Welcome all!

🌎 Today is World Refugee Day! This annual celebration highlights the strength and courage of refugees and serves to increase public awareness of and worldwide support for refugees. (More on that below!)

🇺🇸 Pope Leo XIV’s first bishop appointment in the U.S., Rev. Michael Phamo in San Diego, California is not only a refugee himself, he’s mobilizing priests to help migrants in immigration court.

Environment

China is building the world’s largest national park system, with a network of wilderness bigger than Texas

China created its first national park ever just four years ago — almost 150 years after the U.S. established its first national park. In the years since, China has opened four more, totaling 57 million acres so far.

It’s part of a larger national plan to create 49 parks covering 272 million acres by 2035 — triple the size of the iconic U.S. National Park System.

The parks it’s already established comprise alpine peaks, tropical rainforests, glaciers, deserts, and wetlands, and protect rare animals like the Giant Panda, Siberian Tiger, and Asian Elephant. They’re also preserving cultural heritage, boosting local economies, and encouraging tourism.

Why is this good news? As more and more parts of the world face development, it’s a hopeful shift to see a large country like China also urgently prioritizing the preservation of natural spaces — protecting critical wildlife, ecosystems, and ultimately, human life.

→ Read more​

More Good News

​A new California bill would prohibit ICE officers from wearing masks in the state. If passed, the legislation would prevent police at all levels from covering their faces with masks or balaclavas while working, and would require them to be identifiable via uniform.

​College students in Louisiana invented a “smart car seat” to prevent hot car deaths in infants. The project started as a graduation requirement for three LSU seniors and grew into something much more meaningful — a means to help bring the average number of children who die in hot cars every summer in the U.S. from 37 to zero.

🏳️‍🌈 Circumventing a law that allows police to ban LGBTQ marches, the mayor of Budapest is organizing Hungary’s Pride march anyway. Hungary’s parliament passed legislation in March that creates a legal basis to ban LGBTQ marches, and lets police use facial recognition cameras to identify people who attend. (Paywall)

​The U.K. parliament passed a law banning women from being prosecuted for terminating their own pregnancy. The new law makes it illegal to investigate, arrest, prosecute, or imprison any woman in England or Wales for terminating her own pregnancy — no matter what term or trimester she’s in.

be the good

Join in celebrating World Refugee Day!

According to the UNHCR, there were over 122 million people forcibly displaced worldwide by the end of April 2025, including 42.7 million refugees. On World Refugee Day and beyond, it’s important we remember that each of those individuals has a face, story, and dream they hope to achieve.

We worked with author, poet, and refugee Ahmed M. Badr to curate ways we can all join in celebrating World Refugee Day — and help support displaced folks today, tomorrow, and long into the future:

1. ​Learn the nuances between displaced populations, like refugee, internally displaced, stateless, and seeking asylum
2. ​Sign up to volunteer with a nonprofit that supports refugees (there’s at least one in every state!)
3. Watch a film about the complexity of displacement (here are some recommendations!)
4. Learn about how refugee resettlement works in this 6-episode podcast series​
5. ​Read and share good news by and about refugees

→ 15 ideas to celebrate World Refugee Day​

Best of the week

We shared a ton of good news this week ... here’s a look back at some reader favorites!

A prison quilting program: featured on Netflix, then “overwhelmed” with donations.

An endangered flower is blooming all over California.

Park rangers in Senegal got a glimpse of a beloved “Ghost elephant.”

Schools are reimagining how we do student loans.​

Kids are using their screen time to protest ICE.​

After the Minnesota shooting, people turned their grief into something good.​

A guide to making a homeless care kit that actually helps.​

And a historic win for animals in Italy.

More Good bits

👏 We can thank 17th-century refugees for laying the foundations of modern-day humanitarianism.

☀️ Want to keep the lights on? Go solar.​

⛽️ An emergency fuel jug will restore your faith in humanity. (Instagram Reels)

🐎 Horse therapy is helping rehabilitate incarcerated veterans.​

🦟 Can we all have a ‘Skeeter Meter’ please?

What’s good?

Honestly, by Friday, even my brain can lose track of all the good that happened during the week ... we thought a quick look back might be helpful for you, too.

Did you miss any of those stories from earlier in the week?

Reply and let me know which one!

— Megan