After Dr. Alex Oshymansky, a radiologist in Dallas, TX started a public-benefit company to combat the exploding prices of certain prescription drugs, he attracted a new partner—Shark Tank billionaire investor Mark Cuban. Oshymansky started in 2015 with Osh’s Affordable Pharmaceuticals and a million dollars in investment capital. Four years later, the new partnership is moving forward under the name Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drug Co, and donating medicine to those in need.
Mark Cuban has been outspoken about his disdain of the mixture of FDA demands for approval, and drug company greed creating soaring prices for drugs, making them unaffordable to many Americans. Now under Cuban’s brand name, the private-label arrangement allows Oshymansky to buy from third party suppliers, take care of the labeling and branding laws himself, and sell it at a serious discount with just a 15% mark-up for the business expenses.
This partnership allowed the pair to lower the cost of an anti-parasitic medication called albendazole from its normal U.S. price range of $225-$500, down to just $20. This proved especially valuable for Baylor College of Medicine, who needed thousands of doses of albendazole to complete a study they were doing on U.S. hookworm infections in the South.
“The Germ of the South,” was a catch-all term that characterized a curious lethargy and haziness of the brain, distended bellies, and emaciated shoulder blades, found across the Deep South during the 20th century. Today, American hookworm still infects large numbers of people, particularly children, due to poor sanitation and poverty. A study done in Lowndes County, Alabama of 24 homes found that 34% of stool samples contained the parasite, which is killed rather quickly by albendazole.
Cuban and Oshymansky donated the first 10,000 doses of the company’s albendazole supply to Baylor and the author of the study, Dr. Rojelio Mejia, so that volunteers from Alabama to New York who test positive for hookworm could immediately purge the parasite from their bodies. “We found it deeply troubling that albendazole is extremely expensive in the United States, and are happy to be able to manufacture it for free for this research and provide it at significantly decreased prices to the rest of the U.S. market.”
Other drug companies estimate that the number of doses Cuban and Oshymansky donated would have cost $2 million, an overwhelming cost that would have kept the research from being conducted. Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs is aiming for 100 new drug offerings by the end of 2021, all with no hidden costs, no middlemen and no rebates only available to insurance companies. They’re also in the process of constructing their own brick-and-mortar pharmacy in Dallas where they hope to earn a profit on non-pharmaceutical items that can fund the lower cost formulations and offer drugs for rare diseases directly to patients or through outpatient facilities. If successful, Cuban and Oshymansky’s efforts could force drug companies that continue to overcharge their customers to lower their prices or go out of business.
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When the pandemic ground life to a halt in New York City, restaurateur Luca Di Pietro had to close four of his five restaurants on March 15. After a friend offered to pay for meals offered to pay for meals prepared by Di Pietro’s restaurant to be delivered to a New York City hospital. He immediately wanted to do the same for the hospital that treated his son years earlier.
After that first delivery Di Pietro thought, “if there is such a need from the emergency room workers, maybe this could help save my restaurant while we do something good for the emergency room workers,” he said. Di Pietro reached out to other hospitals in New York City to continue deliveries and shared his plans with friends. From that point forward, orders for hospital workers began to flood in to his restaurant.
To organize the ordering process and manage donations, Di Pietro created Feed the Frontlines NYC, a for-profit initiative, to raise funds for his restaurant, Tarallucci e Vino, as well as other local restaurants and to provide hospital workers in the country’s hardest hit city with free and delicious food. Di Pietro and his team have become known as the “lasagna guys” among New York City’s frontline workers. Di Pietro and his team have helped deliver more than 157,000 meals to healthcare workers amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Supported by generous donations, Feed the Frontlines NYC works with local restaurants to prepare and deliver meals to fellow New Yorkers and has enabled many restaurants to rehire employees who had been laid off.
