From Forgotten Prisoner to University Graduate
After spending a year visiting prisons and witnessing the conditions experienced by prisoners in Uganda, Ashoka Fellow, Alex McLean, founded the African Prisons Project. The African Prisons Project seeks to restore a sense of self-worth and hope to prisoners in Uganda and Kenya in the belief that all humans deserve to be treated with dignity and that societal change can result from such measures. ... posted on Mar 12, 10886 reads

4 Steps To A Healthier Relationship With Technology
Tom Mahon has written about digital technology for over three decades, and has witnessed the dramatic effect it's had on nearly every facet of our lives. "From how we bank, travel, and shop, to more abstract realms, like how we derive a sense of self-worth, how we forge and sustain relationships and how we choose to spend our attention." Mahon believes it's crucial for us, as individuals and a soc... posted on Apr 8, 21819 reads

How To Resist Social Distractions
"One can never be alone enough to write"... And yet despite the vast creative and psychological benefits of boredom, we have grown so afraid of it that we have unlearned -- or refused to learn altogether -- the essential art of being alone, so very necessary for contemplation and creative work." In discussing the life and work of 19th century French artist and diarist Eugene Delacroix, Maria Popov... posted on Jun 24, 13994 reads

The Love Kitchen
Helen Ashe and Ellen Turner are 82-year old twin sisters with huge hearts. They cook breakfast for dozens of needy Knoxville folks who come to the Love Kitchen twice a week for a free meal, and for delivery to the hundreds of people in need who have no way to get to Love Kitchen, and for the hundreds more who come by and pick up much-needed emergency food bags. The sisters cook for the hungry, the... posted on Sep 5, 12400 reads

What Women Can Teach Us About Compassion
It is said "[t]he road itself has power ... that suffering itself can have an inner door ... that there is a resilience even in the midst of it." In this conversation with Gitanjali Babbar, we get glimpses of the power of resilience -- both Babbar's, as well as the thousands of women and children whose lives she touches, and that touch hers. Babbar started a nonprofit named "Kat Katha" or "Puppe... posted on Dec 23, 9256 reads

The 80-Year-Old Who Runs the World's Coolest Train...for Dogs
"Eugene Bostick, an 80-year-old retiree in Fort Worth, Texas,spends his days operating what just might be the coolest train in the world. His homemade dog train takes rescued strays out for fun rides around the neighborhood and in the surrounding woods. Eugene and his brother Corky live on a dead-end street where many locals bring their unwanted dogs to leave them behind. Eugene began adopting the... posted on Jan 21, 29361 reads

The Pollination Project: The Power of Small & Philanthropy
The Pollination Project has a unique approach to philanthropy. It grants small donations of up to $1000 each day, to causes spanning all geographies, all unmet needs, and all issues. The common element for each grantee is that their work spread compassion. Founder Ari Nessel defines compassion, "being this ability to see yourself in others, and others in yourself. Wanting to reduce our collective ... posted on Jan 31, 10975 reads

Sitting By the Well: Stillness in Times of Chaos
"When all is in confusion, when I don't know what to do next or where to find inner quiet, I go and sit down by the well. Usually I'm at a point where nothing else works before I give up and just sit and listen to myself and the world, saying goodbye to all the permutations and combinations of efforts that seem to have brought me relief in similar past situations. There's nothing more to do. Just ... posted on Feb 15, 0 reads

GivePhotos: Portraits for People Who've Never Been Photographed
"Given the utter ubiquity of photography in the USA, most Americans probably dont view photography as special. But in impoverished areas around the world, personal photos can be rare. On visits to her birthplace of Kolkata, India, Bipasha Shom frequently took portraits of people she met, and she was struck by how many people lacked access to a camera and had no family photos of her own." So she ca... posted on Feb 27, 11558 reads

Teach Girls Bravery Not Perfection
"[M]any women I talk to tell me that they gravitate towards careers and professions that they know they're going to be great in, that they know they're going to be perfect in, and it's no wonder why. Most girls are taught to avoid risk and failure. We're taught to smile pretty, play it safe, get all A's. Boys, on the other hand, are taught to play rough, swing high, crawl to the top of the monkey ... posted on Mar 25, 25718 reads

