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, 5429 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

Why 'How' Matters
In his 2007 best-seller "How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything...in Business (and in Life)", Dov Seidman showed us how to navigate more than just business. The book's premise was fairly simple --in our hyperwired and hypertransparent world, how you do things matters more than ever because products can be copied, expertise can be bought and your customers, not your PR agencies, write your re... posted on Apr 12, 3661 reads

How To Lead A Focused Life
With so many things now demanding our attention -- emails, Web sites, BlackBerry alerts, incoming text messages, Twitter tweets, Facebook updates, blogs, stock updates, and old-fashioned meetings and phone calls -- increasing numbers of us multitaskers are plagued by bad habits and technology overload, darting from one mental activity to the next. In her new book "Rapt", Winifred Gallagher concen... posted on Apr 30, 9328 reads

The Art of Getting Things Done
You know the drill. It's Monday morning. You arrive at work exhausted from a weekend spent entertaining the kids, paying bills, and running errands. You flick on your PC -- and 70 new emails greet you. Your phone's voice-mail light is already blinking, and before you can make it stop, another call comes in. According to David Allen, 54, one of the world's most influential thinkers on personal prod... posted on May 18, 12644 reads

A Doctor-Poet's Birthday in Burundi
There are corners of the world whose struggles and triumphs seem hidden from view. Kigutu, is one of them -- a little village three hours away from Bujumbura, capital of Burundi. A DailyGood contributing editor, Sri, has called this place home for the last three months. As an American doctor and UCSF Faculty, Sri dedicates five months of the year to working abroad in regions of extreme need. Now, ... posted on May 19, 5097 reads

Bankrupt and Wealthy
On December 11, 1995 a fire burned most of Malden Mills to the ground and put 3,000 people out of work. Most of the 3,000 thought they were out of work permanently. A few employees were with the CEO in the parking lot during the fire and heard him say "This is not the end." With these words began a saga that has made Aaron Feuerstein a legend among American leaders and a hero to his employees.... posted on May 25, 4371 reads

Not Without My Daughters
Pharmacologist and medical researcher Vimala Seshadri lives with 10 girls between the ages of 4 and 20 who come from underprivileged backgrounds. "We're an all-women household," says Vimala, who has brought up the girls as her own daughters in a small home in India for the past nine years. The girls live with her through the year and visit their parents during holidays. "We go back for a while, bu... posted on Jan 30, 1522 reads

The Road Builds Us
In 1958 a group of students went to a small, rural village in Sri Lanka and built schools, houses, and toilets alongside the villagers. They shared meals, song, and dance and called their program shramadana (gift of labor). This act of kindness led to what is now known as the Sarvodaya movement. Last month, in the same spirit of shramadana, a group of students in Nepal went to a small village to h... posted on May 28, 2376 reads

Purple Songs Can Fly
In her room at Texas Children's Cancer Center in Houston, eight-year-old Simran Jatar lay hooked up to a chemo drip to fight her bone cancer. Over her bald head, she wore a pink hat that matched her pajamas. But the third grader's cheery outfit didn't mask her pain and weary eyes. Then a visitor showed up. "Do you want to write a song?" asked Anita Kruse, 49, rolling a cart equipped with an electr... posted on May 29, 3138 reads

A Maternity Ward -- For Turtles
With its white sand and clear, blue water, Trinidad's Matura Beach looks like a postcard. It's a far cry from its recent past, when leatherback sea turtle carcasses littered the ground and kept tourists away. Saddened and frustrated, Suzan Lakhan Baptiste launched a crusade to help end the slaughter of the gentle giants. Today, she and her group are succeeding: What was once a turtle graveyard is ... posted on May 30, 2994 reads

The Art of Dialogue
What's the secret of good conversations? Bill Isaacs, the author of "Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together" and director of the Dialogue Project at MIT's Organizational Learning Center, says that people need to build specific skills and to appreciate the separate stages of a good conversation. This Fast Company article outlines a few key skills, followed by a description of those stages that a... posted on Jun 1, 5353 reads

