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A group of bullied friends had a plan. Their city has not been the same since.

In 2008, a group of adults with developmental disabilities started reclaiming what "the short bus" stands for.

You guys remember the "short bus," right?

The "short bus" is a big part of the daily lives of many people. Like these folks:


They're a group of people with special needs, and yeah, every day they rode the "short bus" to school, and they heard other kids make fun of them and their "short bus."


When they finished school, many of the group members say they were given boring jobs that left them feeling unfulfilled. They were paid very little to do menial tasks that they didn't think empowered them or enriched their lives.

A volunteer named Cassandra, who worked with these folks, had an idea.

She created Shortbus Studio.

Shortbus is an art studio where people with disabilities create art they could sell, like greeting cards and T-shirts. She gave them an alternative to their boring jobs and empowered them to grow, explore the world, and make money on their own.

Shortbus Studio became super-popular in the town.

Local residents began buying their art for friends and family. Seriously, see the ideas below and tell me you wouldn't buy 'em!

With the money made from selling their art, they created a full-on service organization.

They created a community garden at a local church to feed hungry people, they made chew toys for animal shelters, and they bottle-fed orphaned wild animals.

They cleaned trash from hiking trails in the Appalachian mountains.

Local residents noticed how their community was improving because of the help of the people at Shortbus Studio, so they all began working together.

Neighbors helped them use tools to build wheelchair ramps...

...and helped them explore the mountains in ways they could never have experienced before. The guy below is named Ricky, and he's been in a wheelchair his entire life. One day, they taught him to zipline!

Shortbus Studios even made enough money to take residents to see the ocean for the first time.


On their days off, Cassandra would take them hiking in the mountains, something they had not experienced before.

Before Shortbus, these adults were limited by the ideas that people put ON them, but Cassandra and their community changed all of that.

Shortbus Studio used art, outdoor adventures, and service projects to build relationships so community members could see that individuals with disabilities are more alike than different.

That they wanted to connect with people.

Feel heard.

And learn to be a part of something larger than themselves.

The very small things we do for each other have a ripple effect that can change a town.

Check out the whole video:

**UPDATE**

Since I started writing this post, North Carolina drastically cut the funding for the Shortbus Studio program. I don't know about you, but I don't want them to go back to a life that made them unhappy. They still make greeting cards and T-shirts that you can purchase from their catalog. Please share this to get the word out!

Community

How to end hunger, according to the people who face it daily

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

True

Even though America is the world’s wealthiest nation, about 1 in 6 of our neighbors turned to food banks and community programs in order to feed themselves and their families last year. Think about it: More than 9 million children faced hunger in 2021 (1 in 8 children).

In order to solve a problem, we must first understand it. Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released its second annual Elevating Voices: Insights Report and turned to the experts—people experiencing hunger—to find out how this issue can be solved once and for all.

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See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn't fooling her feline siblings.

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A 12-year-old student wrote Costco's CEO asking for help.

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Now imagine, as part of that effort, he decided to email the CEO of Costco, one of the most beloved big box retailers in the world. Well, that’s cute, right? But what if he told you the CEO not only wrote back but went out of his way to donate exactly what your son asked for?

It may sound too good to be true, but that’s exactly what happened when Grant Cerwin sent an email to Costco CEO Craig Jelinek. The sixth grader emailed Jelinek asking if he would donate one of Costco’s famous 93-inch teddy bears to his middle school’s fundraiser in Los Angeles:


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Pop Culture

This mesmerizing dance routine is a cultural phenomenon in China and with good reason

Hearing impaired performers come together in perfect synchronization to share a beautiful message.

Hi China/Youtube

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In a world full of jaw-dropping dance routines, the Thousand Hand Guan Yin manages to captivate like no other.

A large group of performers in identical golden costumes flow together in synchronized movement so seamlessly that it appears as though one entity with several arms is moving about space.

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Guan Yin is often depicted with a thousand arms, having an eye in the palm of each hand, to symbolize an omnipresent mother figure always witnessing the pain of humanity with endless amounts of mercy, extending out one of her many arms to lend a helping hand.

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