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“The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hello everyone! This week, we offer stories of far-reaching innovation and kindness in our world. A cafe in Japan staffed by dementia patients, much to everyone’s delight, serves mistaken orders. At a large refugee camp in Uganda, a groundbreaking creative arts center for dance, music, and art is being built. And during New York City’s fashion week, ‘adaptive apparel’ is highlighted on a runway of dreams. Our ability to produce new and creative ideas is unlimited! May we rest in this knowing and cultivate the power of the human spirit for positive action. Wishing you a week full of happy surprises!
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Restaurant of Mistaken Orders | mistakenorders.com/en/home.html
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Once a month around lunchtime in a suburb of Tokyo, a 12-seat cafe transforms into a pop-up "dementia cafe". Lovingly named the Cafe of Mistaken Orders, the dementia cafe concept was first introduced in Japan in 2017 as one way to creatively engage dementia patients amid the country's aging population. With 30 percent of Japan's population over the age of 65, and over 6 million Japanese people estimated to have dementia, the cafe is a bright spot of humanity, fostering multiple benefits. Not only does employing elders with dementia help keep them physically and mentally active as well as emotionally engaged in community (practices that slow down the neurodegenerative disease's progress), the cafe also helps sensitize the general public to the effects of dementia. The cafe's diners arrive expecting their orders to have errors -- they come not only for the food, but for the connection to humanity that gets served up in spades. In one of the first pop-ups, 37% of orders were mistaken and 99% of customers reported being happy. "A lot of elderly people are either in nursing homes or are just sort of shut away in their homes, so I hope that our initiative will give people with dementia something to look forward to," Yui Iwata, who helps run the cafe, told The Washington Post. "If people get a deeper understanding, it would become easier for people with dementia to go out, as well."
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Juan Sebastian useche | Unsplash
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"Heroism at its finest!" raved Berlin Police, applauding 40 brave individuals who came together to lift a bus and rescue an 18-year-old who got trapped under the vehicle. Despite the chaos, the community united, managing to lift the bus to free the young man with minor injuries, says volunteer rescuer, Frank Kurze. Nearby medical personnel also rushed to the scene, providing first aid and giving us a stark reminder of the extraordinary power of human spirit and kindness. The young man, now recovering from surgery in hospital, has a remarkable story to tell thanks to his "heroes," proving once again that when we stand together, incredible things can happen. Sandra Grunwald, one of the nurses, beautifully summed up this event, "I think it's nice that one can still more or less have trust in society."
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Hassell
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Outside the Ugandan town of Yumbe, architects are building the first performance and arts space of its kind for Bidi Bidi, which has grown from a camp for South Sudanese refugees to a permanent settlement of almost 200,000. The Bidi Bidi Music & Arts Centre is a rare example of a project dedicated to the arts in a displaced community. Residents wanted "a place for dance, music and performance," and Nachson Mimran of to.org, which conceived the idea, says "music, art, dance and theater are firmly established as meaningful forms of therapy for people with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)." The building will be low maintenance. Sunlight will perforate the brick building through openings and light wells. Its water system uses gravity, and will provide another source of clean water to Bidi Bidi. The prefabricated steel roof, made in Kampala, avoids use of local wood, and hand-pressed bricks are made from local soil.
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Runway of Dreams
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New York Fashion Week is a chance for designers and models to shine, and this year, one nonprofit organization showcased adaptive fashion made specifically for people with disabilities in the Runway of Dreams Fashion Show. For model Dustin Giannelli, it's about his hearing aids."I can't get my (hearing aids) wet. If it's raining I have to be able to put my hood on," he said. "There is also an adaptive sweatshirt for people in wheelchairs. I've got zippers on the side of my shoes which make it adaptive for people that have issues putting sneakers on." Mindy Scheier, a fashion designer by trade, founded Runway of Dreams because her son, now 18, has muscular dystrophy and "just wanted to be able to wear jeans like everyone else and there were no mainstream options for him."
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Carolina Grabowska | Pexels
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Are humans more prone to generosity or selfishness? With the help of a pair of wealthy donors, researchers affiliated with University of British Columbia, Yale, and Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) ran an experiment to find out. Two hundred people from six countries were selected to participate in a vague "mystery" experiment. They learned that they would be given $10,000 with the only conditions being that they had to spend all of it in three months, they couldn't save or invest any of it, and they had to report to researchers precisely how they spent it. The results are in and, happily, generosity reigned. Participants spent 68% of their cash pro-socially, benefiting others and sometimes simultaneously themselves (paying for a shared vacation or dinner, for example.) On average, they also donated a fifth to charities or other causes.
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