While most of his restaurants remain closed, he was able to rehire 135 of his own workers. Di Pietro partnered with other restaurants in New York City and lower Westchester County, New York-enabling them to pay their bills and rehire employees as well. In partnership with Di Pietro, the restaurants receive a portion of the donations to make and deliver meals to local hospitals. Each restaurant is given a different amount of money depending on how many meals it can make and deliver each week, Di Pietro says. The restaurant owners coordinate their deliveries with local hospitals and send meals themselves.
Feed the Frontlines has been feeding local hospital workers fighting the pandemic while helping to keep participating restaurants running and their workers employed.“We have … restaurants helping us and delivering food so they can keep their lights on,” Di Pietro says. “It’s morphed into something that I didn’t expect, but I’m very happy to be able to put together supply and demand.”
So far the Feed the Frontlines NYC initiative has raised over $1.26 million to pay for meals, and its success has even inspired others to create their own Feed the Frontlines initiatives in other cities. One of Pietro’s family friends started Feed the Frontlines Marin, that services an enclave in the San Francisco Bay Area. The operations team at Divieto Ristorante started Feed the Frontlines Miami after learning of Di Pietro’s initiative. Shawn Wilson, co-owner of Shed’s BBQ and Viga Eatery, started Feed the Frontlines Boston.
One man’s idea had inspired and enabled others to keep their businesses open while helping show appreciation for frontline workers. The pandemic has greatly changed not only Di Pietro’s business but the whole restaurant industry, perhaps permanently. Di Pietro said “This is keeping the lights on for us and others. Otherwise, there would be no business. And with rent due and salaries, for all the personnel basically living paycheck to paycheck, they’re so happy to come in and work on this because everyone is impacted, and they’re happy to be receiving a full salary. It’s been very humbling and it’s been good.”
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The Good Fight Group, a nonprofit started by UFC lightweight Dustin Poirier and his wife Jolie has provided thousands of meals to food banks, provided school supplies, helped build a playground and even supplied a solar powered water well to create a more self-sustainable living environment for the Batwa Pygmy Tribe. The nonprofit raises funds by selling sought after memorabilia they call “Fight Kits” to fans of the sport.
Former Interim UFC Lightweight Dustin Poirier and his wife Jolie began their nonprofit in 2018 and started auctioning off the shorts, jackets, and wraps that Poirier used in dozens of fights. The Good Fight is dedicated to helping underserved communities in their local Acadiana region.
The foundation has raised thousands of dollars since 2018 to impact others, including the young family of fallen LPD officer Michael Middlebrook, and disabled children who didn’t have a playground. The first auctioned kit was from the Poirier vs Eddie Alvarez fight, with proceeds providing 3,000 meals for their local Second Harvest Food Bank. In August 2019, a specially-built playground for children with special needs was built after Jolie heard the story of a young wheelchair bound boy dying wish.
Selling fight kits also provided over 100 women experiencing homelessness with care packages, and 500 children with school supplies & backpacks at Acadian Middle School. Donations to The Good Fight also supported former UFC fighter Justin Wren who now champions long-suffering Pygmy tribes in Africa—providing new water wells, solar power, and 43 acres of purchased land for the Uganda Batwa tribe. Other fighters are donating parts of their kits for auction, including the winner of the UFC main event fight, Michael Chiesa, from Spokane, Washington.
The Good Fight’s first goal of 2021 is to fully fund transportation and providing more tutors for all 6 locations of The Boys & Girls Clubs of Acadiana. Currently, the kids have transportation from school to the clubs, but do not have a ride home in the evening—which cuts attendance dramatically. The academic gap for students is huge right now and the Boys & Girls Clubs are trying to give the kids what they need to stay on track to progress to the next grade level. “Project Learn” has been identified as one of BGCA’s targeted programs which provideds homework help, individual or small-group tutoring, regular implementation of high yield activities and school-club-family partnerships. So far The Good Fight has raised over $17,000 of their $105,000 goal.
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IKEA Group has always been environmentally conscious and their latest move of purchasing of 11,000 acres of forest in Georgia that looked like it would be lost to development, shows their continued commitment. The purchase was made to ensure it remains intact and working to suck up CO2 from the atmosphere, the forest was bought by IKEA as part of a strategy to reduce more carbon than it creates through its value chain.
