s a blessing to be able to be out there, especially for the elderly. We’re making sure the elderly have wheelchairs, glasses, food, water. I want to thank everybody for supporting us and getting out there and volunteering because without us coming together, this wouldn’t happen so quick.”
Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana declared a state of emergency in four parishes in the New Orleans area after the National Weather Service confirmed that two tornadoes had hit the area: one in Lacombe, north of the city across Lake Pontchartrain, and another that tore through both the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.
One person was killed, hundreds injured and over 8,000 were left without power after the storm. Search-and-rescue crews surveyed heavily damaged homes and debris-filled streets after tornadoes ripped through the New Orleans area. The weather service rated the St. Bernard tornado was at least an EF-3, characterized by wind speeds of 136 to 165 mph, making it the most powerful tornado to hit the region since 2017.
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The Chancellor of Vanderbilt University is recognizing all the school’s employees for their diligent work over the past two years with a surprise bonus in their paychecks. As part of the Chancellor’s Recognition Award, all eligible staff, faculty and postdocs will get a one-time payment of $1,500 added to their paychecks at the end of March, according to the university.
Around 9,000 workers, including part-time employees, are getting the generous bonus. While announcing the award on March 17, Chancellor Daniel Diermeier expressed appreciation for staff members’ “extraordinary efforts” during the tumultuous time, saying they are “at the heart of Vanderbilt’s educational mission.”
Diermeier said “It has not been easy, especially during the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic. However, your dedication to our vision and goals enables our university to operate at its highest level. I am indeed grateful as we approach Vanderbilt’s 150th anniversary in a position of strength and with optimism about our path forward.”
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across America suffered from a national teacher shortage. Every year teachers leave the profession and fewer people are entering the field each year. According to the National Education Association, the pandemic has exacerbated a challenge that has seen massive staff shortages in public schools in every state. The shortage has left teachers increasingly burnt out, with an alarming 55 percent now saying they’re ready to leave the profession they love earlier than planned.
There are over 50 million US public school students and about 3.5 million teachers. The shortage is particularly acute in areas like maths, science, languages and special education. Throughout the pandemic, administrators have been struggling to fill vacancies for teachers, substitutes and other vital school staff positions in order to keep operations going.
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A rare kind of reunion recently took place at Houston Methodist Hospital. Five strangers who received a donated kidney meet the five strangers who volunteered a kidney. They are linked in a life-saving kidney swap that involved 10 people and it has left them with a life-long bond. With all its complexities from matching antibodies to patient health, a kidney swap is where your loved one needs a kidney, but you’re not a match. So you donate to someone else in exchange for one that is a match.
The chain of the swap is similarly complex and intertwines them all by a sacrifice to save a loved one. Michael Wingard, 20, donated his kidney to 30-year-old Heather O’Neil. Because Michael is donating a kidney that will go to Heather, her twin sister, Staci, donates a kidney to a 47-year-old man named Javier Ramirez Ochoa while Lisa Jolivet, a 43-year-old mother of three, donates one that matches up with Michael’s friend, Kaelyn Connelly, so that Lisa’s 72-year-old mother, Barbara Moton, can receive a kidney from 67-year-old David McLellan, who donated so that his son Chris, who is 31, can receive a kidney from 33-year-old Tomas Martinez so that Javier Ramirez Ochoa can receive that kidney from Staci O’Neil, Heather’s twin sister.
A swap of this size is difficult to pull off and with all the complexities to be synchronized – matching antigens, patient health and COVID – this kidney swap had already been postponed three times since December. The extraordinary 10 person life chain took place over four days. All recipients in the swap are doing well and met for the first time, with the strangers that gave the gift of life.
According to the National Kidney Foundation, there are about 100,000 people in the U.S. on the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network waiting list needing a kidney yet only about 20,000 transplants are performed each year. A patient on the waiting list typically waits an average of three to five years to receive a kidney. In 2020, about 5,000 people on the list died while waiting for a match. Matching kidneys, typically donated after death, never became available.