Eat Your Spoon
Every year, 350 billion pieces of disposable plastic cutlery and wooden chopsticks are discarded in the United States, Japan and India. Research scientist Narayana Peesapaty has come up with a solution: edible cutlery and chopsticks. These products are made of millet, rice and wheat, contain no preservatives, and have a shelf life of 3 years. They will also decompose in 3 to 7 days (unless they ar... posted on Apr 9, 3641 reads

Why We Need to Cultivate Awe in the Workplace
"There's a profound feeling that shifts us outside the box of the routine and familiar and opens us to something much larger than ourselves writes Homaira Kabir. We've all felt it -- the goose bumps on our arms when standing below towering Eucalyptus trees or the expansive feeling in our chests when watching the sun slowly set in the horizon. Researchers define it as the emotion of awe. Like most ... posted on Jul 23, 13719 reads

#MakeVirtueViral: A Graduation Speech for Uncertain Times
"Commencement speakers are typically supposed to inspire you to make a splash in the world, be somebody, do something big and important. But this isn't a typical university, and you're not a typical class. So I'm trusting I won't get in trouble for this next piece of advice: Learn the art of doing nothing." Addressing the graduating class of a religious studies university, ServiceSpace founder Nip... posted on May 31, 49825 reads

Buried Treasure: The Story of a Marriage
"Like most marriages, I guess, we were a mixed bag of personality differences, varied preferences, unexamined childhood traumas, weaknesses and strengths, hopes and passions. I think he and I partnered each other with as much love and courage as we could, making every mistake in the book on a daily basis but trying to learn from them and carry on." After her husband's passing away, writer Carolyn... posted on Sep 14, 19704 reads

Inspiring the Future: Redraw the Balance
Twenty children between the ages of 5 and 7 in the U.K. were asked to draw a fighter pilot, surgeon and fire fighter. This video captures the reality of gender stereotyping among school children, and how early on in their education, children already define jobs as male and female. 66 pictures were drawn, with 61 pictures of men. Watch the surprise and delight of the children when a real-life fight... posted on Jun 4, 3793 reads

Olympians Without Nations: Refugees Head to Summer Games
In August of 2015, Yusra Mardini and her sister, Sarah, fled Syria after their home was destroyed in the countrys civil war. The sisters traveled on land through Lebanon and Turkey, eventually boarding a boat with 18 other refugees. When that boat's motor failed in the Aegean Sea, Mardini, her sister, and another woman jumped out and pushed the boat for three hours to the island of Lesbos. "These ... posted on Jun 10, 12499 reads

50 Years Ago She Did Something No Woman Ever Had
Fifty years ago, Bobbi Gibb applied to run the Boston Marathon and was informed that, "Women are not physiologically able to run a marathon." So she decided to enter anonymously and ended up being the first woman to finish it. "In those days, if you were a woman and you were lucky enough to go to college [Gibb attended Tufts University School of Special Studies], you were expected to get engaged y... posted on Jun 23, 25439 reads

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Community
Whether we know it or not, like it or not, honor it or not, we are embedded in community. Whether we think of ourselves as biological creatures or spiritual beings or both, the truth remains: we were created in and for a complex ecology of relatedness, and without it we wither and die. This simple fact has critical implications: community is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received. Whe... posted on Aug 29, 28932 reads

Jane Hirshfield:Living by Questions
"In times of darkness and direness, a good question can become a safety rope between you and your own sense of selfhood: A person who asks a question is not wholly undone by events. She is there to face them, to meet them. If you're asking a question, you still believe in a future. And in times that are placid and easy, a good question is a preventive against sleepwalking, a way to keep present th... posted on Aug 1, 19596 reads

