Awesome Stories 243

/ October 10, 2015

This week Awesome Stories brings you printing homes, seeds of love, food runners, water reclamation and patience.

Building Homes with 3-D Printers3-D home printing, Awesome Stories

WASP, Awesome Stories3-D printing is very exciting, and this may be the best application I’ve seen. Italian innovator, Massimo Moretti, launched the Worlds Advanced Saving Project (WASP) to build affordable and sustainable homes using the latest in 3-D printing technology. WASP has created the world’s largest BigDelta 3-D printer to build affordable homes using local materials like clay. Using local materials will keep the construction easy, affordable and sustainable. This might be the future of affordable home building for the billions of people living on $3000 or less a year. Kudos to Massimo and WASP for such a compassionate project.

Food Runners

Food Runners is a creative solution to food waste in San Francisco. In 1987, Mary Risley, founder of Tante Marie’s Cooking School, decided to do something about food waste and hunger in her town by gathering her friends to see what they could do. Now, they have an engaged network of volunteers, restaurants, cafeterias, hospitals and chefs helping to feed the homeless by giving their excess food to food banks that in turn cook or distribute the food. We have several similar groups here in Fayetteville working to create urban farms and better food distribution.

Seeds of Love

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. ~  Jayesh Patel

This is a touching story of Aruna and how her life turned around when shown a little love and encouragement. Growing up in a neighborhood of poverty and leprosy, Aruna didn’t believe in herself or dreams. That all changed when she met Jayesh Patel, a co-founder of the NGO Manav Sadhna, who nurtured her potential. Manav Sadhna serves the underprivileged, offering love to all as their worship. His nurturing and Dream Class have helped Aruna to blossom into a young leader in her community. Now, she is serving her community, being a role model, going to college and inspiring other girls to dream and change. Watch the film below to learn more about how these seeds of love are changing the community.

The Art of Waiting

I’m not very good at waiting. This is a fun article and video showing kids trying to wait to receive an extra marshmallow. There were some surprising results to the research on being more patient. Our ability to wait depends in part on the incentives and how much we want what is being offered. The surprise to me was that when people are forced to wait a few days before making any choice, they make better choices. We still aren’t really more patient, just willing to wait because we find the value!

Water Lessons from Australiaconserving water, Awesome Stories

This article is filled with great examples of how Australians have responded to drought. Engaged citizens like John Harvey inspire me, as well as the many citizens who stepped up to conserve and wisely use water. John installed a system of rain collection, holding tanks, filters and pumps to use gray water for much of his home water needs. Across the country, similar measures have resulted in dramatically reduced water use with people in Melbourne using a mere 40 gallons of water per day compared to 84 gallons a day in San Francisco. I hope we learn and model much of what they’ve done, especially in the dry southwest.

 

Water, waiting, wind and love. Sounds like a crazy new band!

May fair winds blow into your heart.  🙂

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25 thoughts on “Awesome Stories 243”

    • Thanks for honoring me with your invitation Neha. You’ve challenged me again, in more ways than you know! I generally don’t like challenges that require inviting others, I love the spirit of getting to know each other and sharing our stories. So I will ponder and probably play along! blessings my friend. 🙂

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  4. Great inspiring stuff, Brad! I loved the Seeds video in particular, and I’m truly impressed by the WASP project. There will be more great applications for the 3D printing technology, I’m sure.

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  6. Another treat of stories from you Brad, awesome indeed. The 3-D building is something I am amazed with…what an impressive and positive use of technology, and inspiring to see such ingenuity…but the Seeds of Love that offers such encouragement is perhaps what is closest to the heart and something we can all strive to do. Enjoy your weekend Brad.

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  8. I see I made a wise choice in following you as well. The friends who have commented here I know well and are in my opinion, great people. I look forward in getting to know you better, Brad, as well as your work. Bless you! ❤

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    • Thanks Indah. I agree with you about having many cities doing programs like Food Runners. We have an organization collecting food waste from farmers, another from grocery stores, but not from restaurants yet! Feel free to share the stories. 🙂

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  10. Another amazing and inspiring post. I love the house building with the 3D printer!! And the reclaimed water is going to take off like “wild fire” in my opinion. There will be wars over water instead of oil in the years ahead. Be well Mr. Brad and thx for the inspiration .

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  12. Amazing set of Awesome stories this time around.. Loved the way technology is progressing.. and if used to create homes! all the better..
    The lovely lady who started the Food Runner.. such a wonderful spirit.

    But the one which I really enjoyed watching was that beautiful young woman whose parents lived within the Leprosy community.. Such personality and she has worked so much upon her self..
    Loved the Dream sessions too.. And when the man who was asking her questions how she had felt living where she was brought up.. He spoke of having self respect and not harbouring inferiority complexes .. Wise words..

    Thoroughly enjoyed Brad.. 🙂 Many thanks xxx

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