Key Characteristics of Changemakers
There are millions of citizens who refuse to succumb to what their more cynical neighbors call "reality," who insist with their lives that there has to be a better way -- and who day by day go about bringing it into being. What makes them tick? What enables them to see beneath the surface and work for the common good rather than simply for their own private welfare? What inspires people to act fro... posted on Apr 4, 4544 reads

Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier
At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Ishmael Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive hims... posted on Apr 15, 2867 reads

The Healthy Art of Forgiving
Holding grudges may be part of human nature, but recent studies show that it works to the detriment not just of spiritual well-being but of our physical health as well. Bitterness, anger, hostility, and fear are emotions that have specific physiologic consequences—such as increased blood pressure and hormonal changes—linked to cardiovascular disease, immune suppression and impaired neurologica... posted on Apr 20, 3595 reads

World's First PhD Program In Happiness
A leading expert on well-being is establishing what he calls the world's first Ph.D program (in Claremont, California) focusing on positive psychology and the analysis of happiness. "Even though the things that make people happy seem ephemeral and immaterial, they are the most important things in life, and they have not been studied very seriously," says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, highly acclaimed a... posted on Apr 22, 6664 reads

Wikinomics & Mass Collaboration
Today, encyclopedias, jetliners, operating systems, mutual funds, and many other items are being created by teams numbering in the thousands or even millions. While some leaders fear the heaving growth of these massive online communities, Wikinomics is an approach to put this fear to rest. Smart firms can harness collective capability and genius to spur innovation, growth, and success. Based on a ... posted on Aug 2, 2034 reads

The Good Pied Piper of Haiti
10 years ago, when American Douglas Perlitz visited Cap-Hantien –- Haiti's second-largest city -– he soon found a trail of street children following him. One child, Wilnaud Pierre, only 8 years old, especially touched his heart. "He pulled me aside and said 'Would you send me to school? I want to learn to read and write.'" Five months later, Perlitz talked to some local priests who offered him... posted on Apr 23, 1496 reads

So That All May Play
Justin Clemens loves baseball. Cerebral palsy may limit this 13-year-old's use of his left arm and both legs, but he plays his favorite sport on the Montgomery Miracle League. With help from parents and coaches he swings at pitches and scoots to first base with his walker. "When he's going for home, he feels like a million bucks," says his mother. For the most part, baseball diamonds are unplayabl... posted on May 4, 1779 reads

A Wiser Earth
Imagine you're on holiday in a city in Thailand and you discover that the area's natural environment is suffering from the effects of tourism. Back home, you decide to support that local Thai environmental movement. But how do you tap into it? WiserEarth, offers an answer: an online database of organizations active on the issues of environmental protection and social justice. For two years, scores... posted on May 6, 2276 reads

11-Year-Old Leukemia Patient's Compassion
Pat Pedraja is a sixth-grader on a mission, and nothing -- not leukemia, not chemotherapy and certainly not a lack of public awareness -- is going to keep him from his goal: adding 2007 new donors to the National Marrow Donor Program Registry and raising $100,000 to pay for their cheek swabs, all by the end of the year. If anybody can accomplish such a task, this 11-year-old with the bubbly person... posted on May 8, 1724 reads

Thinking Outside & Inside The Box
This takes a little outside-and-inside-the-box thinking. What looks like and lives like a house is actually a shipping container. "I call it my bunker," says Rosalynn Kearney of her container home. Used to import almost everything we use and wear, shipping containers are now a new concept in affordable housing. The containers are claimed to be hurricane-proof, fire-resistant. Increasingly too expe... posted on May 9, 4231 reads

Transforming a Village on $3 a Month
When Phulbasin Yadav and 11 other women set aside $3 a month to start a business, skeptical elders turned the town against them. When Ms. Yadav learned to ride a bicycle, traveling between villages to set up health clinics and offer hot meals for children, her husband threw her out of the house, saying she was ignoring her duties at home. Business in Sukuldhain, India had always been a man's world... posted on May 15, 2201 reads

Young Golfer Playing Against The Odds
There is more than one reason that MacKinzie Kline has been generating headlines in the United States lately. The most obvious of them is that she suffers from an incurable heart defect that means she may not live to see her 30th birthday, and yet she has managed to work her way on to the women's professional golf circuit at the tender age of 15. That might be enough to grab anybody's attention. W... posted on May 21, 2309 reads

A Clinic That Gives Prescriptions ... for Action
If you’ve ever experienced acute concern over environmental issues, specialist Dr. Natalie Jeremijenko, of NYU’s Environmental Health Clinic, might be able to help. To be clear, Jeremijenko, 40, has a Ph.D., not an M.D. And the project is part of NYU’s Art Department, not the School of Public Health. Her credentials as an artist and environ-mental activist, however, are solid. Ever since 199... posted on May 29, 1730 reads

Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet
As Ray Anderson was preparing a speech at Interface, a billion dollar carpet title company he founded, he had a stark realization -- "I was running a company that was plundering the earth." While they fully complied with the law, he knew that wasn't enough. So he challenged his employees to find ways to turn it all around, and forestalled objections from his own stockholders. “He bet his enti... posted on May 23, 2253 reads

Your Life (And How You Tell It)
Researchers have long been trying to work out the raw ingredients that account for personality, but they have largely ignored the first-person explanation — the life story that people themselves tell about who they are, and why. Yet in the past decade a handful of psychologists have argued that the quicksilver elements of personal narrative belong in any three-dimensional picture of personality.... posted on May 28, 3745 reads

Forgetfulness: A Tool of the Brain
A note to the forgetful: be thankful you don’t remember everything. It means your brain is working properly. According to a new study, the brain only chooses to remember memories it thinks are most relevant, and actively suppresses those that are similar but less used, helping to lessen the cognitive load and prevent confusion. "Whenever you’re engaging in remembering, the brain adapts. It’s... posted on Jun 9, 2555 reads

The Odyssey Project
Students in the Odyssey Project at University of Wisconsin-Madison are near the poverty level, and most are encountering higher education for the first time. As one Odyssey graduate wrote, "I would never have thought that classes in the humanities would change my life forever. I mean 'forever' without exaggeration because writing, art history, American history, literature, and philosophy transport... posted on Jun 20, 1418 reads

Three Men Sailing Against All Odds
An unusual sailing crew is gearing up to compete in the North Sea Yacht Race on 1 July. All three men have lost limbs -- and only have three hands and three feet between them. The race, which takes two to three days, is one of the longest and perhaps most challenging ocean races in Northern Europe, starting in the Norwegian port of Stavanger and finishing in Macduff, Scotland. This audio slideshow... posted on Jun 18, 2160 reads

Familiar Beats in a New School
They trudged in, eyes cast down with no sign of a smile, unsure what to expect.Then they noticed the two drummers playing African beats. One by one, the Burundian children took over the skin-covered drums, cola-nut shakers and rhythm sticks, stomping the floor and dancing to the music. This was how the child refugees were introduced to the Dallas Independent School District. The 16 children had co... posted on Jul 5, 1725 reads

Homeless Shelter Gets Extreme Makeover
When a friend asked her to help women battling homelessness and abuse, Terry Grahl made a visit to their shelter. "It was as if the room was screaming out, 'Save me!' I knew I had found my calling -- a passion and purpose which, I was sure would lead to the transformation of, not just a room, but the lives of many women." Grahl, an interior designer who owns Terry's Enchanted Cottage in Taylor, b... posted on Jun 28, 2965 reads

Not Buying It: The Freegan Movement
The day after New York University's class of 2007 graduated, about 15 men and women assembled in front of an N.Y.U. dormitory. They had come to take advantage of the university's end-of-the-year move-out, when students'discarded items are loaded into big green trash bins by the curb. Ben Ibershoff, a dapper man wearing two bowler hats, unearthed a Sharp television. Autumn Brewster, found a paintin... posted on Jun 30, 1956 reads

The Elders: Veteran Diplomats Unite
Melding serious statesmanship and a dose of audacity, Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, and a clutch of international figures are announcing an alliance to diplomatically tackle the world's most intractable problems. The alliance, unveiled during the events marking Mr Mandela's 89th birthday, is to be called the Elders. It includes the retired Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu, th... posted on Jul 20, 1484 reads

The Little Island That Could
It's a two-hour ferry ride to the Danish island of Samso — and it can seem like a trip back through time. But if you look more closely, to visit Samso is to see the future. Samso is an area about 40 square miles long with a permanent population of about 4,000 — all of them living a green dream. Take farmer Erik Andersen. His tractor runs on oil from seed, which he grows. His hot water and powe... posted on Jul 21, 2369 reads

When Was The Last Time You...
"When is the last time you cut someone off in traffic or scared someone with an insistent and angry horn? When was the last time you took the last cart, or cookie, or pool chair and pretended not to look at someone waiting behind you? When was the last time you said no when you could have said yes? When was the last time you cut someone you love with words because you were tired, cranky, hurt, ove... posted on Aug 17, 4336 reads

Why Old Habits Die Hard
Habits help us through the day, eliminating the need to strategize about each tiny step involved in making a frothy latte, driving to work and other complex routines. Bad habits, though, can have a vise grip on both mind and behavior. Notoriously hard to break, they are devilishly easy to resume, as many reformed smokers discover. A study led by Ann Graybiel of MIT now shows why. Important neural ... posted on Aug 16, 3101 reads

