🌞 Refugee athletes, art and flying high

Welcome to the very first edition of The Good Newsletter. I’m so excited to begin this journey of exploring the goodness that exists in the world — from success in the sporting and arts arenas, to scientific discoveries, and everything in between.

More than anything, though, I want to also be able to platform stories from real people who walk among us every day. If you have a good news story that you think should be included in a future edition, please hit reply and tell me a bit about it. Let’s make this newsletter a place of comfort and brightness every single weekend.

Enjoy today’s read!

The Olympics is providing us with no shortage of warm and fuzzy moments, but one you might’ve missed from this week was the Refugee Olympic Team winning its first-ever medal. Cindy Ngamba, who was born in Cameroon and lives in the UK, won bronze in the Women's Middleweight boxing.

If you haven’t heard of the Refugee Olympic Team, it was created in 2015 and represents a diverse group of refugee athletes from around the world. For an athlete to be able to compete as part of the team, they must be elite competitors in their sport and be recognised as refugees in their host country by the UN Refugee Agency.

This year’s refugee team includes 37 athletes across 12 sports. According to the Olympic Refuge Foundation, “The Refugee Olympic Team's participation in the Olympic Games is not only a testament to their resilience and excellence but also sends a powerful message of hope, belonging, and inclusion.”

Speaking during her Olympic campaign, Ngamba said: “There are many refugees around the world who are not even athletes, who are going through many different issues, so many obstacles and they don’t believe in themselves. I hope that [by] them watching me, they can see that through anything in life I was able to overcome.”

What a legend!

While all eyes have been on the elite sportspeople among us this week, there was a big moment in the art world too. This week, Angus McDonald won the Archibald People’s Choice Award for his painting of Professor Marcia Langton. In case you’re confused (same) about why there’s another Archibald winner, it’s because while Laura Jones won this year’s Archibald Prize (voted by the trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW), McDonald’s piece was voted the favourite among visitors to the exhibition.

In his explanation of the piece, McDonald said that he placed Langton “just right of centre to suggest a sense of stepping away and handing the baton to a younger group of activists after a lifetime of tireless commitment. She gazes up and to the left to reflect that she has persistently followed her own path.” Langton is an Indigenous leader and was one of the architects of the Voice to Parliament.

I’m no art critic myself, but I must say I thought McDonald’s painting was absolutely beautiful.

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If this week hasn’t been filled enough with news of teenagers doing incredible things (we’re looking at you, Arisa Trew!) then allow me to introduce you to Ethan Guo.

Guo, a 19-year-old Chinese American pilot, is aiming to become the youngest person to fly solo to all seven continents. He’s hoping the challenge will allow him to raise money for charity, and is looking to raise a million dollars for research into childhood cancers.

As someone that panics on a one hour flight to Melbourne, I absolutely do not resonate with the task ahead, which is to cover 80,000 kilometres over 100 days with stops in 60 countries. Guo started learning how to fly at the age of 13 (I don’t think I could even operate a calculator at that age?) and says that from that age on, he “set his eyes on the skies, embarking on an extraordinary journey that would soon redefine the bounds of youthful ambition and philanthropy”.

I did check and Guo plans to fly to Darwin as part of his epic journey. We can look at the northern sky and wave hello!

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Keeping it on theme from a story this week, my first Good Newsletter recommendation is to watch ‘The Swimmers’ on Netflix.

It’s a biopic of two Syrian sisters who fled the country to escape war and against all odds, end up in Germany preparing for the Olympics.

I don’t want to say too much, but it will make you appreciate the news of this week’s refugee team win even more.