A Wolves Organization(The Humanitarian)

For Chris O'Connor, donating blood was once a simple act of service.

As a college student, he and his friends regularly rolled up their sleeves when blood drives came to campus. Giving blood felt like a civic duty, a way to help someone they would likely never meet.

Then, Chris was told he was ineligible to donate blood as a gay man.

“It was a really traumatizing experience,” he said. “I walked out of there feeling less than.”

More than 30 years later, Chris was finally able to return to the donor chair.

Three years ago, we implemented updated FDA guidelines that ended blood donation policies based on sexual orientation, allowing more people to give while keeping the blood supply safe.

For Chris, the change represented an opportunity to do something he had wanted to do for decades.

“I haven’t been able to give and now I can give,” he said. “Granted, it took too long, but I’m really grateful that the FDA saw the advances of science and testing, acknowledging the truly problematic and discriminatory ways of their former policies.”

Returning to donate was a full-circle moment.

“It feels great,” Chris said. “Anyone could need blood at any given point. It’s really important for us, as the q***r community, for me, as a q***r person, to contribute for the better good of our community.”

🎤 Keynote Session Live Now | MRICS 2026

The International Youth Council (IYC) is proud to see Ms. Abinaya Kandasamy, Head of Global Humanitarian Projects, IYC New York, take the stage today at MRICS 2026 as a keynote speaker.

Her keynote:
"Artificial Intelligence in Arts & Humanities: Driving Social Change, Inclusion, and Addressing Inequality."

The session explores how AI is helping advance inclusion, empower communities, and address societal challenges through innovation and collaboration.

📅 5–6 August 2026
📍 Jnanajyothi Auditorium, Bengaluru, India
🌐 Hybrid, In-Person & Online

Preparedness is part of the profession. Start your online health and safety training at nationalcprfoundation.com.

Toxic chemicals are on our plants, are in our food chain and are in our soil. Recently Bayer agreed to pay out $7.5 billion to settle weedkiller cancer cases against them for not telling people Roundup potentially causes cancer, crucially they are not admitting liability or that Roundup causes cancer.

On one hand we have an industry that manufacturers calorie rich fake food, that is designed to be highly addictive.

These ultra processed products make us sick. Then you have an industry that creates drugs that help manage the symptoms of the disease this artificial food creates. It would seem like the perfect business model, make people sick, profit off that, then profit again from treating the sickness.

There, is a theory that the large food corporations, large agribusiness and the pharma industry are in cahoots, I would surmise that this is not too far from the actual truth. This intersection is characterized by shared financial interests, joint lobbying efforts, and, in some cases, overlapping ownership between food companies, nutrition groups, and
pharmaceutical firms. It is also worth noting that Bayer have a very significant health care division.

Today our bodies must contend with toxic chemicals that have been sprayed on our food, and toxic chemicals being added to our processed food, we are sick and by all accounts getting sicker.

There may be one simple solution, and it goes back to Michael Pollan's maxim "eat food, not too much, mainly plants". Eat fresh food, grown without toxic chemicals. Eat more home cooked food. Eat ingredients you know and recognise (Or as one person said, ingredients your grandmother would recognise). If we do this most of the time or at least some of the time and put our money into our food, then we will have to pay out much less to the Pharma's of the world.

With your support we are changing the food system, so thank you.

Kenneth

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Protecting whistle-blowers and investigative journalists means protecting integrity.

UNODC helps countries strengthen laws and build safe and inclusive mechanisms so people can report corruption without fear of retaliation.

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