Reasons to be Cheerful

When Martin Aufmuth, a math teacher in Erlangen, Germany, read in 2009 that hundreds of millions of people worldwide suffered from vision impairment but could not afford glasses, he could hardly believe it. “It was the book Out of Poverty by Paul Polak,” Aufmuth remembers, “I thought, ‘This can’t be true.’”

But it was and it is. The World Health Organization estimates that at least one billion people have a near or distance vision impairment that could have been prevented or has yet to be addressed. Eighty percent of them could be helped with relatively easy means, like glasses. The day after reading Polak’s book, Aufmuth passed a one-euro shop and spotted reading glasses for a single euro. “I thought, strange, we have this here,” he says. “Why not elsewhere?”

After researching existing efforts, he found no large-scale solution that satisfied him. Donated second-hand glasses, often mismatched and poorly distributed, did not seem sustainable. “That wasn’t a solution for me,” he says.

Aufmuth was searching for ways to make a difference. Years earlier, inspired in part by his wife’s blunt advice — “then do something” — he had raised significant funds for development initiatives in Malawi and organized climate campaigns that mobilized hundreds of thousands of children. “I realized,” he says, “that even as an individual, I can move something.”

So he disappeared into his basement to tinker. The result was the EinDollarBrille (“One Dollar Glasses”), a pair of glasses made from highly flexible spring steel wire and shatterproof plastic lenses. Aufmuth has been wearing glasses since childhood and knows firsthand how precious eyesight is. He takes off his glasses, one of his models, pops out the lenses and shows how bendable the frame is. “You can take the lenses out, adjust everything,” he explains “You could run a jeep over it and it would not break.”

Courtesy of One Dollar Glasses

“You could run a jeep over it and it would not break,” Aufmuth says of the glasses he created, which are made from highly flexible spring steel wire and shatterproof plastic lenses.

Manufacturing the glasses requires no electricity, no industrial production — just a compact, hand-powered bending machine small enough to fit in a shoe box. “I was looking for a technical solution that could have a big impact,” he says. “That was it.”

In 2011, Aufmuth traveled to Uganda with a group of eye specialists, carrying two of his prototype machines. There, he trained local participants to produce the glasses themselves. “People were already lining up outside, waiting for glasses,” he recalls. “We could start immediately.”

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The experience was transformative. He returned home five kilograms lighter, he jokes, but with a refined system and a clear sense of purpose. By 2012, recognizing the limits of working alone, he founded the organization that would later expand internationally as GoodVision.

Today, the network operates in 11 countries, employs around 600 people and is supported by volunteers around the globe. Much of its funding comes from individuals rather than governments. “Private donations keep us moving,” Aufmuth says. “Every €10 [about $11.70 U.S.] means another person can finally see.” He emphasizes the effectiveness of the solution: Every dollar invested in eye health can yield a $28 return in low- and middle-income countries. Production and distribution are localized: Glasses are manufactured on-site and sold for the equivalent of two to three days’ wages — about five euros in Malawi, four in India. “In Malawi,” Aufmuth notes, “that’s roughly the price of a local chicken.”

The impact of a simple pair of glasses is often immediate and profound. Aufmuth recounts a wide range of stories: a 10-year-old boy in a Brazilian favela who, upon putting on his glasses, looked at his mother and said, “Ah, so that’s what you look like.” A teacher in Bolivia who could finally read her students’ work again — and for the first time, read to her grandchild.

Across rural communities, the effects are deeply practical. The Seva Foundation estimates that $447 billion in productivity is lost every year due to impaired eyesight. A woman near Lake Titicaca, on the border between Peru and Bolivia, told Aufmuth that with her new glasses, she could once again sort seed potatoes. A Brazilian farmer harvesting açaí fruit no longer had to climb trees just to check ripeness. In the Amazon, a grandmother responsible for sewing clothes for an extended family with 56 grandchildren regained her ability to work.

In fragile economies, such changes can be life-altering. “If a farmer can’t see properly, yields drop,” Aufmuth explains. “In Malawi, that might mean three months of hunger instead of two.” In some cases, he adds, access to vision correction can be the difference between subsistence and crisis.

Courtesy of One Dollar Glasses

Today, the network operates in 11 countries, employs around 600 people and is supported by volunteers around the globe.

While the glasses themselves are central, Aufmuth emphasizes that at least half the organization’s work lies in education and outreach. “Many people don’t even know what they’re missing,” he says. The shortage of trained eye care professionals remains a critical barrier. “The few opticians and doctors are in cities,” he says. “In rural areas, there is often no care at all.” To address this, GoodVision trains local technicians not only to manufacture glasses but also to conduct basic vision tests.

In India, mobile teams — often young women from rural areas — travel six days a week to remote villages and currently distribute 6,000 pairs of glasses each month. “What they do is remarkable,” Aufmuth says. In Brazil’s Paraná state, the organization partnered with public systems to test 300,000 schoolchildren within a few months, a logistical effort he describes as a “mammoth operation.”

The work has also expanded into more complex care. In India and Burkina Faso, the organization now helps coordinate cataract surgeries, arranging transportation and funding for patients who would otherwise never reach a clinic. “We realized,” Aufmuth says, “that many had never been to a hospital — not even once.”

Despite reaching over a million people, Aufmuth remains acutely aware of the gap between impact and need, given the WHO’s estimate of one billion people still living with uncorrected vision impairment. The scale can feel overwhelming. “A million glasses sounds like a lot,” he says. “But compared to the need, it’s very little.”

That tension defines his outlook. The work is meaningful — deeply so — but unfinished. “Of course, it gives purpose,” he reflects. “But I tend to look ahead — to what still has to be done.”

Analyses by the WHO have underscored that preventable vision impairment remains one of the most widespread — and solvable — global health challenges. Other groups are stepping in as well. International collaborations like International Agency for the Prevention of Blindness and initiatives such as Our Children’s Vision are working to expand access, particularly for children. Yet coordination remains a challenge. “Sometimes you see camps that screen for cataracts sending people home without glasses,” Aufmuth notes. “That’s a huge waste of resources.” His nonprofit’s efforts on the ground are hampered by political uprisings, floods, fires and hurricanes. “In Bolivia, the gas is currently tainted, preventing engines from running,” he says, sighing. “There’s always something.” 

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For him, the future lies in better integration — linking local initiatives with national health systems and global networks to create sustainable, scalable solutions. “What drives me is fairness — the idea that everyone should have the chance to see, to learn, to work.” 

His belief in individual agency remains central. “People often say one person can’t make a difference,” he says. “That’s just an excuse. You have to start something, set it in motion.”

The post The $1 Visionary appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

When foodies head to Newport, Oregon, one place is always at the top of their list: Local Ocean. Repeat diners rave about the roasted garlic and crab soup, studded with fat lumps of local Dungeness; the lightly battered fried rockfish tacos served with citrus slaw, Huichol mayo and pickled veggies; and the saffron-infused Fishwives Stew, teeming with Oregon pink shrimp, wild prawns, scallops, clams and rockfish — served with a side of garlic bread. Even the niçoise salad, elevated with seared Oregon-caught tuna, is a standout. 

