From chimpanzees in Africa, to a refugee turned CEO, to reclaimed hashtags on Twitter, this is October’s edition of 5 Good News in 5 Minutes.

1. Uganda is planting 3 million trees to help endangered Chimpanzees

Uganda recently announced its plans to plant three million trees over the next few years, from fig to mahogany, with the purpose of benefitting local communities, the planet, and endangered chimpanzees in the area. Non-profit One Tree Planted and the Jane Goodall Institute announced earlier this year that they were collaborating on a “Wildlife Habitat & Corridor Restoration Project” in Uganda.

The effort goes on to explain that over the course of three years, millions of trees will be planted in Uganda’s western region in order to support the long-term, large-scale restoration of the Albertine Rift, an extremely diverse ecosystem in Africa. The Albertine Rift plays a crucial role as the habitat for endangered chimpanzees, 50% of birds, 39% of mammals, 19% of amphibians and 14% of reptiles and plants of mainland Africa.

In the last two and a half decades, human settlement, agriculture, logging, and fires have become responsible for the loss of millions of hectares of forest, showing that Ugandan ecosystems face a conglomerate of threats. By managing and restoring these communities, local areas will see fundamental benefits in ecological, socio-economic, and cultural aspects of life.

2. Canada banning single-use plastic bags, straws, and cutlery in 2021

On October 7, Jonathan Wilkinson, Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change, announced that the government was adding a new step into their plan to achieve zero plastic waste by 2030: banning all single-use plastics in 2021, including bags, straws, cutlery, and more.

Canadians throw away over 3 million tons of plastic waste every year, only 9% of which gets recycled. The majority of all plastic eventually ends up in landfills and about 29,000 tons wind up in our natural environment, usually in oceans, where the waste threatens wildlife and pollutes water sources.

The government took into consideration which items of harmful plastic had readily available alternatives and with that in mind, proposed to ban plastic checkout bags, stir sticks, cutlery, food ware, six-pack rings, and straws in 2021, a list that was published in the discussion paper titled Proposed Integrated Management Approach to Plastic Products to Prevent Waste and Pollution. The plan aims to improve current recycling efforts in order to keep plastic “in the economy and out of the environment.”

3. World’s Largest Hunger Program wins 2020 Nobel Peace Prize

The World Food Program (WFP) has won the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize “for its efforts to combat hunger and bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas by seeking to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon.” WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian organization that feeds the hungry.

In 2019 alone, WFP gave assistance to almost 100 million people across 88 countries. These people are victims of acute food insecurity and hunger, conditions that, in most cases, are provoked by armed conflict. During the Coronavirus pandemic, the organization intensified its efforts globally, stating that “Until the day we have a medical vaccine, food is the best vaccine against chaos.”

The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that increasing food security not only reduced hunger, but is also a crucial step on the path to improve prospects for stability and peace. WFP participated heavily in the UN Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 2417, the first diplomatic process to ever explicitly address the connection between conflict and hunger, urging member states to ensure food assistance and condemning the use of starvation as a method of warfare.

4. Former refugee creates a video game that teaches about refugee camps

When he was 15 years old, Lual Mayen was living in a refugee camp located in Northern Uganda where he saw a computer for the first time. Now, he is the creator of mobile app Salaam, a new game that teaches players about life in refugee camps and helps provide aid to these groups.

Mayen and his family, originally from South Sudan, were displaced after the outbreak of the Second Sudanese Civil War, along with nearly 680,000 others. He arrived at a refugee camp where he continued to live for the next 22 years, and then moved to Washington, D.C. to work on his video game. He has described life inside these camps as difficult, with no opportunities for education, scarce food, and extremely crowded conditions. Salaam (which is the Arabic word for peace), shows players what it is like to live as a refugee, with the character running from those who are trying to capture them.

The player also has to help their character stay alive by making sure they have enough food, water, and even medicine. The game is free to play, however players have to pay to take care of their character’s needs. By partnering with the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and several non-profits, when players purchase resources in the game, those same items are donated to real refugees in camps. Mayen says he was exposed to a number of different games, like Grand Theft Auto, but he was sure that he wanted his game to have a positive impact. He has since been named a Global Gaming Citizen by the Game Awards for his game’s mission to achieve global peace.

5. LGBTQ+ community drowns out hateful hashtag

“The Proud Boys” are a far-right group that have been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. They began trending on social media after they were mentioned in the first presidential debate of 2020, however users on Twitter began working to reduce the spread of their hateful rhetoric. Men in the LGBTQ+ community started tweeting photos of themselves, the majority of them with their partners, with the hashtag #ProudBoys in order to drown out the offensive content.

The Proud Boys have publicly denied promoting white supremacy, however, members of the group have historically supported racist individuals and movements. Recently, they showed up to Black Lives Matter demonstrations to counter-protest. When called upon to condemn white supremacists, President Trump stumbled on the question, leading the moderator to mention Proud Boys as an example of a white supremacist organization. Trump did not condemn the organization or white supremacy.

Some noteworthy participants in the #ProudBoys hashtag include Star Trek actor George Takei, sharing a photo with his husband and encouraging others to do the same. Social media is a hotspot for activism, however it can also be a strong landing spot for hatred. Luckily, most social media users know how to band together to combat this problem. Earlier in the year, K-Pop fans successfully used mass posting to drown out the #WhiteLivesMatter hashtag.

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