Good News: One secret to exercising more is simpler than you think, and a rainwater revolution

This is your Good News round-up:

We bring you news of a project harnessing rainfall to provide a reliable water source for schools in Venezuela; news that if you want to start exercising more, you may simply need a more active friend; Zimbabwe’s key move to fight AIDs; confirmation from Apple that it will abandon its lightning port in order to make the USB Type-C cables standard; and a US study showing that video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children.

1. A rainwater revolution in Venezuela

Many people in Venezuela struggle to get a reliable water supply because of recurrent problems with the networks operated by state-owned companies.

At Unidad Educativa Nuestra Señora del Encuentro, a school in Petare, one of Venezuela's largest poor neighbourhoods, the supply of water was so precarious that students had to bring water from home to drink and wash their hands during the day.

But then Laurencio Sánchez, a Venezuelan architect, designed the Lata de Agua [Can of Water] a system, which captures and filters rainfall for use in schools to bring a constant flow of clean water to communities.

“It is a sustainable, alternative, complementary water-supply model based on the collection, storage and treatment of rainwater in vulnerable communities and their institutions," explains Sánchez.

“The model offers, at the local level, a unique possibility of obtaining abundant and high-quality water for at least six months of the year in these communities, not only in vulnerable communities but in all places that suffer from water scarcity."

Lata de Agua started operating back in 2019 in three schools and one outpatient clinic.

At the Fermín Toro school in Petare, it has changed the lives of the students and their