What Makes You Happy?
So you're between the ages of 13 and 24. What makes you happy? According to a recent survey the answer is sweet and simple. Spending time with family was the top answer to that open-ended question, according to an extensive survey -- more than 100 questions asked of 1,280 people ages 13-24 -- conducted by The Associated Press and MTV on the nature of happiness among America's young people. Next wa... posted on Aug 21, 3254 reads

Philosophy & Recycling in Albania
Miranda Fejzo is an unlikely person to find standing in the middle of a rubbish heap. Smartly dressed in matching black jacket and skirt, with white high heels, she explains the intricacies of recycling while carefully navigating between piles of discarded plastic bottles and heaps of cardboard and tins."Here comes the rubbish," she says - long, silver coloured fingernails pointing at a battered t... posted on Aug 22, 2300 reads

Walking Across America
32 years ago Peter Jenkins began his first epic journey across the country. He started that trip as a disenchanted young man, so upset by war, politics, and the troubled state of race relations that he was ready to abandon America. An older friend urged him to give the country a closer look. So he began walking in October 1973, starting in Alfred, 300 miles northwest of Manhattan, accompanied by h... posted on Aug 23, 2371 reads

A Clinic for the Little Things that Matter Most
To talk. To be listened to. To unwind. When you are a low-income woman with cancer, it is often the little things -- a caring touch, a steaming cup of herbal tea -- that can make a difference. The Charlotte Maxwell Clinic addresses an invisible problem -- the economic and emotional fallout that cancer can have on low-income women already underserved by the health care system. The clinic -- a volun... posted on Aug 31, 2009 reads

Eighty Year Study On Happiness & Giving
One of the longest-running social-science studies on happiness began in Oakland, California, in the 1920s with 200 people. It combined semi-annual interviews until participants graduated from high school, and has since followed them at intervals of 10 years. An astounding 90 percent of people have stayed in the study, giving it coherence and offering insights into what constitutes a happy life. On... posted on Sep 2, 5956 reads

Holistic Business School Serves Disadvantaged
An actuary turned management consultant, Taddy Blecher first stepped into a South African township by mistake. "I was terrified and thought I was going to die," he remembers. In 1995, he was at the point of moving to America, but at the last minute he decided to stay and make a difference. He and three partners then started CIDA City Campus, a $21/month-tuition, holistic business university for 15... posted on Sep 16, 1955 reads

Health Through Friendship
According to research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., having close friends you can count on has far-reaching benefits for your physical and mental health. A strong social network can be critical to helping you through the stress of tough times, whether you've had a bad day at work or a year filled with loss or chronic illness. Dr. Edward T. Creagan is a cancer specialist at the Mayo Clinic... posted on Sep 20, 3236 reads

88 Keys To Happiness
Harlan Creech fell in love with the piano when Woodrow Wilson was president. It was 1920 and Creech was 8 -- a creek-splashing dreamer stuck with a squeaky violin his parents made him play. His sister got the piano, which sounded to him like a sunny day set to music. He's wanted to play ever since. Creech grew up to be a husband, a father and a Methodist minister -- a job where he made time for ev... posted on Sep 23, 3466 reads

The Billionaire Who Wasn't
He wears a $15 watch, flies economy class and does not own a house or car. For years. few guessed that Chuck Feeney was one of the world's biggest philanthropists, secretly giving away his fortune. Born in New Jersey during the Depression, Feeney co-founded the world's largest duty-free retail chain. He liked making money but not having it, and gave it away for years in strict secrecy. Conor O'Cle... posted on Sep 25, 4186 reads

How Captcha Puzzles Serve
A weapon used to fight spammers is now helping university researchers preserve old books and manuscripts. Many websites use an automated test to tell computers and humans apart when signing up for an account or logging in. Known as captcha puzzles, these tests usually contain a few random letters in an image, arranged in such a way that automated programs cannot read. Carnegie Mellon scientists h... posted on Oct 7, 1850 reads

The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits
Conventional wisdom says that scaling social innovation starts with strengthening internal management capabilities. But a recent study of 12 high-impact nonprofits including Teach for America, Habitat for Humanity and the Exploratorium shows that real social change happens when organizations go outside their own walls and find creative ways to enlist the help of others. The secret to their success... posted on Oct 8, 6086 reads

Personal Transformation Required
"Nothing happens without "personal transformation." But at the heart of any serious effort to alter how we operate lies a concern with three dysfunctions of our culture: fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness.The word health has the same roots as "whole." Like people, organizations can get sick and die. They also need to be cured and healed. Yet, like physicians who focus only on their speci... posted on Nov 13, 4512 reads

The Spiritual Practice of Hosting Conversation
"Our policy choices flow from our politics, our politics flow from our values, and our values flow from our personal stories. If we're going to create a new politics in America and the world, we need to start at the level of story. We need to talk to each other -- and to "the other," the one we think is dead wrong. It's risky, but good hosts make such conversations so safe that people stumble past... posted on Oct 17, 2795 reads

