Do you want to get home from work knowing you have made a real difference in someone's life?

    If yes, don't care about sex or age! Come and join us, then you'll make it!

Position: Volunteer Social Care Assistant

(No Pay with Free Meals)

Place: Manchester

Hours: Part Time

    We arc now looking for volunteers to support people with learning disabilities to live active lives! Only 4 days left. Don't miss the chance of lending your warm hands to help others!

Role:

    You will provide people with learning disabilities with all aspects of their daily lives. You will help them to develop new skills. You will help them to protect their rights and their safety. But your primary concern is to let them know they are valued.

Skills and Experience Required:

    You will have the right values and great listening skills. You will be honest and patient. You will have the ability to drive a car and to communicate in fluent written and spoken English since you'll have to help those people with different learning disabilities. Previous care-related experience will be a great advantage for you.

                                                                       Balloon Volleyball

    It's a rainy, dark day and there's nothing to do. You don't feel like sitting quietly but you are not allowed to make a lot of noise. What can you do for fun? Try balloon volleyball.

    Items needed for this game: a balloon (or two, in case the first one bursts), some ropes, two chairs, at least two people and a room.

    Set up the room. If you're in the living room, or a family room, be sure to move all the furniture out of the way. Get two chairs and set them in the middle, outer edges(边缘)of the room. They should be at the same place where you put a volleyball net. Turn them so that the seat is facing the wall, not the “playing” space. Tie the rope onto the top of the chair, and run the rest of the rope to the other chair. Now tie it on this chair at the same place as the first chair. You can decide the “out-of-bounds”(出界) lines, if you want to have them, but they really are not necessary in this game.

    Blow up the balloon. Choose sides. You will play this game on your knees (at least until they start hurting and you want to stand). Each side must get the balloon over the rope in three hits. If it does not get over, the other side gets the balloon and a point. This game becomes more difficult because you must play without talking.

    You can also add other rules to make it more difficult; for example, you can only use your left hand or only your right hand to hit the balloon.

    Continue playing until one side gets 10 points. You can make your game longer or shorter by changing the number of points it takes to win.

    This is a fun way to get your energy out, have fun, and not make too much noise on a rainy, stay-in-the-house day.

    It is believed that some of animals think a great deal. Many of them are like children in their sports. Some birds are very lively in their sports; and the same is true with some insects. The ants, hardworking as they are, have their times for play. They run races; they wrestle; and sometimes they have mock fights together. Very busy must be their thoughts while engaged in these sports.

    Animals think much while building their houses. The bird searches for what it can use in building its nest, and in doing this it thinks. The beavers think as they build their dams and their houses. They think in getting their materials, and also in arranging them, and in plastering them together with mud. Some spiders build houses which could scarcely have been made except by some thinking creature.

    As animals think, they learn. Some learn more than others. The parrot learns to talk, though in some other respects it is quite stupid. The mocking bird learns to imitate a great many different sounds. The shepherd dog does not know as much about most things as some other dogs, and yet he understands very well how to take care of sheep.

    Though animals think and learn, they do not make any real improvement in their ways of doing things, as men do. Each kind of bird has its own way of building a nest, and it is always the same way. They have no new fashions, and learn none from each other.

    It is plain that, while animals learn about things by their senses as we do, they do not think nearly as much about what they learn, and this is the reason why they do not improve more rapidly. Even the wisest of them, as the elephant and the dog, do not think very much about what they see and hear. Nor is this all. There are some things that we understand, but about which animals know nothing. They have no knowledge of anything that happens outside of their own observation. Their minds are so much unlike ours that they do not know the difference between right and wrong.

    One afternoon I toured an art museum while waiting for my husband to finish a business meeting. I was looking forward to a quiet view of the wonderful works.

    A young couple viewing the paintings ahead of me chatted nonstop between themselves. I watched them a moment and decided she was doing all the talking. I admired his patience for tolerating her constant words. Disturbed by their noise, I moved on.

    I encountered them several times as I moved through the various rooms of art. Each time I heard her constant talking, I moved away quickly.