Sagar Kabra: A Doctor Who Strove to Light the World
"In rural India, it is not uncommon for a person to pass before their time, their life cut short by the injustices of poverty, hunger, accident, and disease. Often these deaths go unnoticed, and the stories of these lives unheard. Sagar Kabra was familiar with this reality from his time working as a resident physician at Jan Swasthya Sahyog, an organization through which he and his colleagues prov... posted on Aug 5, 18645 reads

The Magic Flute
A pawnshop flute. That's how Marvin Sanders makes art out of uncertainty. From living on the streets to graduating college with a degree in music, Sanders recalls his incredible journey. And how it all started at a gas station: "I was in Denver, Colorado working at a gas station. Those were the days people would pull up and someone would walk out and pump your gas and wipe the windshield. I was wo... posted on Aug 7, 11983 reads

Buddhas on Death Row: A Bridge of Art and Friendship
Buddhas on Death Row is a project that was born out of the collaboration of two pen friends, based in the United States and Finland. Their names: Moyo and Maria. What follows is a sampling of Moyo's art and a selection of excerpts from his letters written on Death Row. Using the pages of a discarded atlas for stationery, he answers Maria's questions regarding his relationship to art, shares his pe... posted on Aug 9, 15955 reads

Martin Levya: Don't Ever Give Up
Martin Leyva did time for robbery but knew when he walked out of Chino State Prison he would never come back. He would transform his life. In a remarkable story, a blend of perseverance and the world opening up to show him his path, Leyva used his troubled past to become a beacon of hope for others in similar situations. He says, "The whole process [working with youth] feeds my fire for social jus... posted on Sep 3, 13858 reads

Back on My Feet: Running to End Homelessness
Running has been known to alleviate a host of society's woes -- childhood obesity, stress, drug addiction. . . and now we can add homelessness to the list. Not through a 5K fundraiser as one might think, but through a program that actually empowers homeless people to run. Since 2007, Back on My Feet has been providing homeless people the opportunity to experience the many benefits of running by gi... posted on Sep 23, 9430 reads

A Special Kind of Grace: The Remarkable Story of the Devadosses
He is a writer and an artist whose captivating pen-and-ink drawings, books and greeting cards reflect the beauty of southern India. His wife helped compose his work. What makes their story extraordinary? Manohar Devadoss is near blind. His art is produced through a painstaking process of extraordinary will-power and dedication. His wife Mahema was paralyzed below the shoulders, the result of a ca... posted on Sep 10, 21071 reads

Small is Better
"As a horsewoman, I've come to see that so many theories that work with eliciting real learning and collaboration for horses, work magically with their human counterparts. The brilliant horseman and trainer (as well as second degree aikido black belt), Mark Rashid, teaches how to reward the try, which rewards a horse in response to any of his micro-tries towards the desired action. "Because we are... posted on Sep 25, 15427 reads

A Filmmaker, a Mountain and a Moment of Truth
Andrew Hinton, Emmy award-winning filmmaker, embarked on a vision quest with the intention of becoming a "man of integrity, a bridge between two worlds." He notes, "how our culture lacks deep rituals that mark the transition to manhood, and how easy it is without them to get lost somewhere between boy and man. And of how, maybe twenty years late, I am here to finally step across." Alone in the Ore... posted on Oct 19, 10756 reads

United Nations: A Meditation for Peace
October 24th is United Nations Day, which commemorates the anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Charter in 1945. For 71 years, the United Nations has been working to maintain international peace and security, promote sustainable development, protect human rights, uphold international law, and deliver humanitarian aid. Spiritual leaders can also be found on the front lines of peace, an... posted on Oct 25, 13826 reads

The Sneaker Saint
As a child going through tough times, Rikki Mendias had holes in his shoes. A woman he met through a shelter noticed and gave him new ones. He remembers fondly the smell of them, fresh out of the box, and the feeling of pride he had when he wore them the next day. Something about the experience affected him so deeply that he became a huge sneaker fan and collector. But it felt meaningless. Then h... posted on Oct 27, 13600 reads

