You Gotta Have Art
As health-care costs skyrocket, a down-to-earth approach to healing is emerging, complementing high-tech medicine with high-touch arts. The approach is based on the assumption that incorporating music, visual art, writing and performance into clinical care can increase feelings of well-being and even improve health -- an assumption that medical researchers are beginning to recognize the need to te... posted on Apr 10, 1413 reads

Listening to People
"The effectiveness of the spoken word," say Ralph G. Nichols and Leonard A. Stevens, "hinges not so much on how people talk but mostly on how they listen." In this article in the Harvard Business Review, Listening to People, they open up a subject of tremendous practical importance. We have assumed that learning to read will automatically teach one to listen. While some of the skills attained thro... posted on Apr 27, 6061 reads

A 9-Year-Old Walks For The Homeless
Younger than most of the people in the crowd, 9-year-old Zach Bonner stepped to the side of the lectern so that people could see him. He thanked sponsors of his 250-mile walk for the homeless, which was about to start. "What bothers me is what homeless kids go through," Zach said. "What happens when they go to sleep? What happens when they wake up?" His family doesn't know why Zach works so hard o... posted on Apr 18, 3544 reads

Uniting the World One Swoosh At A Time
Noel had quit his job as a valet parking attendant in Las Vegas; Angelina had given up her gig as a cocktail waitress. In 2001, the Andreonis embarked on an unusual adventure. They decided that they would be governed by three passions: travel, photography and basketball. Nearly seven years later, the Andreonis have traveled far beyond their beginnings. They have visited 28 countries and all 50 US ... posted on Apr 24, 2572 reads

Redemptive Power of Music & Friendship
Three years ago, journalist Steve Lopez met a homeless musician on skid row in Los Angeles. Lopez learned that the man, Nathaniel Ayers, had once been a promising violinist, and that he had left the prestigious Juilliard School because of his struggle with mental illness. Lopez developed a friendship with Ayers, eventually helping him to get off the street, settle into an apartment and find treatm... posted on Apr 30, 3231 reads

Where Does Creativity Hide
Born in the US to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan rejected her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist. She chose to write fiction instead. Her much-loved, best-selling novels have been translated into 35 languages. In this TED talk Tan digs deep into the creative process, journeying through her childhood and family history and into the worlds of physics and chance... posted on May 1, 17103 reads

Becoming A Creature of New Habits
"Habits are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word "habit" carries a negative connotation. So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously... posted on May 7, 5504 reads

Films For the World, By the World
Over a span of four hours today -- on Saturday, May 10th 2008 -- twenty-four short films made "by the world, for the word" will be broadcast on television and transmitted over the internet and to cell phones everywhere. Welcome to Pangea Day. "In a world where people are often divided by borders, difference and conflict," the event's creators say, "it's easy to lose sight of what we have in common... posted on May 10, 2196 reads

The Pep Talk of a Lifetime
Moments before an important competition, a young swimmer turns to her coach in a moment of doubt. "As most athletes know, when you have time to sit and think about what you need to do, you start to get nervous. That is exactly what I was beginning to do; only it wasn’t the good kind of nerves that get you psyched up—it was the bad kind that made you want to sit in a corner and hide. Knowing t... posted on May 11, 7867 reads

The Healing Power of Portraits
On the fourth floor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, they're doing cutting-edge research on bladder cancer, the mechanics of cancer stem-cell replication, and the healing power of portraits. That's right, portraits. The aim of the project is for an artist to study the interaction between patients and caregivers and to develop a set of paintings based on observation. The work ... posted on May 13, 2846 reads

Top 10 Tips from Gandhi's Words
A 27 year old student from Sweden, Henrik Edberg, shares "Gandhi's top ten fundamentals for changing the world": Change yourself. You are in control. Forgive and let it go. Without action you aren’t going anywhere. Take care of this moment. Everyone is human. Persist. See the good in people and help them. Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self. Continue to grow and evolve. The full artic... posted on May 15, 10411 reads

The B Corporation
Mike Hannigan and Sean Marx started a company with an unusual mission: donate all profits to charity. As they grew to sales of more than $26 million, Hannigan and Marx often wished for additional capital to help fuel that growth but stayed away from outside investors for fear of undermining their philanthropic mission. Now, they've found a solution to their dilemma -- writing their values into th... posted on May 21, 4193 reads

Rwanda's Weapon of Mass Construction
The 1994 genocide in Rwanda left the country in tatters, its future fraught with uncertainty. Of the more than 800,000 people killed, most were men and boys. Rwanda's remaining population was 70 percent female. Fast-forward to the present day: The economy has revived and is holding steady. Major road arteries between cities and outlying villages, which were destroyed, have been rebuilt. Today, the... posted on May 23, 3020 reads

