If a young boy or girl does you a special favour this week, then passes you a red wristband, don’t be surprised if they ask you to spread the kindness with a good turn of your own.

It’s part of a week-long initiative by Scouts Canada, the national organization of Beavers, Wolf Cubs, Scouts, Venturers and Rovers, to create a wave of goodness across the country.

For more than 100 years, everyone in the largest youth movement in the world has made a solemn promise to “do a good turn for somebody every day.” It is part of their creed to help other people.

This week, each of the almost 100,000 Canadians registered in Scouting has been given a rubber wristband to wear with the slogan “Pass on this good turn.”

If you thank them for a good deed – depending on their age, anything from helping mom carry the groceries to volunteering at a food bank – they are to give you the wristband. When you do something nice for someone else, pass on the wristband and spread the wave.

John C.P. King

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Childhood allergy rates have hit “epidemic proportions” in Australia, prompting health experts to broaden their efforts to combat the mysterious condition.

Canberra-based allergy expert Dr Ray Mullins said 15,000 Australian children born this year would develop a potentially fatal food allergy before they reached school age.

Food allergies - particularly allergies to peanuts and tree nuts - were a growing problem with no known cause, and they now affected three to six per cent of children under the age of three.

“This translates to 65,000 little kids with food allergy before they reach school age, (including) 25,000 now with peanut or tree nut allergies”, Dr Mullins said today.

“On current birth rates, another 15,000 kids born every year will develop food allergy in the first few years of life.

“It’s a public health problem of epidemic proportions.”

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(NBC) - A breast cancer awareness bracelet has landed a student at New York’s South Glens Falls High School in hot water.

“It wasn’t really a distraction,” Nicholas Morgan insisted.

Nick’s mom says he’s not a troublemaker, but this week trouble found him, thanks to the bracelet on his right wrist.

It says “I love boobies.”

The sale of the rubber bands benefits a not-for-profit that raises breast cancer awareness among teens. Nick’s mom, Barbara Gifford, bought it at a store in the mall after he asked for it for his birthday.

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ONE hundred wristbands bearing messages of support for troops in Afghanistan were distributed within hours of arriving at The Northern Echo offices yesterday.

There has been an overwhelming demand for the wristbands since the launch of The Northern Echo campaign to support 3 Rifles’ Swift and Bold Wristband appeal, which raises money for the battalion’s injured soldiers and the families of soldiers killed in action.

The newspaper’s offices in Darlington and Bishop Auckland sold out of wristbands within hours of the launch, and dozens more people have reserved wristbands from future deliveries.

Fifty more wristbands were delivered to each office yesterday. Anyone who was not notified of their arrival, will be contacted as soon as another batch arrives.

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WATERLOO - Ensuring impoverished African villagers have easy access to clean water may seem like an impossible task for a group of Iowa high school kids.But Columbus High School students are walking Saturday to raise funds and help make that possible for three communities in north central Kenya. The Walk for Water will be held at Hawkeye Community College beginning at 9:30 a.m. The public is invited to donate to the cause or collect pledges and join students in the five-kilometer (or 3.1 mile) walk around the college’s interior courtyard.

Columbus’ service club organized the event after the school was among 30 chosen for the fund-raising effort benefiting Kenyan and Ugandan water projects by Canadian nonprofit Impossible 2 Possible. Senior Grace Moore, the club’s president, said they decided on the event because “the women and children would have to walk to get their water.” Campus minister Mary Pedersen added, “The average is at least three miles to get their water.”

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