The working forest in the Altamaha Basin is now owned by the IKEA subsidiary, Ingka Group, which has worked with The Conservation Fund, a non-profit that has protected over 8-million acres of forests in the U.S. from fragmentation and development. A working forest is one in which lumber is harvested and regrown—and it’s these forests which often suffer from being broken up into smaller segments and developed, something the Conservation Fund and Inka are ensuring will not happen by creating permanent easements that legally prevent the forest from ever being split up into smaller pieces.
Ingka Group currently owns 616,000 acres of such forests in the U.S. and Europe, while privately choosing to ensure the highest international standards for good forest management. A spokesperson added that “no significant amount” of wood from the forests is currently used in Ikea products.
“Well-managed forests provide essential benefits, including clean water and important wildlife habitat, as well as mitigating climate change. The transfer of these lands to Ingka Investments completes our Working Forest Fund process, through which we identify and buy important, at-risk private forests; develop sustainable harvest and restoration plans; and secure permanent conservation protections to block fragmentation and development,” said Larry Selzer, President and CEO of The Conservation Fund.
Forest stewardship is just one way that the world’s largest furniture outlet is trying to become a carbon-neutral company. They recently announced they would begin buying used IKEA furniture from customers for resale, while electric vans and less carbon-emitting materials are used in both packaging and product. They are also committed to the goal to only use renewable and recycled materials in their products by 2030 and reducing the total IKEA climate footprint by an average of 70% per product, by 2030.
IKEA’s Sustainability Strategy outlines their belief that climate change is no longer a distant threat, but a visible reality and one of the biggest challenges that humanity faces. The IKEA People & Planet Positive strategy describes the sustainability agenda and ambition for everyone in the IKEA franchise system. They say the purpose of the strategy is to inspire, activate and lead others in decision-making and goal setting so that together we can achieve the positive changes we want to see in the world.
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A program in Indiana is allowing truck drivers to donate rejected food deliveries to charity. Truck drivers will often arrive at a grocery store to drop off several pallets of ordered food only to have the products rejected by the supermarkets because there was either an error in the ordering process; the food was cosmetically damaged in transit; there were equipment failures en-route that caused delay; or a variety of other reasons. This often results in tons of edible food being dumped into a landfill.
Instead of letting thousands of pounds of food continue to go to waste, the Indy Hunger Network charity created their Food Drop program which connects truck drivers with nearby food banks that can put the products to good use. In addition to helping to feed the hungry during a time that food banks across the US are reporting record numbers, the program also benefits the drivers by saving them from having to pay expensive landfill fees, providing them with a tax deduction for donated goods, and helping them to offload the cargo.
The program was initially launched in 2017 to operate solely out of Indianapolis and charity workers say that they documented over 90,000 pounds of food donated within the first six months. The program’s success led Indy Food Network to expand the initiative to several more food banks across Indiana. If the Food Drop project continues to prove itself effective, then the charity hopes to expand the program to other states as well.
Drivers are only asked to donate groceries that are still edible, non-alcoholic, and individually packaged with unbroken seals. The Indy Hunger Network works with community centers, food pantries, churches, and schools in the area with the goal of connecting drivers to fill the food shortage needs. They continue to look for new opportunities to improve the food assistance system.
They also run a grant program to award small grants to food pantries in Marion County for projects that would increase capacity, improve operations, and implement best practices. Each year they award grants to over 20 partners involved in the food assistance system.
The National Guard had been assisting Indiana’s emergency food bank system but their temporary deployment will be ending, leaving an urgent need for volunteers. People can visit https://www.in.gov/fssa/dfr/operation-food/ to sign up or go to https://www.indyhunger.org/ to find a list of locations in need of volunteers.