A Meal with 30 Families in 24 Countries
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. Well, that's exactly what photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio did to explore the impact of globalization, migration and rising affluence on the d... posted on May 24, 2514 reads

Science of Subtle Signals
When MIT's Media Lab team studied one of the largest's providers of call center outsourcing, they found something curious that helped them predict the success or failure of almost every call -- within just a few second of the call! And oddly enough, they studied neither the specific words that the operators used nor the logic of their conversations, but only the physical voice signal: the measur... posted on May 31, 3243 reads

Work When You Want, Where You Want?
Picture an office where no meeting is mandatory and employees can come and go as they please as long as they get the job done. "Too good to be true," most cubicle occupants would probably say, but new research shows that such an empowering work environment can be more than fiction. Best Buy, for example, gave 3,000 of its corporate staffers a chance to work without micro supervision and producti... posted on Jun 6, 5385 reads

Zero-Emission Car
Honda has announced the release of their new Clarity hydrogen fuel cell car and refueling station. The FCX Clarity was designed to be a fuel cell vehicle that runs on electricity powered by hydrogen, and emits only water vapor and heat into the air. Due to a lack of public refueling stations, the car will be piloted by a few Californians in summer of 2008. However, Honda is developing The Home En... posted on Jun 7, 3310 reads

A Millionaire Still Living in a Hut
When 27-year old Sarathbabu graduated from the prestigious Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, he created quite a stir by refusing a job that offered him a huge salary. He preferred to start his own enterprise, inspired by his mother who once sold idlis (rice cakes) on the pavements of Chennai, to educate him and his 4 siblings. Brought up in the slums, Sarathbabu knew what it was like to... posted on Jun 10, 5884 reads

The Plastic Planet
An estimated one percent of thrown-away plastic bags never make it to the landfill. Instead, too many of them become street litter which first gets washed into the city's storm drains and then, when a heavy rain comes and the system overflows, gets dumped through one of the harbor estuaries. From there they head straight to the ocean where they could become accidental food for the 7 species of sea... posted on Jun 20, 2508 reads

The 12-Year-Old Teacher
At a recent tutoring session, Michael moved between the laptops used by shelter residents Alicia Lewis and Heaven Sanders, both 7. He coached them for 30 minutes on typing their names, then switched to a half hour of vocabulary and math games. "Michael, I'm lost," Heaven said, resting her face on her hands. He quickly went to her computer and punched the "load" button on the keyboard to get the so... posted on Jun 16, 4096 reads

Manifesto for the Next Industrial Revolution
How does economic growth happen -- from a strategic point of view? Joseph Schumpeter argued that growth happens through a process of creative destruction. But creative destruction has two sides -- the costs of destruction as well as the benefits of creation. And as creative destruction intensifies, the costs of this great tradeoff sharpen. How can we avoid this tradeoff and how do we begin reorgan... posted on Jun 29, 2268 reads

Letters To A Young Teacher
For more than forty years, Jonathan Kozol has taught in, worked with, and written about America's inner city public schools. His straight talk in best-selling books such as Savage Inequalities and Amazing Grace has made him a hero of many teachers, and he fiercely opposes policies he believes perpetuate educational inequities. In Letters to a Young Teacher, Kozol writes a series of personal letter... posted on Jul 1, 4179 reads

What Business Execs Should Know About Non-Profits
Business leaders play vital roles in the nonprofit sector – as board members, donors, partners, and even executives. Yet all too often they underestimate the unique challenges of managing nonprofit organizations. In this article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review, 11 executives who have played leadership roles in both for-profits and nonprofits reveal the critical differences between the... posted on Jul 15, 3571 reads

Selling 1 House to Serve 30 Villages
One day while driving with her father, Hannah Salwen noticed a Mercedes stopped next to a homeless man sitting on the curb. "I said to my dad, 'If that guy didn't have such a nice car, then that guy could have a nice meal,'" the 15-year-old from Atlanta, recalled. And so began the tale of what the Salwen family calls "Hannah's Lunchbox." The family began seriously thinking through what they actua... posted on Jul 10, 3209 reads

Mildred Norman's Simple Message
In the summer of 1952 Mildred Norman, traveling alone, hiked the entire length of the 2050 mile-long Appalachian Trail. She was the first woman to accomplish this feat. It turned out to be a practice run. From 1953 until 1981, she walked more than 25,000 miles across the United States , bearing the simplest of messages: this is the way of peace --overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, ... posted on Jul 19, 3265 reads