The Plastiki Expedition
In 1947, Thor Heyerdahl and a crew of five men traveled across the Pacific Ocean to Peru on craft comprised of natural materials modeled after ancient Inca rafts. Using that as inspiration, David de Rothschild, the banking scion and the founder of Adventure Ecology, is embarking on The Plastiki Expedition, and will soon set sail on another curious vessel: one comprised almost entirely of re-purpos... posted on Jun 3, 4390 reads

Social Entrepreneurship Revisited
Ashoka founder and CEO Bill Drayton first used the term "social entrepreneurship" in the early 1980s, and it continues to inspire images of audacious social change -- the kind that sweeps away the old approaches to solving intractable social problems such as disease, hunger, and poverty. Like business entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship involves a wave of creative destruction that remakes so... posted on Jun 9, 3061 reads

Humane Lessons from An 8th Grader
"I had the privilege of mentoring a young friend of mine, Claire Russell, on her 8th grade project. At Claire's school, all 8th graders complete a project of their choice and present it to the entire school community at the end of the school year. Most of the kids learn a new skill or make something. Many have built furniture, created art, written books, or learned a craft like mime or welding. Cl... posted on Jun 12, 3889 reads

A Retired Teacher's Letters of Gratitude
Xu Niankui, a 76-year-old retired teacher in China, had just gotten on a bus when a young girl immediately offered up her seat for him. Xu began chatting with her, and though he couldn't get her name or age, he found out she was from Taopu Middle School, and so sent a letter to the school thanking the anonymous girl. The school identified the good samaritan and ended up recognizing her for her cha... posted on Jul 1, 3333 reads

Dipped in Original Wisdom
"High in the Andes live the Aymarans. A tribe born with their toes dipped in original wisdom. They place the future at their backs and face their past with the intentness of a woman scanning a mirror for wrinkles or chin hair. An Aymaran gestures over his shoulder to indicate next year and will point straight ahead if you need directions to yesterday. ... I know in my old bones that sing their ach... posted on Jun 16, 3893 reads

The Power of Place
"A bit of unaccustomed reflection on one dimension of our experience suggests that the answer to that perennial child's question: If grown-ups know so much, why aren't they happy?--is increasingly bound up with the places in which we spend our lives. Many, of the eclectic researches that support this commonsensical idea are less discoveries than rediscoveries of principles that our forebears consi... posted on Jun 14, 3904 reads

The Millenium Seed Bank
All life on earth depends on plants, but in spite of our reliance on plants, 60,000 to 100,000 plant species are under threat. The root causes of these threats are difficult to control and include human population growth and socio-economic factors. Seed banks provide an insurance policy against the extinction of plants in the wild and provide options for their future use. The Millennium Seed Bank ... posted on Jun 19, 2546 reads

The Limits of Control
"My mother had always feared domestic animals, but now as a plump neighborhood cat ran up our driveway, she gazed at the feline, and revealed that 70 years ago she had had a pet cat. Her 87-year-old eyes teared up. Her cat was white, she said, and so thin you could see its ribs. Still, she loved to cuddle it. It wasn't a house cat -- it couldn't have been, because she was imprisoned at the time, i... posted on Jun 28, 4055 reads

She Cashed In Her Savings For Bess
In 2002 38-year-old Jennifer Frances cashed in her 401K to do something fulfilling with her life. And it all started with a 1972 Volkswagen bus named "Bess." "Bess the Book Bus" is a gateway to reading for underprivileged and inner-city kids in Tampa, Fla that has now distributed thousands of books to thousands of Tampa-area children, from kindergarten-to-high school, giving almost 40,000 new book... posted on Jul 3, 2535 reads

Charter for Compassion
When Karen Armstrong won a prize to do anything she wanted, she created a "Charter for Compassion" to bring together voices from all religions and backgrounds and remind the world that while all faiths are not the same, they all share the share the core principle of compassion and the Golden Rule. In this moving video, Karen and many other friends lay out a beautiful narrative as an invitation int... posted on Jul 9, 4006 reads

