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, 4056 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

Luminous Comic Book Tells Mandela's Story
Keeping life lessons alive is important and telling our children and the young people of community about those that have walked before us is essential. Nelson Mandela, the prisoner of conscience turned president of South Africa, was a global inspiration even before he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Now a wondrous graphic novel, released to coincide with his 91st birthday, is the latest and pos... posted on Sep 29, 3000 reads

Touched by Tragedy, and Paying It Forward
Last July, April DeSerre's world was turned upside down when she lost her father, her home, and all of her family's possessions in a fire. Immediately following that life-changing event, though, DeSerre also experienced something else: generosity. A year later, DeSerre and her family are on the road to recovery. And now, she wants to help others whose lives have been affected by fire do the same... posted on Oct 5, 2563 reads

Upwardly Global: Helping Immigrant Professionals
In Vietnam, Mai Le worked as a doctor, a low-paid but respected position requiring years of training. However since arriving in San Jose in 1999, she has worked as a census taker, one of the many immigrant professionals who find their experience and education do not count here. Although Le is determined to practice medicine again, she's less certain about how to sell herself in resumes and intervi... posted on Oct 11, 1491 reads

Death by Information Overload
Thanks to the Internet, a wealth of information is at our fingertips. We can access so much knowledge at speeds previously impossible. However, there is a downside to this information overload. Trying to keep up with the flurry of a constantly updated web world can leave us drained, and distract us from the important tasks of our jobs. Current research suggests that the surging volume of inform... posted on Nov 4, 5148 reads

No Vacation Nation
Last year, fewer than half of all Americans took a week off or less for vacation. Compared with the five weeks of paid vacation Europeans get, Americans seem woefully overworked and under-rested. Doctors have been researching the ill effects of too much work, and some claim that a lack of vacation can have real health consequences. Dr. Sarah Speck calls the stress from too much work the new tob... posted on Nov 15, 5835 reads

Lawyer Heads to a Classroom
Tom Dunn spent twenty years working hard to get convicts off death row. However, several decades of grueling work and compounding health problems forced Mr. Dunn to leave behind the high-stress world of litigation. Instead of spending the rest of his life relaxing on a beach, though, he immediately signed up for Teach for America. Mr. Dunn, in his years of working with criminal law, recognized a c... posted on Oct 26, 2305 reads

The Burden of Genius
Elizabeth Gilbert's book "Eat, Pray, Love" was so successful that everyone worried if she'd ever be able to repeat that creative performance. The concern led Gilbert to investigate how past cultures and societies handled creative strokes of genius, and she discovered a rather curious insight from ancient Greek and Roman cultures -- that people aren't geniuses, but rather they have a genius. Funny,... posted on Nov 2, 6350 reads

"Feed Me Bubbe": Not Your Usual Cooking Show
The Internet is full of some amazing and impressive technological feats. However, sometimes, very simple things have just as much, or more, impact. "Feed Me Bubbe" is a heartwarming collection of videos of an 83 year old Jewish grandmother and her loving grandson. "Bubbe" shares recipes in her cooking videos, but she also shares stories, life lessons, and advice. Watch this video interview of ... posted on Dec 4, 5020 reads

Food Bank Robbery Triggers Generosity
First the bad news: Burglars stole about $2,000 worth of food from the Rainier Valley Food Bank in Seattle on November 18. Now for the good news: In the succeeding two days, local residents, organizations and corporations donated at least $100,000 worth of food and money. Responses were immediate and meant the Food Bank could meet the demand for the Thanksgiving weekend. Sam Osborne, executive dir... posted on Dec 29, 2211 reads

A Professor's Lesson 30 Years Ago
"One winter semester during college in upstate New York., I took an 8 AM history class to fulfill a requirement. It was hard to get up for that class, but about 15 of us met 3 times a week to brave the cold winds and trudge to that lecture in a nondescript classroom. The professor for the class was an odd fellow. He had flaming red hair and wore galoshes with one pantleg in and one out. He woul... posted on Dec 19, 5808 reads