An added bonus to the delicious seafood menu is that the overwhelming majority of it  — including what’s sold at the downstairs fish market — is caught in the ocean just off Newport. That’s a rarity these days in Oregon, where a whopping 90 percent of the seafood purchased and consumed on the coast is not locally caught, according to a recent study by the Oregon Coast Visitors Association. Roughly 90 percent of Oregon’s seafood imports typically come from three countries: India, Canada and China. Ironically, Oregon exports its seafood to some of these same countries. Shipping seafood halfway across the world costs thousands of food miles — that is, the total distance food travels from where it’s caught or produced to where it’s consumed — creating an enormous carbon footprint. 

But also, OCVA estimates that Oregon’s coastal communities lose roughly $178 million a year because restaurants and food stores import seafood and other ingredients from far away. (In other words, when restaurants and groceries on the Oregon Coast order prawns from Indonesia, Atlantic salmon from the East Coast and salad greens from California, money that could be staying in Oregon’s coastal communities leaves the state.)  That’s not even including the economic multipliers of processing facilities, packaging and storage jobs that would be added if seafood stayed on the Coast. 

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Robert Gallery looks like a picture of perfect strength. Broad-shouldered at 6-foot-7, heavily muscled arms inked, the former NFL offensive lineman’s frame fills the chair at his home in Lake Tahoe, California. For eight seasons with the Oakland Raiders and Seattle Seahawks, and before that at the University of Iowa, he built a career on absorbing impact.

The damage he carries is harder to see.

Gallery estimates he sustained “hundreds and hundreds of concussions.” At the time, he barely registered them. “We called it getting your bell rung,” he recalls. “You see stars, you’re dizzy, staggering, but that was just part of the game.”

Only later did he realize those hits were accumulating into a serious medical issue. 

Toward the end of his career, the symptoms became impossible to ignore. He often found himself in a brain fog. The ringing in his ears wouldn’t stop. On the field, he would turn to teammates and ask, “Where are we? What am I supposed to do?”

Like many athletes, he didn’t ask for help, and he self-medicated. “When you’re playing in the NFL, you don’t want to give anybody a reason to not have you in the game,” he says, his blue eyes flashing above an easy smile. “There are hundreds of guys who would love to have your job. You never show weakness.”

After retiring in 2012 at age 32, Gallery expected to recover. Instead, the symptoms intensified. “The brain fog got worse, the ringing in my ears, the mood swings,” he says. Nightmares turned violent. He thought about ending his life. Even the laughter of his young children could set him off. “I would be sitting in my chair, just shaking with rage, trying not to hurt them.”

A brain scan finally made the invisible visible. A neurologist placed his scan next to that of a healthy brain. “There was no denying it,” Gallery says. “My brain looked like it was crumbling.”

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Though chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative condition linked to repeated blows to the head, can only be definitively diagnosed after death, doctors told him his symptoms strongly suggested it. It has been found in the brains of numerous deceased athletes, including NFL players Junior Seau and Aaron Hernandez.

Gallery attacked treatment with the same diligence that made him successful as an athlete. He talked with therapists, spent hours in hyperbaric oxygen chambers, tried hormone treatments to lower his cortisol, took antidepressants and supplements. “I did everything they threw at me,” he says. “But I felt minimal relief.” At times, he couldn’t remember his daughter’s name.

His experience reflects a broader gap in medicine. Each year, an estimated 69 million people worldwide suffer traumatic brain injuries from sports, accidents and violence. For 10 to 30 percent, symptoms like cognitive impairment, depression and anxiety persist. And as Gallery experienced, there are few treatment options — and no approved cures. 

Gallery’s turning point came from an unlikely source: a podcast. Listening to former Navy SEAL Marcus Capone describe his recovery from trauma and brain damage, he recognized himself in every symptom. 

“I literally checked every single box — substance abuse, depression, [thoughts of] suicide,” Gallery says. “I didn’t know if I was going to survive.”

He heard Capone say that psychedelic therapy “gave me my life back.” Through their nonprofit VETS (Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions), Capone and his wife Amber have helped thousands of veterans access psychedelic treatment abroad, because it is illegal in the U.S.

“Athletes and veterans have a lot in common,” Gallery says. “We’re used to pushing through. Not talking about what’s wrong.”

Within weeks, Capone offered him a place in a treatment program in Mexico.

Gallery got an EKG to make sure his heart was healthy enough for the treatments and told his therapist he was going to Mexico. She encouraged him but also cautioned him, pointing out psychedelics were illegal in the U.S. and warning him not to go cold turkey on his medications. But he had already made up his mind. “I’m an all-in kind of guy,” he says. 

In 2021, Gallery flew to San Diego, then crossed into Mexico with a group of veterans for a three-day treatment at a clinic called Mission Within.

He was terrified. “I thought I might not come back,” he says. “But what scared me more was, what if it doesn’t work?”

The treatment centered on ibogaine, a psychoactive alkaloid derived from a West African shrub. It is unregulated in Mexico, Costa Rica, the Bahamas and other countries where treatment centers offer therapy in a legal gray area. In Canada, doctors can prescribe ibogaine for medical use. 

Soon, people like Gallery may not need to leave the U.S. to seek treatment: The Trump administration has granted breakthrough therapy status to certain psychedelics, including ibogaine, to accelerate research. “Psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine compounds, show potential in clinical studies to address serious mental illnesses for patients whose conditions persist after completing standard therapy,” Donald Trump’s executive order states. “It is the policy of my Administration to accelerate innovative research models and appropriate drug approvals to increase access to psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of serious mental illness in America.”

Treatments with ibogaine are infamously unpleasant and intense. “It was like watching a movie of my life playing in the sky,” Gallery remembers. “You’re literally melted into the floor. You can’t move. You just have to deal with all these emotions and feelings that are coming up.”

The aftermath was brutal. “The worst hangover times 100,” he says. “I couldn’t function. My motor skills weren’t working. I couldn’t even get up to go to the bathroom.” Staff put him in a wheelchair, and Gallery wondered if he had done permanent damage to himself. 

Because these side effects are not uncommon, the clinic follows the ibogaine trip with another treatment: On the last day, participants smoke 5-MeO-DMT, a fast-acting psychedelic found in toad venom. “It put the breaker box back on,” Gallery recalls. “All this weight lifted off my shoulders. The ringing in my ears was gone. The brain fog was gone. I felt like a completely different person.”

Gallery is careful not to frame psychedelics as a “magic bullet.” He still had to work through his difficulties with his therapist and a support group of veterans. Yet he credits the psychedelics journey with his remarkable change.

