The Student Volunteers for Optometric Service to Humanity (SVOSH) is an organization that provides eye care to developing nations, bringing graduate students in optometry to people who can neither afford nor obtain such care. SVOSH's latest trip was to Honduras, where one volunteer was surprised by the dreary conditions:
"I don't know that I was really expecting to see little cement homes with no doors and bars over the windows and people actually living in them," said Ashley Scheurer, graduate student at the Illinois College of Optometry.
Scheurer said the trip to Hunduras was sobering, especially when she saw "lines of 300 to 400 people lined up in the hot sun in the dirt" to get their eyes examined.
To volunteer with SVOSH and help others in need, visit their website here.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Helping others is good for your health!
Allan Luks, the former executive director of the Institute for the Advancement of Health, wrote The Healing Power of Doing Good: The Health and Spiritual Benefits of Helping Others.The book, published in 1991, details scientific research that proves that being kind has physical and mental health benefits.
Some surprising findings include:
· Helping others can diminish the effect of minor and serious diseases and disorders .
· Stress-related health problems improve after performing kind acts. Helping reverses feelings of depression, supplies social contact, and decreases feelings of hostility and isolation that can cause stress, overeating, ulcers, etc. A drop in stress may, for some people, decrease the constriction within the lungs that leads to asthma attacks.
· After doing good, a decrease in both the intensity and the awareness of physical pain can occur.
· When a person establishes a relationship of friendship, love, or some sort of positive bonding, he or she feels emotions that can strengthen the immune system.
Being kind is an easy way to improve your health!
Some surprising findings include:
· Helping others can diminish the effect of minor and serious diseases and disorders .
· Stress-related health problems improve after performing kind acts. Helping reverses feelings of depression, supplies social contact, and decreases feelings of hostility and isolation that can cause stress, overeating, ulcers, etc. A drop in stress may, for some people, decrease the constriction within the lungs that leads to asthma attacks.
· After doing good, a decrease in both the intensity and the awareness of physical pain can occur.
· When a person establishes a relationship of friendship, love, or some sort of positive bonding, he or she feels emotions that can strengthen the immune system.
Being kind is an easy way to improve your health!
Helping others all around town
Clawson, a small town in Michigan, celebrated Random Acts of Kindness Week for the second year in early February. The "small city with a big heart" gave free haircuts for kids and hearing tests for seniors, as well as sponsored clothing drives and letter writing stations for troops abroad. More than 35 businesses handed out free gift cards during the week.
“The goal is to make kindness a way of life, so that we show kindness in our everyday lives,” Clawson Mayor Penny Luebs said.
Even police were looking to commend those who were driving well!
Sounds like my kind of town.
“The goal is to make kindness a way of life, so that we show kindness in our everyday lives,” Clawson Mayor Penny Luebs said.
Even police were looking to commend those who were driving well!
Sounds like my kind of town.
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