Living donor kidney donations greatly increase the number of organs available to those still waiting for a match. Kidney swaps are an option when a patient who needs a kidney transplant has a willing donor but they aren’t a good match due to incompatible blood types. The paired exchanges give a ray of hope to life in a dire situation and free up spots on a long waiting list.
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Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott revealed in a blog post that she has donated nearly $4 billion to 465 nonprofits including a $436 million donation to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of its affiliates to create affordable housing. That donation is the largest publicly disclosed gift from Scott so far. Her policy is to let the organizations she donates to make the announcements in the hopes of minimizing attention. Her recent post confirmed announcements by several organizations.
The announcement brings Scott’s publicly disclosed donations to more than $12 billion since 2019. In total, Scott says she’s donated to 1,257 organizations. Scott, who is worth about $48 billion according to Forbes, signed the Giving Pledge through which many billionaires have promised to donate more than half of their wealth. Scott declines interviews and only discusses her philanthropic choices through her blog posts. Her recent post touched off a wave of nonprofits announcing their plans for the donations.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America and 21 of its affiliates received its largest gift ever from Scott— $275 million. Boys & Girls Clubs of America announced a $281 million donation similarly dispersed among local chapters of the organization. HIAS, the international Jewish humanitarian organization, said Scott donated $10 million to its campaign to raise $40 million for its emergency response in Ukraine. Community Catalyst, a healthcare reform nonprofit in Boston, announced it received $25 million and would use the funds to help “create a health system rooted in race equity and health justice.”
In her blog post, Scott said 60% of the groups she and husband Dan Jewett donated to are led by women and 75% are led by people with lived experience in the regions they support and the issues they seek to address. “Our team’s focus over these last nine months has included some new areas, but as always our aim has been to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds. Scott believes in “supporting people directly experiencing inequities is essential, both because it is informed by insights no one else can contribute, and because it seeds power and opportunity within the community itself.”
In the newest blog post, Scott said her team is working on building a website that will include a searchable database of her grants. The expansive list of organizations that received her latest round of donations have a broad range of missions and mandates—from improving women’s health to solving the climate crisis to helping military families, incarcerated people, and teachers.
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People from around the world booked 61,000 nights in Ukrainian cities via Airbnb in a social media campaign to get funds into besieged cities. The campaign saw $1.9 million raised for Ukrainians in just 48 hours. These bookings have amassed more than $15 million in aid, according to Airbnb. Out of the 61,000 stays booked at the start of March, 34,000 came from Americans, 3,000 from Canadians and 8,000 from the U.K. The company, which normally takes about 20% of each booking, waived its fees in Ukraine. Airbnb said they received more than $5.2 million in small-dollar, direct donations from a total of more than 59,000 individual donors across 92 countries.
Airbnb previously committed to setting up temporary housing for 100,000 Ukrainian refugees across Europe and North America. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote “We need help to meet this goal. The greatest need we have is for more people who can offer their homes in nearby countries, including Poland, Germany, Hungary and Romania.” Airbnb hosts that want to help need only register on the Airbnb.org Help Ukraine page. Within one day of the announcement, Airbnb hosts had answered this generosity with their own. More than 29,000 individuals have signed up to open their Airbnb-listed properties to Ukrainians, including 14,000 across Europe and 4,000 in the U.S.
The Utah Jazz Foundation is also partnering with Airbnb.org to provide more than 32,200 nights of temporary housing to refugees fleeing Ukraine, a number representing exactly 200% of the capacity of their Vivint Arena home stadium. Airbnb said they have contacted leaders in 14 European countries offering to place refugees in Airbnb properties. They are working closely with governments to best support the refugee housing needs in each country, including by providing longer-term stays. The United Nations reported that over 2 million Ukrainians, about 4% of Ukraine’s population, have fled to neighboring countries, more than 1 million of them to Poland. According to UNICEF, at least half of the 2 million refugees are children.
Celebrities around the world have also responded to the need for aid to refugees. Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher raised over $30 million and Ellen DeGeneres pledged to match $10 million in donations.