    I was standing at the counter of the museum gift store doing some shopping when the couple approached the exit. Before they left, the man reached into his pocket and pulled out a white object. He turned it into a long cane (手杖) and then tapped his way into the coatroom to get his wife's jacket.

    "He's a brave man," the clerk at the counter said, "Most of us would give up if we were blinded at such a young age. During his recovery, he made a promise that his life wouldn't change. So, as before, he and his wife come in whenever there's a new art show."

    "But what does he get out of the art?" I asked, "He can't see."

    "Can't see! You're wrong. He sees a lot. More than you or I do," the clerk said, "His wife describes each painting so he can see it in his head."

    I learned something about patience, courage and love that day. I saw the patience of a young wife describing paintings to a person without sight and the courage of a husband who would not allow blindness to change his life.

    And I saw the love shared by two people as I watched this couple walk away arm in arm.

    Does the amount of cash in a lost wallet influence how likely a person is to return it? Classical economic theories suggest that the greater the appeal, the less likely we are to be honest—but a new study turns the idea on its head, finding altruism(利他主义), and a powerful hate for viewing oneself as a "thief" outweigh the financial attraction.

    A team of researchers conducted a huge experiment concerning 355 cities in 40 countries. More than 17,000 identical wallets were dropped off at public places, each containing a grocery list, a key, and three business cards in the local language using made-up names and an email address. Some had no money while others contained the equivalent (等值) of $13.45.

    According to the research, people on average returned 40% of wallets with no money in them but 51%with money. It also shows extreme differences between countries. But although rates of people's honesty varied greatly from country to country, one thing remained remarkably constant: wallets with money, as opposed to no money, raised reporting rates.

    In the US, the UK and Poland, they repeated the experiment with even more money: $94.15, which increased reporting rates by an average of 11% compared to the smaller amount. They also found that having a key expanded reporting rates by 9.2%.

    The findings, which run counter to a fundamental principle of classical economics, suggest honesty, altruism and self-image can sometimes be more influential than economic self-interest.

    A purely economic approach to behavior suggests people would keep the wallets with the larger amounts of money due to the increased financial reward, but economics often doesn't account for a person's sense of honesty or self-image, according to behavioral scientists. Altruism also influenced the findings, the researchers say. Since the key is valuable to the owner but not the finder, this pointed toward an altruism concern in addition to the cost of negatively updating one's self image.

Is your glass of milk half-full or half-empty? This saying is often used to test people's outlook in a situation; do they focus on the positives (a half-full glass) or the negatives (a half-empty one)? Thinking positively, with a belief that most things will turn out fine, is called optimism and it's known to boost your well-being. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

Why is thinking positively good for you?

Research shows that people who are optimistic and think positively tend to experience less stress and cope well when faced with life's challenges. People who are more pessimistic (expect that the worst will happen) may find it hard to believe that these challenges will pass. Scientists have even found that thinking positively can make you live longer. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} This is because you believe your goals are achievable and within reach, which encourages you to work towards them.

{#blank#}3{#/blank#}

Everybody can worry from time to time. Worrying can help to keep you safe. If you were never worried and were greatly positive about how things would turnout, you wouldn't recognize risks. "Worrying is our brain warning us that there might be something threatening, which functions as a fire alarm." says child psychotherapist (心理治疗师) Rachel. "The trouble is that sometimes it goes off when there isn't a huge danger to face." {#blank#}4{#/blank#}

You should learn to think positively.

Optimism is shaped by your genes, which carry characteristics obtained from your parents, and by what happens to you. {#blank#}5{#/blank#} Research has shown that it can help to draw or write an outcome that's positive, like an image of you playing guitar and having passed your next grade. Imagining this can motivate you to work to achieve it, such as practising everyday afterschool.

A. Worrying is like a fire alarm.

B. Avoid worrying is beneficial to our health.

C. Asking others for help positively makes sense.

D. The good news is that everybody can learn to think more positively.

E. When this happens, you can feel anxious and hopeless about what lies ahead.

F. However, whatever your starting point is, you can learn to be more optimistic.

G. Being positive about the future goals can make you happier and more successful.