“As soon as I got back home, I rolled around on the floor with my kids and tickled them, and I enjoyed their laughter,” says Gallery, “whereas before, their playing would enrage me.” He says his wife was “flabbergasted” as she watched much of his macho bravado melt away. His suicidal thoughts, mood swings and self-medication disappeared. “I haven’t had a drink since,” he says, disbelief swinging in his own voice.

Stories like Gallery’s are tentatively backed by emerging research.

A 2024 study led by Nolan Williams at Stanford found that ibogaine significantly reduced depression, anxiety and cognitive symptoms in veterans with traumatic brain injuries. “The results are dramatic,” Williams said. “No other drug has ever been able to alleviate these symptoms.” A follow-up study in 2025 found measurable physical changes: increased cortical thickness and a “younger” brain age after treatment. 

Researchers believe psychedelics may help to increase neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form new connections. Studies suggest compounds like psilocybin reduce inflammation while boosting the brain’s ability to form new pathways. Experiments simulating repeated head trauma in rats found psilocybin helped restore lost brain function. Separate research on brain injuries related to intimate partner violence showed improvements in cognition, mood and inflammation after psilocybin treatment.

Still, experts like Frederick Barrett, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, caution about the risks of taking psychedelics, especially outside controlled settings. Psychedelics can trigger psychological distress or, in rare cases, prolonged psychosis. Ibogaine, in particular, can cause dangerous heart arrhythmias and must be administered under strict medical supervision.

Now that the Trump administration is speeding up research and aiming to increase access to ibogaine, “we must be clear-eyed about both the opportunity and the responsibility ahead,” notes Betty Aldworth, co-executive director of MAPS (The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies). “Psychedelic-assisted therapy is effective, but it’s not a simple treatment or a panacea. Without change, we risk repeating the past, where urgency outpaced evidence and people in need were left to find treatment in alleys or with snake oil. We can responsibly study and safely integrate promising psychedelic-assisted treatments into our healthcare system. Given the alternative, why would we choose anything else?”

Despite the uncertainties, interest is surging. In one survey of athletes in the U.S. and Canada, roughly two-thirds of respondents said they would consider psychedelic therapy for concussion-related symptoms.

Gallery has become part of a growing network of psychedelic therapy proponents trying to bridge the gap between emerging science and patient demand. In 2025, he co-founded Athletes for Care, modeled on VETS, to help former athletes access treatment and advocate for research.

“There’s a lot of guys suffering in silence,” he says. “Just like I was.”

In its first months, the organization has helped facilitate psychedelic therapy for about 10 athletes. 

Legal and logistical hurdles remain significant. Psychedelics are still classified as Schedule I substances at the federal level in the U.S., though states like Oregon and Colorado have begun allowing supervised psilocybin therapy. Texas has committed $50 million to ibogaine drug development, while Arizona has approved funding for clinical trials, and the Department of Veterans Affairs is funding a $1.5 million grant to research ibogaine.

The potential applications extend well beyond sports. Survivors of car accidents, domestic violence and other forms of repeated trauma often experience similar neurological and psychological symptoms. 

For now, many patients continue to travel abroad — often, like Gallery, to clinics in Mexico. Experts emphasize caution. As demand grows, so does the risk of unregulated providers entering the space. “People are seeing dollar signs,” Gallery says. “You’ve got to be careful where you go.”

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Gallery has been back to Mexico twice. The effects of his initial journey weren’t permanent. After about a year, symptoms began creeping back. He returned for additional treatments in 2023 and 2024.

He continues to work on repairing the damage within his family and himself. He still journals, attends therapy and microdoses psilocybin.

“I screwed up a lot of things,” he admits, reflecting on the years his family endured his anger and instability. “This didn’t erase that.”

What it did, he suggests, was make change possible.

“I know what it feels like to feel good now,” he says. “And I never want to go back.”

The post Can Psychedelics Help Athletes Recover From Brain Injuries? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Tell us what you’ve been reading at info@reasonstobecheerful.world and we just might feature it here.

When things click

How much do you have in common with a sperm whale? More than it would seem: New research has found that sperm whale communication closely resembles humans, according to a story from the Guardian shared by RTBC Contributing Editor Michaela Haas. Sperm whale vocalizations — clicking sounds known as codas — are “highly complex and represent one of the closest parallels to human phonology of any analyzed animal communication system,” the new study explains.

Michaela says:

A fascinating update from Project CETI (which I wrote about two years ago). I’m fully convinced sperm whales are highly intelligent.

Worth its salt

Some news you might not expect from a West Coast city: San Diego now has so much water that it can share some with its drought-plagued neighbors. That’s thanks to the desalination plant in Carlsbad, the largest in North America. As the Wall Street Journal reports in a story shared by Executive Editor Will Doig, Arizona and Nevada are hoping to swap water access rights with San Diego — meaning that in exchange for funding the water generated by the Carlsbad plant, those states would get to take San Diego’s share of Colorado River water.

Will says:

Desalination has drawbacks (it’s an energy suck, for one, though new technologies are making it more sustainable) but with California facing a parched summer after a very dry winter, this kind of arrangement could help stave off a crisis.

What else we’re reading

Maui residents are rebuilding Lahaina for locals, not tourists: ‘In Hawaii, we take care of one another’ — shared by Editorial Director Rebecca Worby from the Guardian

The Help That Many Older Americans Need Most — shared by Will Doig from the New York Times

The state of solar: Despite partisan rhetoric, the industry is still booming — shared by Rebecca Worby from Grist

From our readers…

Inspired by a story we shared in last week’s What We’re Reading, we asked our readers: What kind thing would you do with $500? We received lots of great responses. Check out some of the highlights on our Instagram.

The post What We’re Reading: Sperm Whales — They’re Just Like Us appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

It was the winter of 2011. The stage was set, the audience in place on a cold Delhi evening. The audience gasped audibly when Rewben Mashangva walked into the spotlight with his son Saka. Oblivious to the chill, he was dressed in the sleeveless woven red and black jacket worn by his tribe, the Tangkhul Naga. Father and son sported the traditional hairdo, with long ponytails and clean-shaven sides, called haokuirut. 

Between songs evocative of the mountains and valleys of the northeast Indian state of Manipur, Mashangva spoke about the Tanghkhul Naga, who form about seven percent of Manipur’s population. Like many other Indigenous peoples in India and across the world, their culture, estimated to be over 1,000 years old, has been orally transmitted across generations through songs and stories. But the fragile links of transmission were being severed, little by little, every day.  

It began in the 1890s, when the colonial British took control of Manipur and its adjoining regions. A young Scottish missionary, William Pettigrew, began converting entire villages and tribes to Christianity. Visible cultural markers of tribal identity like headgear and intricate beadwork, once worn as symbols of status, lineage and achievement, were actively discouraged, even destroyed. Oral tradition — often perpetuated by elders sitting around a fire, singing old songs and telling stories that carried their history — gave way to church-centered practices. 