Harry Potter author J.K Rowling pledged to match up to $1.3 million in donations. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively also pledged to match $1 million in donations. Bethenny Frankel’s disaster relief organization, BStrong, has raised more than $5 million in relocation aid, in addition to the $10 million the organization already pledged to support Ukraine.
South Korean actress Lee Young-ae made an $80,000 donation, Leonardo DiCaprio donated $10 million, singer-songwriter The Weeknd donated $500,000 and committed another $500,000 from his upcoming tour, David and Victoria Beckham donated $1 million and model Gigi Hadid pledged to donate her earnings from participating in Fall 2022 Fashion Week shows this month to support humanitarian relief efforts.
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JPMorgan Chase announced a three-year, $5 million commitment to support the Open Air Economy Collaborative, a partnership of LA community organizations including Inclusive Action for the City (IAC), California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC), Public Counsel, and East LA Community Corporation (ELACC). The commitment will help local Black and Latina street vendors strengthen their businesses.
It will provide economic opportunities for low-income and immigrant workers, and play an important role to promote food access across Los Angeles County. This three-year philanthropic investment in Los Angeles is part of JPMorgan Chase’s $30 billion, five-year commitment to advance racial equity.
The Open Air Economy Collaborative will provide 500 street vendors and other micro-entrepreneurs with one-on-one coaching and over 200 vendors with low-interest loans. The community organizations will also help the small business owners address barriers frequently encountered when navigating the permit approval process, overcoming financial obstacles, and accessing support services.
Small business owners across the county scrambled to apply for federal coronavirus stimulus funds but many street vendors didn’t qualify for relief. A study found that there are an estimated 10,000 sidewalk food vendors working in the City of Los Angeles yet only 165 have received permits in 2021. Thousands more vendors sell merchandise and other goods in the open air economy and face a variety of challenges throughout the process of seeking a permit, hindering the majority from formalizing their businesses and accessing critical business development opportunities and services.
Rudy Espinoza, executive director of Inclusive Action for the City, a part of the collaboration, says street vendors are essential to the local economy, but they have difficulty accessing capital. He said the grant will ultimately help out Black and Latina women, who he says are the majority of street vendors in L.A. Espinoza said “We’re emerging from a global pandemic that has disproportionately impacted Black and Latina street vendors and micro-entrepreneurs. For far too long, these entrepreneurs and community leaders have worked on the margins of our economy simply due to the nature of how they earn their livelihood in the open air economy.
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Former mayoral candidate and Chicago businessman Willie Wilson donated $200,000 in free gas across the city, causing a massive gridlock in the city. Every vehicle at participating gas stations received $50 until all the money was exhausted. Wilson is donating another $1 million in free gas this week.
Fifty gas stations across the city will participate in the free gas giveaway. Each station is also agreeing to lower their gasoline prices during the event to allow more families to benefit from Wilson’s generosity. The gas will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 7am Thursday
Wilson said “The need among the community is so great, soaring gas prices have caused a hardship for too many of our citizens. I am confident that with God’s help and wisdom we will get through these tough times together. This is our second gas giveaway in one week. The need is great, I want to help. If I can help somebody as I pass along this way, then my living is not in vain.”
Wilson, was one of the first African Americans to own McDonald’s franchises in Chicago back in the 1970s. He sold all of his restaurants in the 1980s and is president and CEO of Omar Medical Supplies, one of America’s largest distributors of disposable products for use in medical, industrial and foodservice areas.
He is no stranger to making headlines for his philanthropy. In 2018, he handed out checks for $100,000 to homeowners in danger of losing their homes. People lined up at the Cook County Building for checks from the Dr. Willie Wilson Foundation, a nonprofit organization. He also handed out envelopes of cash at a Southside church totaling $200,000.
In 2020, he donated 1 million face masks to hospitals across all 50 wards of Chicago and another 1000 masks to Chicago fire and police departments. Through his foundation, he also sent $100 to 10,000 people through Venmo and Paypal. Homeless people, senior citizens, and those who lost their job due to the pandemic just had to apply for the support.