What Do You Do When Someone Pushes You?
If someone provokes you, do you push back? Turn the other cheek? Change course? If so, how? You may find the answers in Aikido, a Japanese martial art whose name has been translated as "the way of harmonious spirit". It has less to do with power and more to do with perspective. To gain control of your opponent's actions, you enter their space, seeing their viewpoint and taking away their target. T... posted on Nov 8, 16361 reads

The Winter Pilgrim
In October 2007, Ann Sieben, a native of Denver, Colorado and a nuclear engineer by profession, was waiting for a work permit in Spain that never came through. Instead of looking for other work, she decided to walk on foot along an ancient pilgrimage path known as the Camino de Santiago. Later, in December of that year, she walked over 2100 kilometers from Canterbury to Rome. The following winter,... posted on Oct 26, 18086 reads

Three Things that Matter Most in Youth and Old Age
In an effort to to try and get a glimpse on what is important in life, writer and photographer Nancy Hill approached children under the age of 7 and adults over the age of 70 and asked them to share the three things that mattered most to them. The following photo essay has some endearing, and somewhat surprising answers.... posted on Oct 29, 42880 reads

11 Tips to Leading a Creative Life
In this TED article, Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love" and the new book "Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear," offers wit and wisdom for people living with creativity -- which, according to her, is everyone! Creativity is not always easy to tap into, but thankfully there are lots of things we can do to help. To start, we can reframe "creativity" as "curiosity," consider fear boring... posted on Jan 11, 28975 reads

On Discerning Your Purpose & Letting Your Life Speak
"'Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney,'" young Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter as he floundered to find his purpose. For the century and a half since, and undoubtedly the many centuries before, the question of how to kindle that soul-warming fire by finding one's purpose and ... posted on Dec 2, 23728 reads

Physicist David Bohm on Creativity
The past century has sprouted a great many theories of how creativity works and what it takes to master it, and yet its innermost nature remains so nebulous and elusive that the call of creative work may be as difficult to hear as it is to answer. What to listen for and how to tune the listening ear is what the trailblazing physicist David Bohm explores in his essay in On Creativity, concluding th... posted on Jan 7, 21176 reads

The Boy In The Magic Shop
"Dr. James Doty is the founder and the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at the Stanford University School of Medicine of which the Dalai Lama is the founding benefactor. He also happens to be a professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford and the New York Times bestselling author of Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeons Quest to Discover t... posted on Feb 1, 12189 reads

A Green Hardware Store On Every Corner
Jason Ballard was looking for a way to make the home improvement market more eco-friendly, and he found one. Or rather, he created one. Inspired by his grandfather who shaped his early understanding of the importance of conservation, Ballard studied conservation biology in college, and went on to open TreeHouse: an eco-friendly home improvement retailer. The stores, with 1 location in Texas and 2 ... posted on Jul 5, 9052 reads

Manifesting Love at Work
In an insightful excerpt from 'Shakti Leadership: Embracing the Feminine and Masculine Power in Business', authors Nilma Bhat and Raj Sisodian express the innovative concept of brining caring and love into the workplace. Conscious companies are embracing this form of leadership, as CEO's of different companies speak about how to manifest love in a capitalist business world, whilst still being succ... posted on Feb 19, 6412 reads

Keys to Building Solidarity Across Our Differences
"Binary decision-making processes like referendums reflect positions on one issue at one point in time, not whole people with complex lives. Simplistic versions of events can become entrenched, leaving us stuck in different silos. How can we become unstuck? How do we foster solidarity between people who could be allies for radical change but who view each other with suspicion and anger? These are ... posted on Feb 17, 12283 reads

When Kids Say Thanks
When a child shows or feels gratitude, how does it affect other areas of his or her life over time? How best could we bring this practice into schools? What techniques in which settings produce the best results? Inspired by an act of kindness received while recovering from a childhood illness, Giacomo Bono has been studying the answers to these questions and more, adding to a growing body of resea... posted on Mar 14, 9191 reads