“By the 1980s, very few elders who even remembered the old songs and stories were left, and they lived in remote villages untouched by proper roads and means of communication,” Mashangva says. “I couldn’t let that happen.”

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The largely oral traditions of Indigenous cultures represent intangible cultural heritage, which UNESCO says is fragile and endangered as it is dependent “on an uninterrupted chain passing traditions from one generation of performers to the next.” Linguists warn that nearly half of India’s languages could vanish within the next century. Every two weeks, the world loses a language, and around 40 percent of the estimated 8,324 languages worldwide are at risk of disappearing. Every language that falls silent represents a loss of cultural heritage — an erosion of Indigenous knowledge systems, oral traditions and ways of life. 

The UN has declared the decade between 2022 and 2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, but the question that Mashangva grappled with in the ’80s has still not been fully answered: What is the best way to save an unwritten language? 

Determined not to let the sounds of his culture fall silent, Mashangva began to travel, often trekking long distances, to over 200 remote Tangkhul Naga villages to record songs in the voices of the tribal elders. “Some of the songs were hard even for me to understand as we have multiple dialects,” he recounts. “I played and replayed the recordings endlessly and whenever I didn’t understand something, I went back and asked.” There were times when he even invited elders to stay with him, so that they would record their songs and also teach him to play traditional instruments like yangkahui (an indigenous flute with only four holes) and tingteila (a single string bowed lute). “I didn’t ever seek funding from the government,” he says. Instead, he used his income from concerts, and his wife, a teacher, supported him as well.

As a musician himself (Bob Dylan is a significant influence and he loves to sing the blues) he found the songs fascinating. They were not performative, and were meant for the ears of people who already knew them. Many followed a call and response format, with lyrics being interspersed with rhythmic cries. Their themes represented every aspect of his ancestors’ everyday lives: there were songs for weddings, funerals, the retelling of epics, preparations for battle, feasting and farming. Some were what he refers to as “work songs,” alluding to long-lost chores like the pounding of paddy by hand. Mashangva himself had not grown up with these traditions, and this made it hard even for him to understand the subtext of the lyrics. He realized that oral traditions like his focused less on melodies and more on the words, and the transmission of their way of life. “Which is why somehow, in these songs,” he says, “I could hear the voices of my ancestors.”  

Cut to the present, and Mashangva now has the only extensive archive of the songs and oral tradition of the Tangkhul Naga. In many ways, archiving is the most obvious way to preserve the histories of tribes across the globe that have no written language and records. In Gujarat, Vaacha: Museum of Voice documents oral histories and cultural expressions of Adivasi communities as many historically lack written scripts. Similarly, the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology is digitizing decades-old audio recordings of musical and oral traditions (ballads, epics, storytelling) from desert communities in Rajasthan. 

But something happened that made Mashangva realize that simply archiving his tribe’s songs was not enough.

“Initially, when I sang these old songs in concerts, people scoffed and laughed at me,” he recounts. Manipur and much of northeast India has had a long-standing love for western rock and pop and a more recent obsession with K-Pop. Even though Mashangva was an established name on the concert circuit, audiences reacted negatively when he sang the folk songs he had spent so much time collecting. “They said: this is too outdated … this is too backward … why don’t you sing modern songs?” he recollects.

Instead of bemoaning, as the older generation is wont to do, the fickleness of his tribe’s youth, Mashangva, a brilliant, self-taught guitarist, decided to adapt the folk songs and melodies into his more contemporary repertory of the blues. “The essence of our folk songs remains, but in a version more acceptable to the modern world,” he says. “I tell people my songs are not folk songs, but ‘folk blues’ – the addition of old melodies, song structures and traditional instruments is like adding salt to the curry that is modern blues. Salt makes curry more tasty, folk elements make the blues more interesting!” 

In the spirit of a living oral tradition that evolves with use, his repertory has become, in the words of his 24-year-old son Saka, a “bridge between the old and the new.” 

Mashangva was given the title of Guru (teacher) by the government in 2004 and has received many accolades for his work, including India’s fourth-highest civilian honor, the Padma Shri, in 2021. But his biggest achievement, he says, is the knowledge that his tribe’s songs will continue to be sung long after he has gone. His son, who has a master’s degree in tribal studies, has been working on this. “We’ve managed to digitize over 90 percent of his collection, which was earlier just a huge pile of cassettes in our house. Some were recordings of elders, some were of my dad singing old songs … some of those cassettes, they’re not playing any more,” he says, adding that the digitized archive is in the public domain in Imphal’s Tribal Research Institute. 

Perhaps more importantly, younger audiences — and consequently, younger bands in Manipur — have started singing the songs of the Tangkhul Naga. Manipur-based band Featherheads Haokui is one of them. Frontman Augustine Shimray says that he has played and enjoyed many western genres. “But when I heard Guru Mashangva’s concert, I was inspired to sing the old songs too,” he says. “It felt like I was finally getting to know myself.” Shimray, who learned about his tribe through songs and stories his grandmother told him when he was little, now loves to hang out with elders. “Their songs are stories, their stories are our history,” he says. “And when they tell and retell them, our culture will survive.”

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Saka Mashangva feels the same way. He was only three when he first performed Tangkhul Naga songs with his father, and says that growing up with this music has shaped his life. “The songs we sing, they feel like conversations — between me and my dad, between me and my ancestors,” he muses. “I’m glad I’m doing my bit to keep them alive.”

The post The Musician Racing to Preserve a Disappearing Soundscape appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

Last April, at the James Beard Foundation’s Chef Action Summit, food industry leaders gathered to discuss the political and economic landscape with one concern hanging grimly in the air: undocumented and immigrant workers were increasingly afraid to come into work after ICE raids ramped up at the outset of Trump’s second term. 

But it just so happened the summit took place in Asheville, North Carolina, where activists had already asked, “What would it take to make this the safest state for immigrants in the south?” as Andrew Willis Garcés, senior strategist with the immigrant justice organization Siembra NC, puts it.

One answer: 4th Amendment Workplaces, a framework developed by Siembra NC and launched at the summit to help restaurants and other businesses train up on legally vetted protocols to defend employees against ICE. The idea quickly took hold — there are now over 1,000 4th Amendment Workplaces across North Carolina, with 4th Amendment Workplace resolutions passed in three cities and similar efforts underway across 12 states. 

It’s emerged as perhaps the most powerful workforce training to help businesses prepare for ICE raids, but it is not the only one. Across the country, training, resources and hotlines have been developed for workplaces, alongside an effort to harness the wider labor movement as a force against ICE. 

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Though the ICE raids that make the news often take place on the street, workplaces are in fact a frequent target. “We’ve seen ICE this year go into workplaces more than a lot of other kinds of places where people are gathered,” Willis Garcés explains. “With workplaces, there’s usually an open door you can walk through.” 

