All Aboard the Googly-Eyed Train – CNN 5 Good Things

Hi. I’m Krista Bo and I’m going to tell you about the good things happening all over the world. You’ll hear from some Bostonians who are campaigning to make their subway rides a little more fun.

Bring some joy into our lives. Give the green line googly eyes.

And did you hear that NASA sent Missy Elliott into space? Well, sort of. From CNN, here are 5 Good Things.

Books have the power to change lives. And that was the case for Payton McGriff. She read Half the Sky in college.

The book is about the plight of women and girls around the world. It’s about how there are over 130 million girls out of school today, and so my worldview is completely open, someone from Idaho, that there’s just such a vastly different experience for women around the world.

And one of the many barriers that keep girls from going to school is a uniform. So she turned a university project into a nonprofit called Style Her Empowered—or SHE for short. They help 1,500 girls a year in the West African country of Togo.

Today, when a girl participates in our program, she not only receives a new school uniform, but also a full scholarship, a year’s worth of school supplies, a reusable menstrual kit, and year-round tutoring from our local staff.

For her work, Payton was named a CNN Hero of 2024.

Last year, 99.1% of our students passed their classes and national exams, which are quite difficult in Togo.

Payton developed the idea for her nonprofit while doing some field research in Togo. In the spring of her senior year at the University of Idaho, she met a young woman named Elolo whose family was struggling financially, forcing her to drop out of school while her brothers stayed in class.

She says that made her sad, because her goal was to go to school and become a successful person. 2017 was SHE’s first year. And the team hired a local seamstress to make the uniforms, but they quickly realized that the students quickly outgrew them. So they designed their own uniforms.

So that’s where the uniform that grows was born. We created a dress. It grows in six sizes and is up to 12 inches long, and adjusts to different parts of the body to provide a well-tailored fit.

Not only did Elolo graduate from high school, she also became the group’s assistant director and recruited hundreds of girls.

I think Elolo is just the epitome of when you educate a girl, you educate a community, and she is a role model for every girl in our program who sees themselves in her. It’s so girl power. It’s so much fun.

To learn more about SHE’s work, go to cnn.com/heroes. The link is also in our show notes.

When Arielle Lok moved to Boston, she noticed that the subway system there, which locals call the T, was missing something. The trains lacked quirkiness, so Ariel and her boyfriend John Sanchez had an idea.

I remember standing on the T platform with John and thinking, ‘What if we just keep an eye on them?’

By eyes, she means googly eyes on the front of some trains, like giant versions of those crazy googly eyes you can buy at a hobby store. To make their vision a reality, Arielle and John launched a full-scale campaign, writing to transit officials and putting up posters at stops. They even organized a march to the headquarters of Boston’s transit authority, the MBTA, complete with signs and coordinated chants.

Bring some joy into our lives. Give the green line googly eyes. Dot the I and cross the T – googly eyes on T-trains, please.

‘Overall it was a successful march, but Arielle said they didn’t hear any updates on their wide-eyed demands for a few months. Then one day, out of nowhere.

We got an email like, yo, we put them on. Five of the trains have googly eyes and John and I were shocked.

Arielle and John hope the big-eyed trains will make passengers smile and perhaps feel a little less irritated if their journey is delayed.

It gives you a kind of empathy for the train, as if it didn’t want to arrive at the station too late. It’s your friend.

We believe that the eyes are the windows to the soul and that the soul of a city is its public transportation system.

When I think of the Summer Olympics, I immediately think of gymnastics or swimming. But for the first time ever, we will see breakdancing as an Olympic sport, and Sunny Choi will be banging and locking for the US this August.

I always wanted to be an Olympian. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be an Olympian.

Sunny started her career in college and says the sport really helped her find herself.

‘I was going through life like a robot, doing everything I had to do, all the time. And it was a break that turned all that upside down and made me discover who I am, what drives me, why I do what I do, it confronted me with my fear of failure, my lack of self-confidence.

‘That’s why the 35-year-old decided to quit her job to pursue her passion.

I just liked it, I didn’t allow myself to dream. So I thought, you know what? I’m just going to try it and whatever happens, happens and I qualified

She proves that it’s never too late to chase your dreams.

‘Friends Rebecca Shelley and Laura Ruth became friends over their love of flowers. And now the Harrisonburg, Virginia, stay-at-home moms have turned that love of flowers into a nonprofit called Friendly City Florals. They give event flower arrangements a second life. Laura says they have two ways to collect donated flowers.

We have home growers who donate their flowers. We take them, reuse them and ship them. We can also donate flowers for corporate events, weddings and funerals.

Rebecca used to work in the wedding industry, so she knew they would find plenty of beautiful flowers there that they could repurpose.

I threw the beautiful, gorgeous flowers in black garbage bags myself, because I didn’t want to do anything with them after the event.

They give the rearranged bouquets as gifts to places like hospitals, nursing homes, and mental health facilities. As a licensed clinical social worker, Laura understood the impact a single bouquet of flowers can have on someone.

‘They feel special and part of the sense of community connection. The closeness that this fosters is just as important to a person as well-being.

We know that light travels faster than sound, but how fast can a song travel to, say, Venus? That’s the next thing.

“Space recently got a taste of Earth-based hip-hop. CNN’s Emily Williams is here to tell us more. Hey, Emily.

Hi Krista. So an announcement from NASA this week caught my attention. NASA did a little space DJing last week and broadcasted Missy Elliott’s song from a lab in Southern California. 158 miles away to Venus. So if you were on Venus last Friday, you would have been dancing to this

I’m super cool, super super cool.

You know, I missed the rocket that launched into Venus last Friday, but I’ll try to go next time.

Well, it would have taken you a lot longer to get there than this song. NASA said it took about 14 minutes for the song to travel from those huge radio stations in California all the way to the planet of love. This is only the second time NASA has sent a song like this into space. The first was the Beatles’ “Across the Universe.”

And wow, I didn’t actually know that. Although, you know, if it were up to me, I would have picked her song. ‘Music Make You Lose Control. Music Make You Lose Control.’ That’s my favorite.

That’s a really good one. I think my favorite is “Work It.”

That’s a good one too. Classic.

I do think NASA made a good choice. Missy Elliott was pretty excited about it. She posted on X that the sky is not the limit. It’s just the beginning.

Okay, that’s it for now. Join us tomorrow for the next edition of One Thing. Five Good Things is a production of CNN audio. This episode is produced by Emily Williams and myself, Krista Bo. Our Senior Producer is Faiz Jamil. Greg Peppers is our Supervising Producer. Matt Dempsey is our Production Manager. Dan Dzula is our Technical Director. And Steve Lickteig is the Executive Producer of CNN Audio. We have support from Joey Salvia, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to the CNN Heroes team, CNN Sports, and Katie Hinman. And thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please consider following it and leaving a nice rating and review. It helps other people find the show and spread the good vibes. Take care. Until next time.