by Kevin Burton
Kia Rousseve’s job change came under fire. But not to worry. This is a happy ending.
And she is being called a hero.
Some other heroes in England are saving food from being wasted and feeding hungry people. These are our two happy stories today, from reporter Andy Corbley of the Good News Network.
First, a close escape in New Orleans.
“Schoolbus driver Kia Rousseve rescued a flock of children when her bus caught fire, and it wasn’t until she—the last one off—took eight or nine steps, that the front half of the bus exploded,” Corbley wrote.
“Rousseve had around seven stops left in her route, taking children to Lafayette Academy in New Orleans, for the opening bell.”
“At approximately 7 a.m. on March 13th, she found that her bus was losing power and had begun to smoke. As she pulled the bus over, one of the children, a hero in her own right, alerted Rousseve that a fire had started under the bus.
“As soon as I saw the bus smoking, my instinct was get them off of the bus,” Rousseve told WOWT-TV News. She added that she performs her own brief inspection of her bus every day, despite the school district having claimed it’s relatively pristine.
Ignoring the emergency exit, she led every child aged Kindergarten through 8th grade, through the front door and onto the street. Once everyone was a safe distance away, she reboarded, double-checked to make sure no one was left, killed the engine, and then stepped off again—just in time as it turns out.
“I turned the bus off and got off. When I got off, the bus blew up,” she said. “All I heard was boom, boom, boom. I was like, ‘Oh my God, the bus blew up.’”
“A statement released by the school district called her efforts and poise under pressure ‘nothing short of heroic.’”
“It’s a poignant reminder of the crucial role bus drivers play in our lives, often going unnoticed until a moment of crisis thrusts them into the spotlight,” said the statement, which was first reported by Nola.com.
“Rousseve has decided to stop driving school buses. The days that have since passed the incident, gradually made her realize how close she came to losing her life,” Corbley wrote.
The second story is on a subject close to my heart. I hate wasting food. It is heartbreaking, the amount of food worldwide that is wasted just for the sake of convenience.
Here’s Corbley’s story about a restaurant called The Long Table:
“A restaurant in England has been able to employ 22 full and part-time staff serving food diverted from landfills to people on a “pay-as-you-can” basis.”
“This fantastic achievement is rooted in two significant challenges faced by the UK: inflation has increased the cost of food by a 25 percent, and as many as 10 million Brits, Scots, and Northern Irish are malnourished.”
“The Long Table’s remarkable business model is rooted in conscience and ethics as much as anything they put on the menu. The Guardian reports that 6.4 million tons of food goes to waste in the country every year, amounting to quite a hefty bill of carbon emissions from rotting food and transportation to move it around,” Corbley wrote.
“But perhaps the reason this special Gloucestershire restaurant has been able to stay open despite allowing people to eat for free if they want, is that the plan was never to focus on the negative.”
“We hold a space where we are all collectively trying to answer a question: what if everyone in our community had access to great food and people to eat it with?” said Will North, The Long Table’s general manager.
“Lunch is served five days a week from noon, while the store is open every morning for coffee and cake. Dinner is Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. Everyone eats the same meal based on what the managers are rescuing from their suppliers, but that doesn’t mean the menu is stale.”
“We’re not pro-organic, anti-organic, pro-GM [or] anti-GM, we’re just pro-food,” North said. “But it just so happens that our local producers really prioritize the planet over anything else.”
“The not-for-profit community interest company, is able to cover all costs, but little else remains. Nevertheless, they don’t need any grant money from the government—all their profit comes from diners, heavily supported by drink and coffee sales,” Corbley writes.
“The Guardian writes that others are looking at replicating the model in Cirencester and Falmouth.”
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