According to the American Immigration Council, ICE publicly reported at least 40 worksite enforcement actions resulting in over 1,100 arrests within the first seven months of the current Trump administration. Businesses employing noncitizen workers — restaurants, car washes, automotive shops, bakeries, nail salons — are typically targeted. ICE has also scaled up large raids at workplaces like meatpacking and manufacturing plants. 

These raids often represent legal violations, which 4th Amendment Workplaces raise awareness around. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures” without a warrant based on probable cause — that is, reason to believe that a crime may have been committed.

In North Carolina, volunteers canvas businesses across the state to share what it means to be a 4th Amendment Workplace: identify invalid ICE warrants, secure private employee areas, document unconstitutional actions and defend all workers, no matter their immigration status. Resources include a workplace guide, organizing toolkit, posters signaling opposition to unconstitutional search and seizures, employee handouts and tips for designating private employee areas. 

Workplaces can request dedicated training, in which organizers help business owners and employees develop workplace-specific protocol, and lead them through roleplaying scenarios. “We help you think through … what would you do right after the fact? What would you do to preserve footage, how do you support families left behind, what’s the immediate triage that needs to happen [after a raid]?” explains Willis Garcés.

Scuppernong Books of Greensboro was an early adopter, participating in training, promoting itself as a 4th Amendment Workplace, hiring a lawyer, regularly keeping staff informed of ICE response protocol, even publishing a book on how to resist ICE. Co-owner Steve Mitchell says it is “absolutely essential” for business owners to step up on behalf of employees, especially if the owners are white and legally protected residents: “It’s important for people like us to say that this isn’t right, and we’re going to stand on this side of the issue.”

Even though there hasn’t been a heavy ICE presence in Greensboro, the bookstore’s work with Siembra NC “gives us some sense of confidence,” Mitchell says. “Whether that’s misplaced or not, it at least helps us know what our rights are in that situation.” He adds that using Siembra’s model has made the business feel connected to a broader network of activists.

Willis Garcés describes that model as “plug and play,” easily adaptable outside the state and across a variety of workplaces. Siembra NC recruited small businesses first, with the goal of expansion into higher-targer workplaces like factories and farms.

Today, some North Carolina farmers display giant vinyl banners about their constitutional rights, a riff on Siembra NC’s signage. In Oregon, organizers dubbed themselves “Baddies for the Fourth.” In Minneapolis, the 4th Amendment Workplace was a central demand in a public-pressure campaign around Target. 

There have been other efforts to develop localized training. In New York, Nonviolent Peaceforce trains mostly within the city’s Asian American community, which it has worked with since the pandemic. Last year, ICE raids erupted across the city’s Chinatown.

Nonviolent Peaceforce’s in-person training happens with trusted community partners and focuses on de-escalation and self-regulation tactics, alongside scenario and role-playing. “We came to develop scenarios really at the request of community members who felt that they really needed to know what it was like to be in the moment,” says Roz Lee, head of the organization’s U.S. efforts. She says simple tactics to slow things down — like introducing yourself, asking ICE agents their name, asking for a warrant and taking time to inspect it — can shift a potentially intense and traumatic interaction. 

Other groups have tied the urgency around ICE to larger labor organizing efforts. Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) emerged to help non-unionized labor organize in response to COVID-19. More recently, EWOC developed resources for resisting ICE, which are tied to broader workplace organizing tactics like facilitating conversation among employees, building a committee and planning collective action together. 

“These steps are very universal, whether you work in an office, in a kitchen, at a nonprofit,” says Wes Holing, an EWOC organizer. “If you’re talking about bread-and-butter issues, or you’re talking about a workplace that’s safe from ICE, you’re still ultimately fighting for a place that respects you as a person.” 

This January, EWOC partnered with Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America to hold a No-Work Workshop to train workers on their rights and protections to participate in the Anti-ICE General Strike. It was part of a much larger mobilization among Minneapolis residents and businesses responding to Operation Metro Surge.

The city mobilized far beyond one-off trainings; instead, an entire ecosystem emerged. “The sheer volume, the sheer magnitude of mobilization … it felt like every single person I knew was extremely active,” says Mike Urbanski, who helps lead legal observer training with Monarca. Monarca is a project under the immigrant justice organization Unidos MN, which canvassed businesses in Twin Cities’ immigrant communities. They’d then direct people to Monarca’s ICE hotline as well as its two-hour, in-person training, which focuses on “upstander” legal observation tactics.

Monarca’s trainings were also shared through social media, word of mouth and within community spaces and houses of worship. “We could post a training with 1,000 people in Minneapolis and fill it within four or five days,” Urbanski says, “And most of those people would come, and another 100 people would just show up.” 

The Workers Solidarity Circle also canvassed and shared resources among Twin Cities businesses, channeling that energy into the Minneapolis Worker’s Assembly this February, which brought together over 300 unionized and non-unionized workers across sectors. “It was about building working class power and coordinated strike action, to really push people into action and not wait on managers, bosses or labor officials to save us,” says organizer Aminah Sheikh.

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Now that Operation Metrosurge has wound down, organizers have turned their attention to this upcoming May Day: organizing strike committees, holding strike trainings, conducting labor education and committing unions and community organizations to strike on May 1st. Sheikh says there is a growing realization that workers must build political power far beyond their workplace. 

“Listen, in order for us to really stop — abolish — ICE, like people are saying, from the grassroots,” she says, “then we need to do economic disruption.” 

The post When ICE Shows Up, These Businesses Will Be Ready appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

This story was originally published by Canary Media.

Big batteries have begun reshaping the U.S. grid. Now, the country has made surprising strides in making those energy storage systems itself, rather than depending on imports from China.

Batteries were always crucial for the effort to scale up renewable energy production, but they have taken on even more significance as AI leaders look for quick-to-build power sources to supply their headlong data center expansion.

That’s why batteries will account for some 28 percent of new U.S. power plant capacity built this year. For the first time, the country will be able to produce enough grid batteries to meet that surging demand on its own, according to new data from the U.S. Energy Storage Coalition, an industry group.

The onshoring began in earnest when President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, creating incentives both for domestic battery producers and for storage developers who use made-in-America products.

Already, the U.S. has enough capacity to meet demand for finished grid battery enclosures. That involves connecting battery cells to power electronics, controls and safety equipment in weatherproof steel containers that are ready to install. By the end of this year, the U.S. will also achieve self-sufficiency in a higher-value part of the supply chain: the battery cells themselves. It’s a major industrial coup that is bringing thousands of high-tech manufacturing jobs to communities across the country.

“For the first time, the United States now has the capacity to supply 100 percent of domestic energy storage project demand with American-built systems,” said Noah Roberts, executive director of the U.S. Energy Storage Coalition, on a press call in March. ​“That is a fundamental shift from where we were just a year and a half ago, when the majority of battery storage systems were imported.”

This success outstrips the country’s considerable progress in solar panel manufacturing, too. The U.S. is self-sufficient in assembling solar modules, but that finished product still often depends on high-value components imported from far away — namely, solar cells. U.S. solar cell production remains a tiny fraction of its solar panel capacity.

