Unemployed Man Gives Away $10 a Day
For many of us, giving away money is last thing we'd do after losing our job. For Reed Sandridge, it's a "journey of altruistic giving". After getting laid off last year as a director of a nonprofit group in Washington D.C, the 36-year-old decided to start an experiment in giving. Every day, Sandridge walks up to a stranger and gives away $10. So far, he's handed out close to $1,200! He also inte... posted on Apr 17 2010, 5,438 reads

Meet The Boss
Lily Kanter makes money so she can give it away. And she's good at it. After retiring as a multimillionaire at age 35, she and her husband started a family foundation to support amazing causes and social entrepreneurs. Yet when asked to pinpoint her proudest accomplishment, Kanter admits it's a work in progress: "Figuring out how to do the dance of running a successful company, but also running a ... posted on Apr 14 2010, 3,904 reads

The Humblest People in Washington
Cloaked in simplicity, Sister Christiana and Mother Therese sleep no more than three and a half hours at a time, on straw mats in six-by-eight foot cells. They rise to prayer bells at five a.m., and pray again at six, noon, six, and half past midnight. In a world splattered with high-powered jobs fueled by prestige and assertiveness, humility is often cast aside a sign of weakness. But the convict... posted on Apr 11 2010, 2,384 reads

Silent Tree Planter
As a volunteer, Charlie Starbuck has helped to plant trees by the thousands on the streets of San Francisco, a city long on charm but short on leafy green trees. He has volunteered for a citywide tree-planting program since 1981, nearly without interruption. That's almost 30 years of weekly plantings, without pay, come rain or shine. "He's done it in such a modest way. Week after week. He's the Lo... posted on Apr 09 2010, 3,466 reads

Flow Funding of a Rockefeller
Born into wealth, Marion Rockefeller Weber has been a philanthropist since age 21, deciding which worthy causes to support among the many that would come her way. "The table would be like this," she says lifting both hands shoulder high to indicate the stacks of proposals piled high on her living room table. It wasn't a pleasant process for her, so she took a one-year sabbatical, a time of self-r... posted on Apr 06 2010, 4,313 reads

Five-Star Chef Feeds Hungry
Narayanan Krishnan's day begins at 4 a.m. He and his team cover nearly 125 miles in a donated van, working in temperatures topping 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Once a five-star chef on his way to an elite job in Switzerland, the 29-year-old now spends his day personally preparing and delivering meals to nearly 400 homeless individuals everyday. "I saw a very old man eating his own human waste for food,... posted on Apr 05 2010, 5,389 reads

Designing Cities for Happiness?
What would happen if happiness was the main focus of city planning? Enrique Penalosa asked this very question as the mayor of Bogota, Colombia's capital city of 7 million. In his three years of service, the city built and improved 1200 parks and playgrounds, 300 kilometers of bikeways, and 202 schools, as well as planted 100,000 trees and reduced traffic by 40 percent. Penalosa now travels the wor... posted on Apr 04 2010, 5,485 reads

Dude, Where's Our Car?
"Things the recession has taught me: keeping your thermostat at 63 degrees in the winter and at 85 in the summer is uncomfortable but not fatal. Lesson two? You are not using your library enough. Do you know you can take out as many books as you want? And that they have free storytimes and craft lessons for kids? And that you can check out DVDs? Thankfully, my community has well-funded, thriving l... posted on Apr 01 2010, 4,514 reads

Math Teacher 'Stands and Delivers'
Not many balding, middle-aged Bolivian immigrants have feature-length films produced about them. But then again, not many people have a heart attack, get a gallbladder removed, and spring back to school the next day to teach math. Jaime Escalante, subject of the 1988 film 'Stand and Deliver,' was a passionate teacher, father-figure, and "street-gang equal" who passed away at the age of 79 on Tuesd... posted on Mar 31 2010, 3,894 reads

Championing Religious Tolerance
With a rising awareness of religious-based conflict and violence around the world, interfaith dialogue and education is more important than ever. As a college student committed to issues of social justice, Eboo Patel noticed that religion was often left out of diversity discussions. After discovering the ways Dorothy Day used her Catholicism to inspire her social justice work, Patel began explori... posted on Mar 29 2010, 1,854 reads