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While times are tough for so many, it’s encouraging to know there are people who step in to help when they have the opportunity. Such an instance happened for a Massachusetts police officer who declined to charge two women accused of trying to steal groceries for their children. Somerset Officer Matt Lima is being praised for using his own money to purchase $250 gift cards for two women accused of trying to steal groceries last month. The women said they wanted to provide a Christmas meal for their children.
Lima responded to a report of shoplifting Dec. 20 at Stop & Shop, where two women with two young children were accused of putting groceries into bags at a self-checkout kiosk without scanning them. Upon his arrival, Officer Lima spoke to a Stop & Shop asset protection associate who told him that he observed the suspects, two women with two young children, allegedly not scanning all of their groceries and then putting them into shopping bags at the self-checkout kiosks.
The associate then printed the transaction receipt and noticed numerous items they took were missing. The suspects were subsequently asked to return inside with their items while they awaited for Somerset Police to respond. When Lima noticed that the only items stolen were food, he asked one of the women why she did it. “She stated that, obviously it goes without saying, that times are tough for a lot of people, that she was working but not enough and didn’t make enough money and that there were some other family issues going on and that she just wanted to provide a Christmas dinner for the kids,” Lima recounted.
Officer Lima served the two women Notice Not To Trespass forms and informed the associate that he would not be pressing criminal charges as all the missing items on their receipt were groceries. “The two children with the women reminded me of my kids, so I had to help them out,” Officer Lima said. Officer Lima asked about where the items were that the suspects allegedly attempted to take and was informed that they have been returned to their shelves. Officer Lima then subsequently purchased gift cards in the amount of $250 with his own money so the women would be able to purchase groceries for their Christmas dinner at another Stop & Shop location.
Chief George McNeil said “I would like to personally commend Officer Lima for his actions,” Chief McNeil said. “His actions exemplify what it means to protect and serve the members of our community. When faced with a difficult situation in which a family was trying to provide a meal for their kids, he made the generous decision to not press charges and instead ensured that they would have a Christmas dinner they could enjoy. This incident is a true testament of Officer Lima’s great character and decision making.”
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Global e-commerce giant Amazon has unveiled a new Housing Equity Fund, investing more than $2 billion to preserve and create over 20,000 affordable housing units in three communities where the company has thousands of employees—Washington State’s Puget Sound; Arlington, Virginia; and Nashville, Tennessee. Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund will help preserve existing housing and help create housing developments through below-market loans and grants to housing partners, public agencies, and minority-led organizations.
Amazon’s first investments include $381.9 million in below-market loans and grants to the Washington Housing Conservancy to preserve and create up to 1,300 affordable homes on the Crystal House property in Arlington and $185.5 million in below-market loans and grants to King County Housing Authority to preserve up to 1,000 affordable homes in the state of Washington, with additional investments to come in all three regions.
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos said that his company has been helping people in need, including building a Mary’s Place family shelter within the newest Amazon office building last year to support over 200 women and children experiencing homelessness in Puget Sound. “This new $2 billion Housing Equity Fund will create or preserve 20,000 affordable homes and help local families achieve long-term stability while building strong, inclusive communities.” The Fund seeks to ensure that moderate- to low-income families can afford housing in resource-rich communities with easy access to neighborhood services, amenities, and jobs.
Amazon’s Housing Equity Fund will provide an additional $125 million in cash grants to businesses, nonprofits, and minority-led organizations. Amazon is providing below-market capital in the form of loans, lines of credit, and grants to households making between 30% – 80% of the area’s median income. The fund will also give grants to government partners including transit agencies and school districts, which typically are not involved in affordable housing issues, Amazon said.
Amazon’s first Housing Equity Fund commitment in Virginia includes a $339.9 million below-market loan and grants worth $42 million to the Washington Housing Conservancy (WHC)—a nonprofit organization that preserves homes so they are affordable for moderate- to low-income residents.