Leadership Lessons from Delta's CEO
In the fast pace of today's organizations -- whether corporate, nonprofit, or government -- not many leaders cite patience as the most important lesson they have learned. Even fewer leaders likely hand-write a half-dozen thank-you notes every day. The NY Times shares highlights from an interview with Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines, whose advice on careers is to "just focus on getting you... posted on Jul 10, 4256 reads

An Invitation to Make Music
The piano was standing innocently near the Millennium Bridge, minding its own business except for a cheeky come-on -- "Play Me, I'm Yours" -- printed on its side. All around London its fellow pianos were waiting, too -- 30 of them in all -- part of an interactive art project meant to challenge people to come out of their urban insularity. "They're out there to get people talking to one another and... posted on Jul 14, 2584 reads

The Perceptiveness of Dogs
Some dogs can smell odors given off by humans with bladder cancer and diabetes, researchers say. In some cases, the canines warn of oncoming attacks. Claire Guest, CEO of Cancer and Bio-Detection Dogs, says, "Now that we know that dogs are able to detect human disease by its odor, and that different diseases have different odors, the potential is just incredible to help individuals with life-threa... posted on Jul 20, 4368 reads

Hero Provides A Free Lunch
Chemotherapy treatments are no fun, but patients here at the Kaiser Permanente Oncology Department in Denver have reason to look forward to their visits. On the fourth Thursday of every month everyone here -- patients, family, and staff -- gets a free, homemade lunch. "They love it and I love it. I bring sandwiches and Texas sheet cake, and chips. We have the same menu every month, but everybody l... posted on Aug 3, 2152 reads

Solving Tough Problems
Adam Kahane is not a man you'd pick out of a crowd as having helped move post-Apartheid South Africa towards a peaceful resolution, or helped post-dictatorship Guatemala move beyond the longest civil war in the history of the Americas. But listen to him for a moment, and you know you're dealing with someone who has a vision of what it takes to build a better world. He's seen how good organizations... posted on Sep 7, 4706 reads

The Collaborative Art Revolution
One of the Web's basic tenets is that small contributions from lots of people can amount to something powerful in the aggregate. Now, a growing group of writers, musicians, visual artists and videographers is turning this Wikipedia-era philosophy into online collaborative art. Twitter users are banding together to write an opera for London's Royal Opera House. Bands like My Morning Jacket and Sour... posted on Aug 27, 2269 reads

The Coach Who Never Played to Win
Smack-dab in the heart of America, amid rolling fields of wheat and soybeans -- high school football coach Roger Barta glanced at his notes as he stood among the sea of players gathered before him. 'We don't talk about winning and losing. We talk about getting a little better every day, about being the best we can be, about being a team. And when we do that, winning and losing take care of themsel... posted on Oct 24, 5076 reads

Bach In The Hills
Getting lost on Shillong, India's roads, with clouds and thoughts for company, is most often a matter of pleasure. If you have drifted near Neil Nongkynrih's house in Pokseh, the music will find you. On a regular day, the house fills the neighbourhood with melody -- the strain of a violin, the lilt of the piano as it plays a Bach fugue and voices of children singing. This is home to a unique exper... posted on Sep 11, 1873 reads

How To Escape Perfectionism
"According to the World Database of Happiness (yes, there is one), Iceland is the happiest place on earth. The secret to their happiness? Eric Weiner, Author of The Geography of Bliss, traveled to Iceland to find out. After interviewing a number of Icelanders, Weiner discovered that their culture doesn't stigmatize failure(...)That's one reason Iceland has more artists per capita than any other na... posted on Sep 17, 10768 reads

Is it Oprah? No, it's Ludacris!
"This is Ludacris, and I'm giving away 20 free cars. ..." The famous rapper was pulling an Oprah in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. The rapper announced that if listeners were able to pay the taxes, registration, tags and insurance, they should go to his nonprofit Ludacris Foundation Web site and write 300 words about why they deserved new wheels. Four thousand people took him up on the chal... posted on Oct 18, 3957 reads