Sharing Nature's Design
Janine Benyus has spent her life learning about nature and the environment all over the world. However, she doesn't do it simply to share and experience the beauty and wonder of the natural world. She spends her time teaching about nature to help people design better products and improve existing technology. Listen to the amazing stories of how nature solves many of the problems we struggle with.... posted on Dec 6, 4169 reads

Flying On One Engine
Wheelchair bound, without a larynx, and diagnosed with a life-threatening aortic aneurysm, Dr. Sharadkumar Dicksheet now lives only (and barely) so he can travel to India to perform free operations in marathon-like surgery sessions where up to 700 children receive treatment for their cleft lips and other deformities. Although Dicksheet survives off of social security while living in his Brooklyn a... posted on Dec 14, 3415 reads

Against All Odds: MacLaren & Yeboah
Jim MacLaren and Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah have what seems like an improbable story. Jim MacLaren was an All-American athlete with a future that knew no bounds. At 22, his life was changed dramatically when he was hit by a bus and lost a leg. He overcame his physical limitations and become a top Ironman triathlete. Eight years later, Jim had another accident. Where was the meaning in all this sufferin... posted on Dec 17, 3379 reads

The Surprising Science of Motivation
Bidding adieu to his last "real job" as Al Gore's speechwriter, Dan Pink went freelance to spark a right-brain revolution in the career marketplace. Now a career analyst and author of several bestsellers, Dan Pink has changed the way companies view the modern workplace. In this Ted Talk, Pink examines the puzzle of motivation, starting with a fact that social scientists know but most managers don'... posted on Jan 10, 4001 reads

Born To Help
What is the essence of human nature? Flawed, say many theologians. Vicious and addicted to warfare, wrote Hobbes. Selfish and in need of considerable improvement, think many parents. But biologists are beginning to form a generally sunnier view of humankind. The somewhat surprising answer at which some biologists have arrived is that babies are innately sociable and helpful to others. This New Yor... posted on Jan 15, 3670 reads

To Be A Better Leader: Give Up Authority
In chaotic times, an executive's instinct may be to strive for greater efficiency by tightening control. But the truth is that relinquishing authority and giving employees considerable autonomy can boost innovation and success at knowledge firms, even during crises. Our research provides hard evidence that leaders who give in to the urge to clamp down can end up doing their companies a serious dis... posted on Feb 3, 6274 reads

The Child Who Paints Like An Old Master
A street scene from the paintbrush of a child usually involves triangle-topped boxes for houses. And often an unnaturally large dog. But Kieron Williamson's attempts are so beautifully rendered that artists ten times his age will be filled with envy. Experts have said that the six-year-old's atmospheric paintings, which began with harbor scenes and expanded to include rural vistas, animal portrait... posted on Jan 24, 4953 reads

What Can You Live Without?
It all began with a stop at a red light. While Kevin Salwen and his 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, were waiting at a traffic light, they saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other. "Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal," Hannah protested. She pestered her parents about inequity, insisting that she wanted to do somethi... posted on Jan 27, 6052 reads

Designing Cities for Happiness?
What would happen if happiness was the main focus of city planning? Enrique Penalosa asked this very question as the mayor of Bogota, Colombia's capital city of 7 million. In his three years of service, the city built and improved 1200 parks and playgrounds, 300 kilometers of bikeways, and 202 schools, as well as planted 100,000 trees and reduced traffic by 40 percent. Penalosa now travels the wor... posted on Apr 4, 5506 reads

Championing Religious Tolerance
With a rising awareness of religious-based conflict and violence around the world, interfaith dialogue and education is more important than ever. As a college student committed to issues of social justice, Eboo Patel noticed that religion was often left out of diversity discussions. After discovering the ways Dorothy Day used her Catholicism to inspire her social justice work, Patel began explori... posted on Mar 29, 1868 reads