Home prices in the US have climbed more than 6% annually since 2012 despite low wage growth for most workers. Another obstacle is affordable apartment buildings in American cities affordable for teachers, healthcare providers, transit workers, and others with modest incomes are increasingly being redeveloped into luxury apartments, causing displacement and reducing housing options for working families. Before the coronavirus pandemic, rental prices had also risen steadily, causing a shortage of affordable units.
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A US oncologist gave an extraordinary gift to his past patients by forgiving $650,000 in medical bills for cancer treatments. In February of 2020, the clinic Dr. Atik practiced out of closed due to staffing shortages. At the time, there was close to $650,000 outstanding patient debt on the books. Dr. Atik attributed the large sum to the fact that no patient was ever denied treatment, regardless of whether or not they could pay.
After the clinic closed last year, Dr. Atik attempted to settle the debts. He soon realized that many of the people he’d treated didn’t have the means to pay—especially with so much added financial hardship brought on by the coronavirus pandemic—so with the blessing of his wife, Mehreen, he decided to forgive the outstanding debt.
“My wife and I, as a family, we thought about it and looked at forgiving all the debt… We saw that we could do it and then just went ahead and did it.” Dr. Atik said. It was one final way for Dr. Atik to show kindness and compassion to patients that he had always considered it an honor and privilege to treat. The week of Christmas, Dr. Atik sent out holiday cards to nearly 200 of his former patients that read:
“The Arkansas Cancer Clinic was proud to have you as a patient. Although various health insurances pay most of the bills for the majority of patients, even the deductibles and co-pays can be burdensome. The clinic has decided to forego all balances owed to the clinic by its patients.”
Dr. Atik said “We thought there was not a better time to do this than during a pandemic that has decimated homes, people’s lives and businesses and all sorts of stuff. I just hope that it gave them a little sigh of relief and made it easier for them so they could face other challenges they may be facing in their lives.”
Originally from Pakistan, Dr. Atik founded the Arkansas Cancer Clinic in Pine Bluff in 1991, providing treatments including chemotherapy, radiation therapy and CAT scans. He is now a professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. In 2013, he was named president of the Arkansas Medical Society. Five years later, he became chairman-elect of the board of governors of the American College of Physicians. He credits much of his success to being in the right place at the right time. “I believe the opportunities that have come my way are, in part, because of where I am,” he explained.
David Wroten, executive vice president of the Arkansas Medical Society advocacy group, said that Dr Atik had called him “to make sure there was nothing improper” about his idea of forgiving patients’ debt. “If you knew Dr Atik, you would better understand. First, he is one of the smartest doctors I have ever known, but he is also one of the most compassionate doctors I have ever known” Wroten said.
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Heroes come in all walks of life and are often created just by being in the right place at the right time. That is the case for Keith Walker, a homeless man in Atlanta who made the split second decision on Dec. 18, 2020 to rush into W-Underdogs Shelter and rescue 16 dogs and cats trapped inside. WWhen Walker saw the flames, he urged another homeless man named Mike to call 911. Then he rushed inside and started pulling out animals as fast as he could.
Walker, 53, has been homeless since he was 13 years old and the nonprofit frequently shelters his dog. One of the nonprofit’s signature programs, The Rescue Team, teaches at-risk kids about compassion and responsibility through rescuing and rehabilitating homeless dogs and cats. Walker has done odd jobs for W-Underdogs for several years and was heading there to walk his pit bull, Bravo.
It’s fortunate the two homeless men arrived at the scene when they did because the organization’s founder happened to be on an outreach mission at the time. Celebrity dog trainer Victoria Stilwell, founder of the Victoria Stilwell Academy for Dog Training & Behavior and member of the advisory board of W-Underdogs said he saved every single one, and they’re all perfectly fine.
“It could have been really bad,” she said. “If they hadn’t done that, the fire could have spread and we would have lost all our animals. The act that he did was incredibly brave and he is a true hero. He is the guardian angel that was watching over W-Underdogs.” Officials deemed the blaze an electrical fire and the shelter was left uninhabitable but all of the animals were taken to a new facility.