Peace, Love and Ice Cream
Matt Allen,won't disclose his age but must hover around 30. He finds happiness in life's small wonders. He plays kickball; he does the happy dance. With free-flowing floppy hair and thrift-store threads, he resembles an elementary student allowed to pick his own outfit for the day. Matt Allen is not just an ice cream man, he's "The" Ice Cream Man. And his venture, meanwhile, has grown from a one-m... posted on Jul 23, 3986 reads

Little Boy, Big Mountain
Although no one said it out loud, it was clear the first day that 7-year-old Keats Boyd would probably not make it to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. At just four feet tall, the kid could barely conquer a fallen log. There was just no way he was going to make it all the way up Africa's tallest mountain. That was obvious to everyone ... except for Keats. The boy doesn't come from a mountain-climbing... posted on Aug 2, 3376 reads

What Leaders Should Know About Followers
There is no leader without at least one follower -- that's obvious. Yet the modern leadership industry, now a quarter-century old, is built on the proposition that leaders matter a great deal and followers hardly at all. Most of the limited research and writing on subordinates has tended to either explain their behavior in the context of leaders' development rather than followers' or mistakenly as... posted on Aug 4, 3577 reads

29-Day Giving Challenge
Feeling desperate and hopeless after spending eight days in the hospital related to multiple sclerosis, 35-year-old Cami Walker, decided to take an odd "prescription" from an African medicine woman. The remedy? Give away one thing each day for 29 days. "I thought the suggestion was crazy at first, but decided it wasn't going to hurt me to try it. Things couldn't get much worse," said Walker. "I wa... posted on Aug 19, 3895 reads

Why Social Capital Matters
"The one thing I've consistently seen entrepreneurs do that has significant measurable impact on everything they do -- more than any other factor -- is manage their relationships and manage their social capital. Folks that do that really well are bound to find some measure of success in some area of their life. It may not be the course they set initially, but there's invariably some positive that ... posted on Sep 16, 2778 reads

Singing For Supper
Three young men having been walking across Britain without any money, camping out and relying on the kindness of strangers to survive. Calling themselves "singing adventurers", they have taken three major trips in the past three years, sleeping wherever they can and foraging for food. They sing three-part folk songs, ancient and modern, wherever they are welcomed. They "busk in heaving towns, chan... posted on Nov 19, 2815 reads

16-year-Old Sails Solo Around the World
Michael Perham, 16, is the youngest person to have sailed across the Atlantic alone. He set out on his latest voyage from Gunwharf Quays, Portsmouth, on Saturday morning. He will be alone at sea for over four months and his only contact with family will be through satellite link-ups. Michael said: "I'm a little bit nervous but otherwise really, really excited. "It's just the feeling of being compl... posted on Nov 20, 2221 reads

Now Nature Has Its Own Rights, in Ecuador!
There was a time when people were considered property and this idea is quickly being antiquated. But now, Ecuador has taken a revolutionary step -- by codifying it in its Constitution -- of granting rights to Nature! Ecuador's constitution grants nature the right to "integral restoration" and says that the state "will promote respect toward all the elements that form an ecosystem" and that the st... posted on Nov 22, 2165 reads

A Surprise Bouquet For A Stranger
"My cousin Heidi was stricken around age 16 with a debilitating disease, which took her life about 20 years later. As the disease progressed, she became wheelchair bound and unable to easily communicate (I'm not sure of the disease -- it may have been a combination, including Parkinson's).When she was in her late 20's, she would often have her mother take her out into the front yard when the weath... posted on Nov 24, 5324 reads

An Author Turned Visionary Humanitarian
After the runaway success of his Pulitzer-nominated memoir, literary wunderkind Dave Eggers could have settled into a comfortable career cranking out similar material. Instead he took a more dynamic path. He founded the small indie publishing empire McSweeney's, which produces the Believer magazine, and started two nonprofit enterprises with a humanitarian bent: 826 Valencia, a writing and tutorin... posted on Dec 18, 2397 reads

Eight Strategies for Healing
Illness is an unavoidable part of life, but our bodies want to heal. And we can help them do that, despite the obstacles. Each of us possesses a surprising capacity to bounce back from illness and injury, under the right conditions, and the body will work hard on its own to help the recovery -- even if we do little to help the process along. That said, there are specific steps to help the process... posted on Dec 20, 8355 reads

Japanese City Finds Treasure in Trash
Many small pieces can add up to a big whole, and one small city in the north of Japan is finding there's money in the process as well. Odate, a city of about 80,000 people in Akita Prefecture, on the northern end of Honshu, the big island of Japan, has begun diverting small electronics from landfills and using the town's mining history to salvage precious metals from the waste. By putting collecti... posted on Dec 31, 2739 reads