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By the end of 2025, U.S. factories had mustered the capacity to produce about 70 gigawatt-hours of finished grid storage systems each year, according to the coalition’s survey. Roberts expects that number to rise to 145 gigawatt-hours by year’s end. U.S. storage developers are likely to install about 60 gigawatt-hours annually this year and next, he noted, so the country will actually have a sizable surplus in manufacturing capacity.

As for the underlying cells, it’s a similar story with a slight delay. By the end of 2025, 20 gigawatt-hours of dedicated storage cell lines had opened, and the industry is on pace to hit 96 gigawatt-hours by the end of this year.

Now, the question the industry faces is not whether it can keep up with domestic demand — but whether it can export enough batteries to maintain that mismatch between manufacturing potential and domestic installations.

A gigawatt-scale growth spurt

The development of U.S. grid-battery manufacturing has happened at a dizzying pace. Roberts called it ​“one of the fastest industrial scale-ups in recent American history.”

At the close of 2024, the U.S. had ​“effectively zero” factory capacity for battery cells designed for grid usage, which have different specifications than those in electric vehicles and which typically use the lithium iron phosphate chemistry.

LG Energy Solution Vertech, the grid-storage subsidiary of the Korean industrial giant, started turning things around last summer when it completed a dedicated cell production line for grid storage in Holland, Michigan. The company originally envisioned four gigawatt-hours of production, but quickly expanded that to 16.5 gigawatt-hours, said Chief Product Officer Tristan Doherty. Now LG plans to hit 50 gigawatt-hours of cell production capacity across North America this year.

“If you had told me that 10 years ago, that this is where we would be, I never would have believed it,” Doherty said.

The upstream supply chain, it must be said, still needs work. U.S. factories can only build the lithium-ion battery cells by importing the high-value battery materials, and China runs the show in that arena.

It’s also worth noting that this scale-up was accelerated by an unintentional nudge from the Trump administration, a sort of collateral benefit.

When the Trump administration passed its budget legislation last summer, it maintained Biden-era incentives for domestic energy manufacturing and grid battery projects even as it removed them for electric vehicle purchases.

The outlook for EV sales in America suffered as a result, and that prompted some manufacturers to repurpose their EV-battery facilities for the red-hot grid storage market. In just the last year, car companies like Ford and General Motors have retreated from their earlier EV ambitions and pivoted their battery lines to storage.

Just last week, LG said it and partner GM would retool an EV battery plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, to make grid batteries instead; this will bring 700 people back to work after earlier layoffs. LG is also converting a plant in Lansing, Michigan, to make grid batteries instead of EV batteries, and will sell them to Tesla as part of a $4.3 billion supply deal.

It’s a stark reversal. In earlier years, grid battery developers had accepted surplus EV batteries as a sort of hand-me-down from the more mature supply chain; now, struggling EV battery producers are turning to grid storage in their moment of need.

Other companies have made their own direct investments in grid storage in recent years, including Tesla, Samsung SDI, Fluence and SK On.

Even as the White House fights clean energy broadly, it’s showing interest in strengthening battery supply chains to reduce the upstream dependence on China. Just this month, the Department of Energy rolled out $500 million in funding for processing or recycling battery materials domestically.

The localization of grid storage supplies does more than stroke the national ego. As data center customers ravenously seek immense power supply as quickly as possible, domestic supply chains shorten the time it takes to add storage to the grid, argued Pete Williams, chief supply chain and product officer for Fluence, a major grid storage vendor.

“To deliver this ​‘speed to power’ you need a resilient and a responsive supply chain, and that’s been certainly a challenge in the international markets,” he said. ​“With U.S. manufacturing, we can improve delivery certainty. We can also shorten project timelines for our customers.”

In the past, analysts framed industrial reshoring as a way to protect against the vagaries of geopolitical adversaries. These days, with the White House itself regularly upending global trade through tariff declarations and military interventions in crucial waterways, a local supply chain protects against U.S.-led disruptions as well.

The post The U.S. Is Manufacturing a Ton of Grid Batteries appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

Cigarette butt. Gatorade bottle cap. Part of a Clif Bar wrapper. Cigarette butt. Fake nail. Styrofoam piece. Drinking straw. Styrofoam piece. Cigarette butt.

With gloved hands, Mallory Willem sorts quickly and efficiently through trash pulled from a storm drain in Cedar Key, an island town off Florida’s Gulf Coast. She pauses to examine the fingernail, painted a chalky lavender color. 

“We get a lot of fake nails,” she says, tossing it onto the dull mosaic of broken-down trash.

Next to her on the sidewalk sits a mesh bag fitted to the storm drain, which had captured the items that Willem, an undergraduate student at the University of Florida, and two volunteers were now sifting through. Cedar Key has 10 such mesh traps installed in storm drains around town, all designed to prevent litter from entering the local waterways. Once a month, students and volunteers clean them out, separating manmade trash from organic debris and carefully logging the types of waste collected. Here, endless cigarette butts and plastic pieces make up the vast majority.

The project, dubbed Operation TRAP (which stands for Trash Reduction in Aquatic Preserves), is part of a growing network of groups that use technologies known as “trash traps” to capture litter before it can wash into streams, rivers and oceans. Some trash traps are relatively low-tech, like storm drain traps or booms that stretch across streams to capture floating debris. Others are cutting-edge, like swimming robots or giant trash wheels that suck trash onto conveyor belts. The trash captured ranges in size from microplastics up to mattresses and mangled bikes.

Trash traps have collected more than six million pounds of litter around the world since 2017, according to the International Trash Trap Network, a joint effort between the Ocean Conservancy and the University of Toronto to connect groups that use trash traps. (This number only takes into account data from groups that are part of the International Trash Trap Network; the real number is likely higher, says the network’s manager, Hannah De Frond.)

But that’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the rivers of trash — particularly plastic — that are flowing into our actual oceans every year.  

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A new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts projects that plastic pollution will more than double by 2040. As of 2025, 130 million tons of plastic waste ended up in the environment each year. Without intervention, that number could rise to 280 million tons by 2040, an amount equivalent to dumping a garbage truck’s worth of plastic every second. And much of that waste goes straight to the sea.

Trash traps, because they are not widely adopted yet, may seem like no match for this deluge.

And the meticulous work of Willem and others to record each piece of waste collected, down to Styrofoam scraps and plastic fingernails, may seem Sisyphean. But from the trash rises an invaluable treasure: data.

“[Trash traps] are great for cleanup, but they should really be viewed as more,” says De Frond. 

Trash traps not only drastically cut down on plastic pollution in waterways, they identify local sources of pollution — and upstream solutions. 