A Lift That Gave Me Joy
Last fall, before Thanksgiving, I was making my way in my car out of the shopping center parking lot. I was all alone in the car. I noticed a woman laden with bags and her two boys, one carrying a pumpkin and the other another bag. On a random impulse, I rolled down my window and asked "Would you like a ride?" "Oh yes!" was their excited reaction. This was special for me because, as a handicappe... posted on Apr 2, 2848 reads

Fairness: An Evolutionary Advantage?
The best place to see the Golden Rule in action is... at the grocery store? That's what science columnist John Tierney says. In a recent study, WalMart shoppers of Hamilton, Missouri scored higher in a test of fairness toward strangers than clan-based communities around the world. Researchers explain that developing "market norms" promotes general levels of "trust, fairness and cooperation" with s... posted on Apr 8, 2612 reads

Meet The Boss
Lily Kanter makes money so she can give it away. And she's good at it. After retiring as a multimillionaire at age 35, she and her husband started a family foundation to support amazing causes and social entrepreneurs. Yet when asked to pinpoint her proudest accomplishment, Kanter admits it's a work in progress: "Figuring out how to do the dance of running a successful company, but also running a ... posted on Apr 14, 3911 reads

Food for Thought... in a Jar?
When I worked in a busy office, most of my co-workers kept jars of candy on their desks to enjoy and share with others. Constantly battling the "bulge," I hated these temptations, but nevertheless often gave in to them. Finally, I decided to put out a jar of my own "feel good" stuff, with no calories. I bought a beautiful jar and spent one whole weekend at home cutting up colorful strips of paper ... posted on May 3, 3942 reads

An Artist's Life
"I walked into this little painting gallery and nobody was there, just a room full of paintings- not paintings that I found very interesting, but I was killing time." So begins an unlikely adventure in which Richard Whittaker learns about a 97-year-old painter still at work and giving watercolor workshops even though he was blind. Literally a few hours after setting foot in Claremont Fine Arts, W... posted on May 11, 3272 reads

The I of Marriage
We all know there's no "I" in team. But a new study suggests that having too much "I" in marriage might be a problem as well. In a study that examined over 150 middle-aged and older married couples as they discussed a recent conflict, UC Berkeley researchers found that couples who used words like "we," "our," and "us" displayed high levels of positive emotional behavior and low levels of physiolo... posted on May 19, 4291 reads

Pay What You Want
Dawn Frierdich stood at the counter. Surrounded by the rich aroma of freshly baked breads, pastries, and cookies, she finally settled on three loaves of bread and an iced tea. But when it came time to pay, her cashier, Mike Miller, redirected her to the donation jar on the counter. This week, Panera Bread Company, a national bakery and restaurant chain, launched its new nonprofit store in Clayton,... posted on May 21, 4216 reads

What Adults Can Learn from Kids
"I loved to write from the age of four, and when I was six my mom bought me my own laptop...I wrote over 300 short stories on that little laptop, and I wanted to get published. Instead of just scoffing at this heresy that a kid wanted to get published, or saying 'wait until you're older,' my parents were really supportive." Since publishing her first book at the age of 7, Adora Svitak, now 12, has... posted on May 24, 3989 reads

The Kindness Habit
"Last winter I was going through a rough patch in my life. I had a bunch of terrible things going on around me. I felt very distant and became quite selfish. I hated the way I was feeling and one day I woke up and told myself, 'You are above this, stop feeling sorry for yourself.' Then I tried out an experiment, and it has definitely changed me for the better. Every day, I would do at least one ac... posted on May 30, 2766 reads

Kindness Goes Around, and Comes Around
It is so often true that "what goes around, comes around," and that life lessons often walk in through the most unexpected doors. On one hot summer day, a single mother and her son find themselves on a broken down bus. When their fellow elderly passengers grow unbearable hot and uncomfortable, the mother-son duo hand out all their food without a second thought, even though they have no money to sp... posted on Jul 10, 8685 reads