Less Homework, More Yoga At Needham High
As the principal of Needham High School, Paul Richards is making some radical changes. Among them -- homework-free weekends and holidays, and mandatory yoga classes! It's all aimed at reducing stress. Many students were so stressed out about grades and test scores -- and so busy building résumés to get into the small number of brand-name colleges they equated with success -- that, he ... posted on Nov 1, 3018 reads

1 Slum, 7 Days, 200 New Homes
For the first time, Mona Miller has a real roof, solid walls and glass windows. Lights come on at the flick of a switch, water flows from the tap and she has the dignity of a toilet. Miller will move into her first proper home this weekend thanks to a building blitz by nearly 1,400 Irish volunteers, who completed a mission Friday to construct 200 houses in a week in the depressing, dusty -- and ho... posted on Nov 15, 1593 reads

Do-Nothing Cultivation
Masanobu Fukuoka is a towering figure in the revolutionary field of sustainable agriculture. The author of One-Straw Revolution and The Natural Way of Farming, his unconventional farming methods involve no tillage, no fertilizer, no pesticides, no weeding, no pruning, and remarkably little labor! He accomplishes all this (and high yields) by careful timing of his seeding and careful combinations o... posted on Nov 22, 2021 reads

The White Envelope Project
It's Christmas Day, and the Lawder family has one last gift for the kids, and it's the one they anticipate most every year: a plain white envelope with a note. This particular year, the note says that in the sons' honor, their parents have supported a local health clinic that provides access to physicians and necessary medical care to those who can't afford it. Everyone smiles, some through teary ... posted on Nov 26, 4376 reads

The Generous Car Salesman
Car salesmen get called a lot of things. "Living saint" is rarely one of them. And yet a Chevy dealer from Oregon just might be the exception. His name is Korry Holtzlander. "There are no bad men. There are no bad men on the planet," Holtzlander says, "There're just those who are lost." Last December, Holtzlander found a homeless man sleeping in one of the cars on his lot. But instead of giving h... posted on Nov 27, 3340 reads

Innovation of the Year: Nano Solar
Imagine a solar panel without the panel. Just a coating, thin as a layer of paint, that takes light and converts it to electricity. From there, you can picture roof shingles with solar cells built inside and window coatings that seem to suck power from the air. Consider solar-powered buildings stretching not just across sunny Southern California, but through China and India and Kenya as well, beca... posted on Dec 29, 2844 reads

The Wondrous Origami Man
"My friend, Gayla and I were travelling to Phoenix from Chicago. I misread the ticket, and we missed our flight. I was busy being upset about my failed plans when Gayla suggested we just fly wherever we want instead, since we had the time. I think about missing my flight to Phoenix and going to San Francisco instead. It taught me a lot about being open to what is, not attached to what I want, and ... posted on Dec 28, 3292 reads

The Art & Science of Changing Minds
Famed Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, noted for his theory of multiple intelligences, recently published Changing Minds: The Art and Science of Changing Our Own and Other People’s Minds. The book outlines Gardner’s research and thinking on how best to convince others (or yourself) to adopt a different viewpoint in various settings, including business. In this interview Gardner talks abou... posted on Dec 30, 5114 reads

Life Lessons at Surf School
They would just sit there on the beach, every day, watching, says South African surfer Gary Kleynhans. Then, one day, he called them over. "I could see from their enthusiasm that they wanted to try," he says. "And I thought, 'Let me give these kids a go.'" And so he started free surfing classes for the street kids of this windswept beach town. Word spread fast, and six little students became 10, t... posted on Jan 8, 2131 reads

The 247 Pound Vegan
The protein-rich bounty of the football training table is supposed to grow the biggest and strongest athletes in professional sports. Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Tony Gonzalez was afraid it was going to kill him. So last year, on the eve of the biggest season of his career, Mr. Gonzalez decided to try going vegan. Could an all-star National Football League player, all 6-foot, 5-inches and 247 po... posted on May 20, 3550 reads

What The World Eats In A Week
Imagine inviting yourself to dinner with 30 different families -- in 24 countries. Imagine shopping, farming, cooking and eating with those families, taking note of every vegetable peeled, every beverage poured, every package opened. That's exactly what photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio did for their new book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. The husband-and-wife team wanted ... posted on Jan 31, 3776 reads

He's Got a Song -- and a Mission.
During the sound check before a Martin Luther King Day rally in Atlanta, the stage manager asked 8-year-old David Militello: "Just a few lines for us, okay?" David refused to say a word. He was scheduled to sing the national anthem, but wasn't in a very star-spangled mood -- which begs the question: How'd he even get this gig? "Oh, he can sing!" said Joyce Ketchie-Cann, the director of Harmony, on... posted on Feb 1, 4083 reads