A little good news

It is a peculiar fact of media that we approach each New Year by looking obsessively backward, making tallies of losses and gains: what were the best films, the most notable books, the biggest celebrity scandals, the top news stories? Who failed or flamed out, who passed away?

Human lives are not as High Concept as media would like them to be, which is one reason we have a hard time tallying “good news” stories. They’re often quiet, these stories. They’re muddy and germinal and hopeful without yet being Screamingly Obvious.

To the Fox News headline, running transcontinentally this summer: “Girl has feet severed by amusement park ride,” I can only rejoinder, “And the vast majority of other girls did not.”

Good news! Most people still have their feet! And they’ve kept their heads! And worn their hearts on their sleeves, and been decent, and tried their best.

Still, I can toss you a few High Concept good news stories for the year 2007, to increase your holiday cheer. I offer them as a gift basket, or a box of chocolates, to remind you that when human beings put their minds to it, they do achieve amazing things. A few treats, in no particular order:

1. The national crime rate — reported in July — was the lowest in 25 years.

Notwithstanding our fondness for dramatic tales of gunfire and baby snatching, the news coming from the number crunchers who monitor vile behaviour is actually very heartening. Fewer Canadians are being robbed, according to StatsCan. Fewer cars are being stolen and a dwindling number of us are at risk of death by foul play. The total tally of murders reported by police (for 2006) was 605, which translates into a national murder rate that is half of what it was in the mid-70s.
While there is some regional fluctuation — Toronto had a terrible time in 2007 with gun violence — the overall trend is worth drinking a toast to.

2. More Canadian women are surviving breast cancer than ever before.

The Canadian Cancer Society reported last spring that the death rate for breast cancer has fallen 25 per cent since 1986. Earlier screening and better treatments have been making a truly phenomenal difference. The five-year survival rate for this terrifying foe is now 86 per cent. Wonderful news to contemplate. (Now if we could only figure out why so many women are getting this cancer in the first place...)

3. Global child deaths have reached a record low

UNICEF made this claim in autumn, referring to the number of little ones who survive to the age of five in their various corners of our harsh, malnourished and war-torn world. “This is an historic moment,” UNICEF executive director Ann M. Veneman told the media. “More children are surviving today than ever before.”
Why? Because we are putting our heads together and figuring out how to give them a chance. Much of the progress is apparently due to “the widespread adoption of basic health interventions, such as early and exclusive breast feeding, measles immunization, Vitamin A supplementation and the use of insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria.”

What has prompted these interventions is a rising tendency for business people and philanthropic foundations to collaborate with governments and NGOs in solving long-intractable problems. The phenomenon, known as “social entrepreneurship,” veritably exploded in 2007 and has become the first truly optimistic movement of the 21st century, with keystone books like the Montreal-born David Bornstein’s “How To Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas.”

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last January, the New York Times reported on the stunning array of attendees they called “do-gooders with spread sheets.” I saw a few of them myself at this December’s first annual Canadian Social Entrepreneurship Summit in Toronto. The event was absolutely buzzing with enthusiasm. Venture capitalist Rodney Schwartz of the London-based company Catalyst Fund Management exhorted his fellow entrepreneurs to spread the word: “Get people excited about it,” he urged, “Make a fuss! People have a real frustration with the way the world is today. We’re really worried and we’re nervous and we don’t see any answers. Social businesses have their day now.”

4. An innovative inner-city program has dramatically reduced crime, teen pregnancy and high school dropout rates, and is set to expand nationally.

The Pathways to Education Program, founded by some imaginative people at Toronto’s Regent Park Community Health Centre in 2001, reported this year that it had yielded huge results in a poor neighbourhood traditionally bedevilled by stress and chaos. The program, funded by private donations, involves a large staff and even larger group of adult volunteers who together push the community’s teenagers to reach their academic potential. Kids are tutored if their grades fall below a certain mark at the surrounding high schools, have access to mentoring and counselling, and are given $1,000 in post-secondary school tuition for every year of high school they complete.

The net effect after six years has been to reduce the drop out rate from 56 per cent to 10 per cent, and to increase post-high school education from 20 per cent to 80 per cent. Crime in the community is down, and so is pregnancy. The program acts like a collective set of stern but loving parents to teenagers, providing academic tutoring, mentoring, student and parent support, and scholarships for all students who complete high school and get into post-secondary programs.

"The Pathways to Education Program is one of the most successful programs we have found anywhere in North America in enabling youth from low-income neighbourhoods to graduate high school and attend college and university," David Pecaut, a senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group said after conducting a study this year.

5. Canada established the largest freshwater reserve in the world.

A historic agreement was signed in 2007, according to the World Wildlife Fund, to protect Lake Superior. “This is a long-awaited victory,” said the WWF, “and was truly a collaborative effort amongst many diverse groups of people. It is excellent news for the species that inhabit the area, such as peregrine falcons, loons, woodland caribou, trout and pickerel.” Also bears, wolves, osprey, eagles and the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Happy New Year.

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