The average cabbage weighs between one and eight pounds. In 2008, a nine-year-old girl grew a cabbage so large it could have come from a fairy tale about enchanted vegetables.
Photo by Clint McKoy on Unsplash
Katie Stagliano never meant to grow a cabbage that would've made a fairy godmother proud. She was just a third-grader bringing home a school project that was meant to inspire her green thumb.
She tended to the cabbage every day. And every day, the tiny seedling she'd planted got bigger. It quickly surpassed one pound, then two, and then 30. By the time the cabbage finally hit maturity, it weighed 40 pounds.
What to do with a behemoth cabbage? Once harvested, Katie decided to donate it to a local soup kitchen where it would feed more than 275 people.
Turns out the cabbage really was magical. It inspired Katie's love of gardening and ā more importantly ā her desire to give back.
Photo courtesy of Katie Stagliano, General Mills.
Seeing how much of an impact one cabbage got Katie thinking. At only nine years old, she realized how important it was for everyone to have access to fresh and healthy food. At the same time, it was clear that not everyone had such access. The statistics, in fact, are sobering: one in eight people go hungry in America each year. That's 40 million people, 12 million of which are children.
That clinched it for Katie. Before her age reached double digits, she'd made it her mission to end hunger in America.
While it started from a gargantuan cabbage, Katie's nonprofit that she leads today has grown bigger than any cabbage ever could. General Mills is a big part of that.
Photo courtesy of Ā Katie Stagliano, General Mills.
Katie's Krops started with one garden and a few volunteers. Today, the organization boasts over 100 gardens all over the country. Katie's Krops provides the volunteers who run them with small grants to help those gardens flourish and yield plentiful produce for the food insecure.
In California, a young man named Joey has provided Shepherd's Gate, a women's shelter, with the only fresh fruit and vegetables the shelter gets.
In Ohio, the students at West Carrollton High School are growing fruits and vegetables for more than 450 homeless people right on campus. It was the first time many of the students had ever learned about agriculture.
Thanks to this incredible chain of agricultural efforts, in 2018, Katie's Krops donated 38,342 pounds of produce across America.
Photo courtesy of Ā Katie Stagliano, General Mills.
In 2018, Katie was the winner of General Mills' first-ever Feeding Better Futures scholar program. The contest, which was designed to give today's youth a chance to make an impact on how we, as a society, fight hunger, reduce food waste and grow food more sustainably. It perpetuates General Mills' decades-long commitment to both philanthropy and making sure that all people, everywhere, have enough to eat and love what they're eating.
Katie was awarded $50,000 to continue developing her organization so she can feed even more people. She was mentored by industry experts and presented her project at The Aspen Ideas festival.
And business is still booming. Volunteers have given more than 1,000 hours to ensure the success of Katie's flagship garden in South Carolina. The produce grown their goes has been donated to food banks and cancer centers. Food is also given directly to families and individuals in need and used for Katie's Krops Dinners ā regularly scheduled events where anyone in need can eat a free, hot meal in the company of their community. Volunteers also prepare care packages, distribute books, toys, school supplies, and clothing to those in need.
Katie doesnāt think anyone is too young or too small to make a big difference. She doesnāt see obstacles ā only opportunities. Thatās the way that General Mills looks at the problem of world hunger, too. It can be overcome with passion, empathy, and innovation.
Are you ready to take on the fight against hunger? The world's waiting for your ideas.
If Katie's story has inspired you, then it's time to take action. If you're between the ages of 13 and 21, now is your chance to be a part of keeping future generations fed. Submit your creative ideas for ending hunger to General Mills by February 26th, 2019, and you could win $50,000, life-changing mentorship from industry leaders, and an even bigger platform through which to share your ideas for change. Two additional finalists will receive $10,000 to kickstart their projects. The deadline is quickly approaching, so now's the time to get cracking on your entry!
Solving global issues like hunger takes innovation. It requires us to work together. Katie's ending hunger one vegetable garden at a time. How will you make a difference?
To learn more about Katie's story, check out this video:
A Generation Jones teenager poses in her room.Image via Wikmedia Commons
An office kitchen.via 
An angry man eating spaghetti.via 
Gif of baby being baptized
Woman gives toddler a bath Canva
An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
āBut the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?ā
āYou can just say you're a superhero.ā
āI would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!ā
āI would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.ā
āThis one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.ā
āI would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!ā
āEvery time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.ā
āKeep them. Tell people what to do. Theyāll do your bidding.ā
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.