How Your Vocabulary Can Feed The Hungry
What if just knowing what a word meant could help feed hungry people around the world? Well, at website called FreeRice it does. Go to the site, and you'll see a word and four definitions. Choose the right meaning and the site's advertisers will donate 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program, a United Nations agency that is the world's largest humanitarian organization. Keep on guessing (the q... posted on Jan 9, 5906 reads

The Solidarity Quilt
In 2004, The World March of Women, an international network of 6,000 grassroots women's organizations, created a global charter for humanity, an official statement of the group's goals. In 31 affirmations, the charter calls on men, women and oppressed groups across the planet to "transform the world," "radically change social structures" and live together with "equality, peace, freedom, solidarity... posted on Jan 17, 3431 reads

The Secret Life of Paper
There is no "papering over" the problem of paper. American families use the most pulp products and in the process are chopping down forests, polluting the air in the paper manufacture process and creating methane gas in landfills. Paper recycling is taking hold, and will grow stronger as consumers opt for recycled packaging. Even easier, when you spill something, use a sponge and not a paper towel... posted on Jan 29, 3390 reads

Dr. Campo's Healing Words
There is something deeply dissatisfying about going to the doctor and leaving empty-handed -- no prescription, no pills. We often believe that any bodily illness will disappear once we ingest the appropriate pill. Aspirin cures headaches, caffeine wakes us up, and going to the doctor when we're sick is the magic ticket for an antibiotic that will quickly restore our health. Dr. Rafael Campo, howev... posted on Feb 8, 5380 reads

A Carpet Company's Transformation
As Ray Anderson was preparing to give a speech at Interface, the billion dollar carpet company he founded, he had a stark realization."I was running a company that was plundering the earth," he recalls. While Interface fully complied with the law, Ray 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. "H... posted on Feb 10, 3414 reads

Gifted Hands: The Story of Ben Carson
Benjamin S. Carson went from an angry street fighter in Detroit to become director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Carson, who attributes his escape from the poverty of his youth to the support and love of his mother, is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. His autobiography, "Gifted Hands", chronicles the road from a broken home and poor self-esteem to his life today.... posted on Feb 11, 5428 reads

Ironworkers in Boston
It has become a beloved ritual at Dana-Farber's Cancer Institute, where they are building a new facility. Every day, children who come to the clinic write their names on sheets of paper and tape them to the windows of the walkway for ironworkers to see. And, every day, the ironworkers paint the names onto I-beams and hoist them into place as they add floors to the new 14-story Yawkey Center for Ca... posted on Feb 24, 5950 reads

Three Cups of Tea: A Mountaineer's Story
This story begins in 1993 when American Greg Mortenson set out to climb K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, on the northern border of Pakistan. But he didn't make it all the way. "I was completely exhausted and emaciated. I was kind of slumping off the mountain. I had to walk 58 miles to get to the nearest village." The villagers took him in and nursed him back to health. "They had very ... posted on Apr 11, 4756 reads

The Free Store
The policy of The Free Store in New York reads like this: "If you find something you like and you think you need it, feel free to take it." That's right. At first they were worried they might run out of free items, but it turns out people are likely to give as much -- if not more than they take. So how do they make money? They don't. It's an art project whose mission is to "reinforce and buil... posted on Mar 16, 4883 reads

Young Curious Minds
A group of 20 youths packed together in a small radio studio, crowded over a few microphones, are speaking with great intensity. They laugh often and sometimes talk over each other. The young people are live on air, discussing educational reform and AIDS education -- just two of the many social topics that are covered on 'Curious Minds', a talk radio program of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation,... posted on Mar 19, 2766 reads

Effects of Gratitude on the Body
Researchers have found that when we think about someone or something we really appreciate and experience the feeling that goes with the thought, the parasympathetic -- calming-branch of the autonomic nervous system -- is triggered. This pattern when repeated bestows a protective effect on the heart. The electromagnetic heart patterns of volunteers tested become more coherent and ordered when they ... posted on Mar 23, 10124 reads

A Birthday Celebration for Every Child
The party for Faith and Joy, sisters celebrating their 4th and 11th birthdays, respectively, kicks up the typical din of tots, toddlers, and tweens. Faith, her braids decorated with flower-shaped pins, leans on the kitchen table, burrowing her face into the arms of her seated mother. Joy hurls herself into the festivities, getting her face painted like a cat's along with other children. Home for t... posted on Mar 24, 2824 reads

Come Out And Play!
"I thought it was rather odd when my friend from the nursing home asked me to motor her wheelchair through the puddles that formed from the melting snow. I didn't really get it, but I went along with it. We were out on one of our walks or what I like to call one of our"weekly strolls" because I stand and she rolls. Adhering to my friend's peculiar request, we were off on our watery wheelchair adve... posted on Apr 5, 3094 reads