Walker told news outlets that he was “nervous” to run into the burning building but that he knew he had to save the trapped animals. “I was really scared to go in there with all that smoke. But God put me there to save those animals,” he said. “If you love a dog, you can love anyone in the world. My dog is my best friend, and I wouldn’t be here without him, so I knew I had to save all those other dogs.”
Walker is now being hailed a hero and a GoFundMe set up to help him with a $5,000 goal has raised almost $85,000. “We received a flood of requests on how people can help Mr. Keith Walker, the hero who saved our animals from the fire. Rest assured we have Mr. Walker’s best interests at heart, and are exploring how to best manage donations that have come in on his behalf,” the facility said on their Facebook page.
In addition to teaching at-risk youth to rescue, care for and train pets for forever homes, W-Underdogs fosters empathy and leadership in young people with programs like planting trees, building dog houses and distributing pet food for those in need. Youth also help with their program to trap, neuter and return of community cats. “We’re not an animal rescue and we are not just a youth program; we’re actually a youth program that empowers you through animal rescue and that’s where the connection lies,” Stilwell explained.
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A security guard’s selfless act of cycling for over an hour to return a lost wallet inspired people to return the kindness. Aina Townsend, who works at the Kahului Food Land on the island of Maui found a wallet and when he noticed the owner hadn’t returned, he decided to bring it to her. When the wallet was returned the owner’s husband was so impressed with this selfless deed they first posted to Facebook and a GoFundMe was started to raise money for a car. The GoFundMe raised a total of over $25,000.
It all started when Chloe Marino was shopping at a Kahului, Hawaii supermarket with her 5-month-old son. She accidentally left her wallet in the shopping cart when she left. Luckily, the wallet was spotted by eagle-eyed store security guard Aina Townsend. When he noticed she hadn’t returned, he volunteered to return it to its owner after his shift. Not having a car, the 22-year-old rode his bicycle for nearly an hour right to the Marinos’ door.
Cloe didn’t even realize she’d misplaced her wallet when he knocked on their door but she and her husband Gray were blown away by Townsend’s determination as well as his willingness to help out a total stranger. Gray posted the incident on his Facebook page:
“On Saturday my wife left her wallet in the shopping cart of Foodland in Kahului by the mall. After loading the baby and groceries into the car, she hadn’t even noticed it was gone. Several hours later we had a knock on our home door. It was the security guard from Foodland. He had found the wallet, and after seeing that we didn’t come back for it. He got on his bicycle and he pedaled miles to Waiehu where we lived, getting the address from her ID. He literally rode his bicycle to return her wallet. Completely full of everything important to her including cash. Nothing was so much as moved.
Gray Marino’s pal Greg Gaudet was inspired not only by Townsend’s selfless act but also by the young man’s story—inspired enough to set up a Go-Fund-Me page to see if folks could pull together enough money so Townsend might be able to trade in his bike for a car to make his daily commute to work.
The GoFundMe reads: My friend Gray Marino shared this story on Facebook. When I read it I was blown away by this man’s selflessness. I had been wanting to do something special for a family this holiday season, and I knew we had to do something for him when I heard this story.
It looks like this young man moved to Maui 5 years ago to be with the woman he loved. Now they have kids, and he works security at the grocery store to support his wife and him and put himself through college. But what really got me was that he rides his bike to work and school every day because he doesn’t have a car, and has been doing this for 5 years. When I put myself in his position after a long day of work and school, wanting to go home to see my family and go to bed, but choosing to ride my bike to the next town miles away instead to return this women’s wallet, I know this guy has a huge heart. This shows the effect that one act of kindness and selflessness can have and the way we can impact the world by repeating these actions” Gaudet said.
Townsend said “You know, I lost a wallet before too and it’s the worst thing in the world. I was just doing what I felt was the right thing to do.” Townsend’s good karma translated into more than $25,000 in car-worthy donations, exceeding the original funding goal of $5,000 by $20,000. He was able to purchased and car and Greg Gaudet is helping him put the remaining funds into a mutual fund.
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