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In July 2016, just days after two brothers helped their mother and sister escape their abusive father, Lance Hart fatally shot his wife Claire and their 19-year-old daughter Charlotte outside a leisure center in Spalding, Lincolnshire, before turning the gun on himself. The brothers Luke and Ryan, then aged 26 and 25, were working abroad at the time and had finally raised enough money from their engineering jobs to rent a small house for their mother and younger sister.
After the tragedy, the brothers found themselves in the waiting room of the local police station in total shock. Lance Hart had always been a bully who maintained a rule of terror in his household. He monopolized the household finances, taking Claire’s wages and gambling them away. He used the scarcity of money to isolate his family, telling them they could not afford fuel to leave the house or for Claire to meet friends for coffee. Luke and Ryan said he forced them to obey arbitrary rules throughout their childhood. “We had to fill the kettle up to exactly the same level, and if it wasn’t he’d absolutely lose it and yell at us for days” they said.
The ensuing media frenzy compelled Luke and Ryan to dedicate their lives to bring awareness to this type of abuse and help others who face controlling relationships. Posters raising awareness of coercive control, which had become a criminal offense six months earlier, led the brothers to recognize that their father had always been abusive.
They have since collaborated with the charity Level Up, to create media guidelines for domestic violence that “give people’s lives the status they deserve”. They’ve shared their experience with more than 10,000 people in more than 130 speaking engagements. They say helping teachers, the police, social services and NHS staff to gain awareness of coercive control has been heartwarming.
The brothers also give talks to members of the public, and have written a book about their experience, titled Remembered Forever. “Straightforward education of the public can make a massive difference, because domestic abuse victims themselves sometimes don’t recognize what’s happening to them, Luke said “Many safeguarding professionals have told us that they didn’t understand coercive control before, but now they see the dynamics of it, and it’s helped them intervene in many cases that they probably would have passed over otherwise” Luke said.
He and Ryan receive scores of messages from people who want to escape an abusive partner. To address this challenge more effectively, the brothers are developing an e-learning course in collaboration with the US organization Safe and Together. It will launch later this year. “It’s essentially a tool to help victims articulate what they’re going through, so that domestic abuse services can give them the support they need,” Luke says. Above all, the Hart brothers want to create a legacy for their mother and sister, who were devoted to helping others.
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David Rush started breaking Guinness World Records in 2015 before challenging himself to an amazing one-year feat. Rush is in a hurry to set more Guinness World Records, all in the name of promoting STEM education to students. The man who holds 200 Guinness records set out on a mission to set 52 records in 52 weeks last year, and now all that’s left for a handful of them is to be verified by Guinness World Records.
The father of two boys from Idaho has been turning the Guinness World Records into his autobiography for the past seven years as a way to promote STEM education. He has an electrical engineering degree from MIT and works as a senior product manager at Cradlepoint, a technology company in Idaho. He recalled being rejected from a gifted and talented program as a young student, but persevering to get accepted to MIT by pursuing a STEM education.
Rush said “A student will struggle with math or fail a science test and say, ‘I can never become an engineer, it’s too hard, they have this fixed mindset. I wanted to give students this tangible example that if you set your mind to a goal, believe in yourself and pursue it with a passion, you can accomplish virtually anything and that’s when I started breaking records as that tangible example.”
Despite working a full time job and raising two children with his wife Jennifer, who is also an engineer, he has found time to break one Guinness World Record after another. Rush said the hardest of them all was achieving the fastest 100-meter run while juggling blindfolded. The easiest was popping 10 balloons between two people in 15.25 seconds.
Rush has a total of 49 world records recognized by the Guinness World Record with four other records still pending to be verified. “You can develop any skill, talent or ability. You can become better at math, you can become better at science, you can become a better friend, a better conversationalist, or better at breaking Guinness World Records, which is just the example I’m using to make it real for students” Rush said
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