In Maryland’s Baltimore Harbor, data from Mr. Trash Wheel—a giant, googly-eyed trash trap that consumes up to 500 tons of litter and debris each year — was used to support a statewide ban on polystyrene foam products, implemented in 2020, and a citywide ban on plastic bags, implemented in 2021. Since 2019, foam litter caught in Mr. Trash Wheel has gone down by 90 percent and plastic bag litter by 72 percent. 

In California, trash trap data led to a plastic water bottle ban in the city of South Lake Tahoe, implemented in 2024, among similar local ordinances. 

Using data from trash traps to inform such policies — policies with measurable impact — “is really what we are all about,” says De Frond. The International Trash Trap Network has grown to include more than 150 local programs across 12 countries since it launched in 2021. And it has contributed to a global picture of plastic pollution. Its 2024 report found that the top five “macro” debris items from trash traps were cigarette butts (which do contain plastic), plastic bags, plastic bottles, food wrappers, and foam pieces.

Local policymaking to prevent plastic pollution is sometimes hindered by state law, however. In the U.S., several states have introduced preemption laws that prohibit local ordinances aimed at reducing plastic pollution. In North Carolina, for example, state lawmakers in 2023 banned local governments from banning plastic containers. Since then, trash trap data has shown that 96 percent of the waste collected in North Carolina streams is plastic.

In the trash traps installed around Cedar Key, “plastic is through the roof,” says Dr. Monica Wilson, project manager for Operation TRAP, which is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program. Her team will often bring baggies of some of the trash collected to local outreach events, to give people a glimpse of what they’ve pulled out of the traps. 

“People are still unaware how much stuff goes down the storm drains,” she says. The ubiquity of cigarette butts seems to shock people, she adds; some smokers will come up to her to insist that they throw theirs away in trash bins instead of flicking them onto the street. 

Florida is one of the states where local governments are banned from regulating single-use plastics. Yet Wilson says that her group has seen some interest in using trash traps from counties and municipalities around Florida. One of Operation TRAP’s goals is to provide local governments with a game plan for installing and maintaining the traps—even if some places don’t have the resources to analyze the trash from them.

Ideally, local governments would invest in trash traps the same way they invest in curbside trash pickup, says Wilson. But it costs money to purchase the traps and have them cleaned out regularly — which local authorities may be hesitant, or unable, to set aside. 

“The major barrier right now is probably funding,” says De Frond. “Trash traps are long-term investments, and alongside the upfront cost of the technology, users also need to think about maintenance costs, personnel costs for trash removal, data collection, et cetera.”

For now, most of the groups in the International Trash Trap Network are community groups and nonprofits, which rely on grant funding and volunteer labor to do their work. But bringing in community members to clean out and sort trash has turned out to be another powerful aspect of trash traps: Volunteers are forced to confront the repercussions of their own plastic consumption.

“It was startling to see how many familiar products appeared again and again — fast food wrappers, snack packaging, plastic bottle caps,” one student volunteer with Operation TRAP wrote in a blog post for the University of Florida. “These weren’t just anonymous pieces of litter; they were reflections of everyday habits, including my own.”

“The brands I encountered in the storm drains,” she continued, “were the same ones in my own pantry.”

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The bounty of trash traps also makes for compelling photographic evidence of society’s plastic habit. Photos of Mr. Trash Wheel “munching” through piles of waste in Baltimore Harbor—and making wry jokes while doing so — have turned him into a social media star; earning him more than 45,000 followers on Instagram, and inspiring Halloween costumes and works of art.

The public engagement has been great, noted Allison Blood, who manages Mr. Trash Wheel for the Waterfront Partnership of Baltimore, in a recent online meeting of trash trap groups. But the goal, she said, echoing De Frond, is for Mr. Trash Wheel and similar technologies to serve as catalysts for policies that prevent plastic waste in the first place.

“We want to retire him,” she said with a rueful grin.

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Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Tell us what you’ve been reading at info@reasonstobecheerful.world and we just might feature it here.

Giveaway

What happens if you trust people to be generous? That’s the question behind Drop Dead Generous, a social experiment that is giving 1,000 people $500 each — half a million dollars total — to commit acts of kindness. 

Since donating a kidney, co-founder Tom Cledwyn’s life has been shaped by acts of generosity towards strangers. “The feeling I had when I woke up from that operation is something I want other people to experience,” he told Positive.News in a story shared by RTBC Contributing Editor Michaela Haas.

Michaela says:

What would you do if you were gifted $500 to help others? Some give out flowers, some build a house (in Uganda).

Lessons in hope

“I’ve been on the faculty at Duke University for five years now, and this past one has been the most challenging and the strangest by far,” writes Frank Bruni in a New York Times opinion piece that resonated with Executive Editor Will Doig. Bruni is asking the question that many people in teaching and mentoring roles are asking themselves: How do I prepare my students for life in a world full of trouble and uncertainty while still providing hope?

“I need to communicate that for all this country’s current trials, it still brims with opportunities, its promise greater than its woes,” Bruni concludes. “And a blurry future isn’t the same as a bleak one.”

Will says:

When I was an American Studies major, I had a college professor who often lectured about the oppression, corruption, unfairness and bias woven throughout this country’s systems. But she always framed it as something we could change, through our participation in what she referred to as “the greater social project.” That optimistic takeaway had a huge influence on my mindset. Young adults need that kind of hope if they’re going to make a difference.

What else we’re reading

The Soundtrack to Philly’s Waning Gun Violence — shared by Executive Editor Will Doig from the New York Times

As ICE shipped Minnesotans to Texas, El Paso groups stepped up — shared by Editorial Director Rebecca Worby from Sahan Journal

How Camden, N.J., Cut Its Murder Rate to a 40-Year Low — shared by Audience Engagement Editor Steven Davis from the New York Times

In other news…

Last week, we published a powerful story by Michaela Haas about how formerly incarcerated mentors are changing lives in California. Peer support specialists, as they’re called, help others navigate trauma, addiction and life after prison. 

“We harness our lived experience and come alongside people in their recovery,” Tyson Atlas, who facilitates peer support trainings, tells Haas. “All the years someone spent incarcerated — those experiences can prevent someone else from going down the same path.”

The story has also been republished by our friends at MindSite News.

The post What We’re Reading: What Good Deed Would You Do With $500? appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.

A herd of goats makes its way through a stubbly, dry grassland to a hilly grove. As they get closer, the air becomes noticeably cooler, the vegetation denser, the grass greener. A couple of buffalo wallow in a shallow pool of water, and beyond, a forest path leads to a giant old ficus. From the tree’s roots, a little stream emerges, its peaceful gurgling punctuated with the plopping sound of ripe figs falling into the water. 

“Baba himself looks after this forest and this stream,” says Bhawani Shankar, the custodian of this forest and the shrine of chud sidh which lies at its center. “Its water is so life-giving that my hair has grown to my ankles ever since I came here … years ago.” Twirling his matted locks into a bun larger than his head, he scatters seed for peacocks on a feeding platform. “Nothing good has come to anyone who dares to cut wood from this forest. The last man who cut an ancient tree here to build his house lost everything in a fire that somehow only left the beam he’d made from the tree unscathed.”