Cash & Care for Criminals: Reducing Gun Violence
Operation Peace Fellowship was founded by a core group of ex-cons to bring an end to gun violence. Together, they are working in Richmond, CA and other cities around the US to help gun-prone, troubled youth graduate from high school, find jobs, and settle conflicts without guns. Unconventional approaches have been used, like paying criminals to put down their guns, but more importantly, says James... posted on Apr 9, 3844 reads

Designing Companies that Are Loved
"When Scott Elias lost 80% of his hearing in kindergarten, his emotional and intuitive connection to the world went into overdrive like a sixth sense. When his hearing was surgically restored two years later, the medical miracle ignited his passion for music and science which he channeled into his wildly successful 30+ year career as the CEO of the worlds largest and most-awarded audio communicati... posted on Mar 16, 8085 reads

Marjorie Maddox: Writing Across Genres
"One of my favorite lines is from the modern poet Marianne Moore. She defines poetry as both a poet being a literalist of the imagination, but a poem being something that "has imaginary gardens with real toads in them." I have to make that so believable, even though it is imaginary. It becomes a whole world in itself and it has that element of truth in it." Marjorie Maddox is a poet, author and pr... posted on Mar 18, 2296 reads

The Man Who Died and Came Back to Plant Trees
Twenty some years ago David Milarch hovered above the bed, looking down at his motionless body. Years of alcoholism and hard living had booted him out of his life. A cosmic commandment would return him to it. His improbable charge? To clone the world's champion trees - the giants that had survived millennia and would be unvanquished by climate change. Experts said it couldn't be done. Fast-forward... posted on Mar 23, 29370 reads

Broadway Theater Gives Troubled Teens a Second Act
When we transform troubled youth, we change their futures and our our own. But how to reach them? Stargate Theater in New York City has a novel approach: it pays court-involved and at-risk youth to script and stage performance pieces. This process gives youths the opportunity to express themselves while aiming to reduce recidivism, teach literacy, and provide valuable work experience for their res... posted on Apr 23, 7862 reads

More Than Your Average Cup of Joe
A popular coffee shop in Denver is making a difference, and not just through their drinks. The Purple Door Coffee Shop, founded by Madison Chandler and Mark Smesrud, helps support youth coming out of homelessness by offering them jobs behind the counter, and teaching them skills such as customer service and budgeting. Moved by the overwhelming number of homeless youth in the region, Chandler and S... posted on May 16, 2503 reads

Are Two Lives Saved Twice as Good as One?
"Are two lives saved twice as good as one life saved?" A decision-analysis expert uses this provocative question as a springboard into an exploration of what we value, how we value it, the costly mistakes we make along the way -- and what we can do about it. He opens with this compelling story from 1922 Munich (and concludes with an equally gripping one about the US Marines in Afganistan): "The te... posted on Mar 27, 11294 reads

Crazywise: A Filmmaker Explores the Heart of Mental Illness
Phil Borges is a dentist-turned-photographer, author, filmmaker and social change storyteller. For more than 25 years, he has been documenting indigenous and tribal cultures in some of the world's most remote, inaccessible areas. His recent film Crazywise reveals a paradigm shift that's challenging the way Western culture defines and treats "mental illness" and highlights a survivor-led movement d... posted on Apr 25, 17050 reads

Dr. Toni Frohoff: Life Among Dolphins
Dr. Toni Frohoff, Ph.D., who has dedicated her life to studying marine mammal behavior and communication, argues that humans can learn a lot from the wild animals with whom we share the planet, particularly dolphins. Dolphins show a remarkable capacity for experiencing and expressing a range of emotions, and communicate with other members of the species in ways that often defy human capabilities a... posted on Jun 30, 13728 reads

5 Invitations: What Death Can Teach About Living
Over the course of thirty years, those who were at the end of their lives shared their insights with Frank Ostaseski, the co-founder of the Zen Hospice Project, a holistic residential care facility. In his article, 'Five Invitations: What Death Can Teach about Living' Frank shares the five 'invitations' to connect with death in order to live a more full life. The five invitations he has gleaned fr... posted on Aug 2, 52424 reads