Nancy Ballard，60，went for a routine checkup that turned into something extraordinary.She had just completed her master’s in botanical illustration.In fact，she was canting a painting of a plant she’d done when she arrived at her doctor’s San Francisco office.“It would be great if we had artwork like that for our chemotherapy(化疗)rooms，”the nurse said.Ballard asked to see one.

She was shocked by what she found.The walls were bare，and the paint was chipping(剥落).She could tell where old artwork had hung because of the naked nails.It was a depressing room for a depressing routine—patients had chemo drips for perhaps several hours，often with nothing to look at other than those sad walls.She couldn’t imagine how anyone could even think about getting healthy in a room like that.As it happened，Ballard’s physician，Stephen Hufford was ill with cancer himself，so finding time to decorate the rooms was low on his to-do list.So Ballard made it her mission to brighten up the place.

She wrote to 20 local interior designers and asked whether they would donate their time and money to transform just one of Dr.Hufford’s rooms each.Six of them wrote back almost immediately.Each of them ultimately chose a theme:The dragonfly room，for example，now features bright artwork and dragonfly wall ornaments.Most rooms got new paint，light fixtures，artwork，and furniture.Each room cost about $5，000.

Dr.Hufford was delighted.“All the patients feel soothed by it.”he noted.He even said that his own tone of voice was different in the rooms and that he was better able to connect with his patients.

Ballard was so encouraged that she created a nonprofit to raise money and decorate more spaces.Since then，she has worked on 20 projects，including one in Pennsylvania.She once went to Philadelphia for a ribbon cutting，and a woman there was on her third battle with cancer.When she saw what Ballard had done，she said，“I’m gonna beat it this time.I thought I wasn’t going to，but now I know I’m gonna beat it.”

Loneliness is spreading in our times. According to research conducted this year, nearly 50% of people aged 55and above in the Netherlands experience loneliness. There may be friendly neighborhood, but during the pandemic the elderly suffer a lot as their immune system does not permit them to step out for shopping or any type of activities.

Dutch Local Jumbo Supermarket in Vlijmen is working to make their community less lonely. They recently launched two initiatives(新方案) in the supermarket for seniors: All Together Coffee Corner and Chat Checkout. All Together Coffee Comer is opened as a social coffee corner where elderly people meet with other locals just for a chat or to ask for help with small tasks. The goal of the coffee corner is to act as a meeting point for elderly people with locals as well as volunteers who can help them. The initiative is a huge success. Volunteers help elders in shopping, walking, etc.

Also, Jumbo introduced 200 chat registers in its stores for customers who are not in a hurry and want to talk or chat during checkout. They piloted the first chat register in 2019, which was received positively by customers. The government has introduced Chat Checkout under government-sponsored One Against Loneliness program which also established a 24/7 loneliness hotline for people who are lonely. According to Jumbo representative, this is a small gesture but a very valuable one, especially in a world that is digitizing and getting faster and faster.

Jumbo supermarket is considering opening more chat registers where loneliness is a major issue in the Netherlands. In addition, it will be introducing “cozy chat corners” where customers can sit and have a coffee with others. And it will donate materials to Oma’s Soep, an initiative that brings university students with elders to prepare soup.

When a group of college students put their sorrows into action, they never imagined the project would fuel a nationwide movement to help deal with hunger and control on food waste.

But that’s exactly what the Farmlink Project has done since 2020, bringing together hundreds of young volunteers to rescue nearly 77 million pounds of excess food and deliver it to those in need. The organization’s efforts help farmers, the environment, and people struggling to feed their families all at once.

“In the United States, 40 million Americans don’t have enough food to eat. They don’t know where their next meal is going to come from,” said Aidan Reilly, who co-founded Farmlink. “Meanwhile, in the United States, we’re throwing out over 100 billion pounds of food every year.”

Back in 2020, Reilly and his childhood friend James Kanoff were reading and watching news about food shortages, and they learned that area farms were forced to destroy excess produce that they couldn’t sell, especially with restaurants, schools and hotels closed. Reilly, Kanoff and a core group of friends worked together over Zoom, texted and e-mailed to contact farms coast to coast. “We didn’t really set out to start a nonprofit,” Reilly said. “We just thought, ‘There’re so many people suffering, if we can figure out one way to help, then that’ll be great.”

In California, they found a farmer who had 13, 000 eggs that could be donated, and Reilly offered to do the pickup and delivery himself. That was the first of many more deliveries. With “we’ll come to you” as their catchphrase (标语), the group rented U-Haul trucks and attempted to do all the food pickup and deliveries themselves.

“We had a lot of small problems in the beginning,” Reilly said. “We broke axles (车轴), loaded in 40, 000 pounds of potatoes in a wrong way and had to try to drag them out by using another truck and a rope. But we made it work.”

“Farmlink has worked with more than 100 farms and 300 communities in the US, rescuing and moving enough food to distribute more than 64 million meals,” Reilly said.