This forest is Adaval ki Devbani in Alwar, in the western Indian state of Rajasthan. Devbani literally means “sacred grove,” and the state has an estimated 25,000 of them. Sometimes they are also known as orans, or places where land, water, jungle and people coexist peacefully. Over centuries such groves have existed, not just in India but across the globe, as commons land, used by neighboring villages as pastures and places to collect fallen wood, medicinal herbs, honey and forest fruit. Deeply held spiritual beliefs ensure that trees and animals are protected within their boundaries, making them treasure troves for naturalists and the last refuge for a variety of indigenous species. In the desert state of Rajasthan, devbanis and orans also have within them bodies of water that humans and animals use. 

But with changing lifestyles and land use patterns, these little pockets of biodiversity have been in a state of continuous decline. During the British colonial period, the revenue department  declared many of them ghair mumkin zameen, or uncultivable land that was not taxed. This made them fair game for encroachments, mining, land grabs and worse. Since Indian Independence in 1947, they have continued to face pressure from farming, construction, mining and more. 

In 1992, Aman Singh, a Rajasthan native and no stranger to water scarcity, founded an NGO with a mouthful of a name, Krishi Avam Paristhitiki Vikas Sansthan (KRAPAVIS), which literally means “organization for the development of ecology and agriculture/livestock.” 

“I had a theory that if we could rejuvenate water sources in village commons, perhaps this could improve the water table underground and revive the nearby wells and water bodies downstream that had long dried up,” he recounts. KRAPIVIS restored 15 orans and devbanis in Alwar, on the fringes of Rajasthan’s Sariska Tiger Reserve. As the orans and water bodies within them revived, he says his hypothesis was proved. “Wells revived, water levels in the nearby Siliserh Lake in Sariska Tiger Reserve rose and although the exact hydrology of this area hasn’t been studied in depth, this showed us that they were all connected underground,” he says. 

The realization that reviving sacred and community forests across Rajasthan could help desert communities develop resilience to harsh weather and climate change gave KRAPIVIS an impetus to revive as many such forests as it could. 

Siliserh Lake, which was declared a Ramsar site in 2025, glints in the strong desert sun as we drive past it to Adaval ki Devbani. KRAPAVIS has restored over 249 and mapped 1,400 orans and devbanis in Rajasthan like this one. As Singh explains, after identifying a sacred grove that needs to be revived, KRAPAVIS assesses how receptive the neighboring villages are to collective action. 

“Village residents are an equal part of our restoration plan, and share the cost either in cash or labor,” he says. “So their buy-in is essential to the project’s success.” 

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In the devbani, the air suddenly feels cooler, and a hush descends as Singh and I walk deeper towards the mouth of the stream. KRAPAVIS and local volunteers have planted indigenous trees including date palms, cleaned the mouth of the stream and desilted the pond. They have also repaired the ancient temple dedicated to a local deity located within the grove, and co-opted Shankar, its priest, to look after the forest. He patrols the forest and fines those who break the community rules for using forest produce. For his service, villagers contribute grain for his monthly ration. The restoration cost about U.S. $10,000, roughly the average that KRAPAVIS spends on each grove with funding from institutional donors and the community. 

We drive about 25 miles to the boundary of the Sariska National Park, where a sacred grove on a hillock, Bherunathji ki oran, faces the park boundary, patrolled by three forest guards. The oran is verdant and dense, in sharp contrast to the park, where deforestation and illegal tree felling is evident. 

Community-led conservation, Singh says, is much more effective than state-led conservation, which he says makes locals feel disconnected from the forest. “People have a sense of ownership for their oran; their economic, cultural and religious life is linked to it,” Singh explains. Women collect forest fruits, honey and firewood. Pastoralists follow strict community-set rules when they take their livestock for grazing. For example, devbanis with grasslands prohibit grazing between March and July when new grass grows.

However, sacred groves in India face a more fundamental challenge today: loss of relevance.

 

“When I was a child, most people in my village were farmers and livestock owners,” says 37-year-old Sunil Harsana, who lives in Haryana’s Manger village barely 20 miles from New Delhi. Today, the majority of young people there are looking for more urban occupations and a handful have become real estate agents. So far, a 650-acre sacred grove, Manger Bani (“grove” in Haryanvi) has somehow survived the capital’s uncontrolled expansion. 

“The bani is losing relevance for villagers,” he says. Harsana, with other ecologists, has been fighting against efforts to change the status of Manger bani from forest to farmland since the early 2000s. 

Peacocks call plaintively as Harsana and I hike to a ridge in Manger bani for a rare glimpse of the original vegetation of the Aravalis mountain range. From the top, rocky slopes are colonized by the hardy dhau (Terminalia anogeissiana), a tree which has all but disappeared from neighboring areas. In 2015, the then chief minister of Haryana declared Manger to be a forest, added a buffer zone of 1,200 acres and declared the entire area a no-construction zone. But legal tangles continue to endanger the forest. And religious beliefs — a part of the forest is believed to be protected by the spirit of a holy man, Gudariya Baba — have now become tools in unscrupulous hands, Harsana says. 

Having contracted polio as a child, Harsana walks with a limp. He hauls himself painfully over the unforgiving terrain to point out a tiny new shrine here, a new road there, saying that these could well be the start of a new land grab. He runs a weekly Eco Club for local schoolchildren to inculcate a love for the forest in their midst. 

“Two of our students have returned to volunteer with us at the Eco Club, and three others are working on eco-restoration projects elsewhere,” he says. “And their parents also at least know why they should protect the bani instead of selling it for real estate.” 

In Alwar, Singh too is wary of using the word “sacred” in connection with the groves they protect. “We advocate a strong legal framework to conserve devbanis and orans as ecological  heritage,” he says, adding, “not as national parks, which separate communities from the forest, or religious sites — but as community-owned and community-led conservation areas.”

In 2024, he petitioned the Supreme Court to recognize and preserve Rajasthan’s devbanis and orans. Recognizing their crucial role in conservation, groundwater recharge, grazing regulation and sustaining local livelihoods, the court directed the state government to map them, prevent them from being used for non-forest purposes, and ensure community participation in their management. 

“Moreover, the court stated that traditional community-conserved ecosystems across India, and not just in Rajasthan, cannot be treated as ‘wasteland’ and must be safeguarded,” a visibly elated Singh says. 

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Meanwhile, at Adaval ki devbani — far removed from courts, religious manipulation and real estate avarice — there is a sense of peace. An 80-year-old pilgrim has ridden his motorcycle 50 miles to get here. 

“I’d been feeling stressed the past few months and decided to visit,” he says, massaging his aching back. “Can you feel how special this devbani is? The sound of flowing water and the cool breezes have washed my stress away.”

The post The Verdant Refuge of India’s Sacred Groves appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.