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A new study by the Smell & Taste Treatment and Research Foundation concluded: "Serving garlic bread at dinner enhanced the quality of family interactions. This has potential application in promoting and maintaining shared family experiences, thus stabilizing the family unit, and also may have utility as an adjunct to family therapy."... posted on Aug 20, 562 reads

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Somalia was decimated by warfare and then abandoned by the international community in 1995. The country has almost no infrastructure, no government, and no foreign aid or investment. Yet, thanks to the spirit of some irrepressible local entrepreneurs, the country is starting on the road to recovery. Some Somali see the lack of foreign aid and government as helping to create, rather than hinder, op... posted on Aug 27, 1148 reads

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Each time you log-on to the Rainforest Jukebox [http://www.rainforestjukebox.org], the site's sponsors will purchase and preserve the equivalent of two square-feet of rainforest. The website, created by Australia's 20-year-old Rainforest Information Center, features more than 40 tracks of streaming audio by Midnight Oil, Cruel Sea, the Warumpi Band, and others. Lands being saved include several t... posted on Sep 11, 585 reads

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The lunar cycle and lunar phases are observable behaviorally and physiologically in numerous life forms. These effects occur in fish, shellfish, insects, mammals (including humans), and plants. For example, shellfish renew their shells, Guppy-fish have a color sensitivity on their back that is most responsive during Full Moon, etc. ... posted on Sep 12, 478 reads

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Ryan listened as his teacher explained that villagers in Uganda were drinking bad water and could have a well with clean, running water for only seventy dollars. As a six year old, this was a lot of money, but he was determined and not only raised the seventy, but half a million and still growing. ... posted on Mar 19, 869 reads

Not an Ordinary World Cup
The soccer ball sounds like the clatter of a rattlesnake's tail, fans are barred from cheering too loudly and the sidelines are clear plastic walls meant to keep the players in-bounds -- clearly not an ordinary World Cup. Save for the goalkeepers, all of the athletes are legally blind. Welcome to the fourth World Championships of Soccer for the Blind. Spectator Marcelo Gonzalez, who coaches blind ... posted on Dec 7, 1504 reads

The Harlem Children's Zone
Once the center of a renaissance, Harlem, New York, has slowly declined, now symbolizing urban poverty and decay. But today, there's a new renaissance under way in Harlem, with the construction of new buildings, businesses and schools. One leader is Geoffrey Canada, whose vision, quite simply, is to save children, and he has amassed a staggering amount of private money -- more than $100,000,000 --... posted on Jun 22, 2126 reads

Adventure Playgrounds
There's an unusual park in Berkeley, California. Looking at it, "playground" probably wouldn't be your first thought. "Junkyard" is more like it. And well, that would be accurate. Berkeley's Adventure Playground is one of a handful of playgrounds in the United States based on a concept that grew in popularity after World War II. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark, the landscape architect C. Th.... posted on Sep 21, 3522 reads

Branded
A high schooler wears a Pepsi shirt to school on Coca-Cola day and gets suspended for insurrection. A sixth-grader covets a $500 Kate Spade bag, only to toss it a year later. A family drops $1,400 a day to take an SAT tutor along on vacation. These dispatches from a label-obsessed adolescence come courtesy of Alissa Quart, whose new book, Branded, informs readers that youthful consumerism doesn't ... posted on Jul 28, 1557 reads

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He was the top man in the CIA for his artistic genius -- he used to create disguises for spies. Now, he uses his skills to help people feel better about themselves and more at ease in the world. Prosthetic artist Robert Barron creates new noses, eyes, ears and hands for people who have lost them to disease or injury, or who never had them in the first place. His talent and craftsmanship are stagg... posted on Feb 19, 1269 reads

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Bedridden from a serious car accident, she couldn't do anything ... let alone win five national track and field titles and hold a World Record! But that's what Marilyn King did. Then she realized the power of her mental rehearsal skills and applied it to peace. She formed the UN sponsored Olympic Peace Team -- a worldwide initiative engaging Olympic champions to teach these skills to young peop... posted on Feb 8, 1336 reads

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The City of Berkeley is at it again. This time, it's the first city of its size to use biodiesel fuel called B100 for all 200 of the city's diesel vehicles -- garbage trucks, fire engines, and school buses. B100 can be made from just about any plant oil and animal fat and has far cleaner emissions than traditional petroleum.... posted on Jul 12, 772 reads

A 5 year-old Victim's Forgiveness
A child's grace and forgiveness have inspired Boston. 5-year-old Kai Leigh Harriott looked up from her blue wheelchair in the hushed courtroom and faced the man who fired the stray gunshot that paralyzed her nearly three years ago. "What you done to me was wrong," the dimpled girl with purple and yellow plastic ties in her braids said softly. "But I still forgive (you)."... posted on May 6, 3574 reads

A Priceless Wedding
The musicians were playing, the 2,000 guests were dining, the priest was preparing the ceremony and the bride was dressed in red, her hands and feet festively painted with henna. Then, under the wedding tent, the groom's family asked for more dowry. 25,000 dollars more. So Nisha Sharma, the bride, picks up her cell phone, calls the cops and lands her groom in jail. She is being hailed internati... posted on May 20, 1915 reads

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Tired of seeing soda cans and beer bottles strewn along the road of her rural Virginia hometown, 9-year-old Brooke Crowther designed a flyer and got other kids and parents together to help her clean up. It wasn't long before this little movement would become Pollution Solution Kids, spawning similar activities all over the East Coast.... posted on Jun 22, 828 reads

Quiet Soldiers of Compassion
In 1971, Baba Amte took his young son Prakash Amte to a fierce, isolated jungle to work with the Madia Gonds a tribal people: 37 years later, the family is still there and running a hospital that treats over 40,000 Madia tribals a year, a residential school and a training program for barefoot doctors. All of this free of charge. It also has an animal orphanage -- affectionately christened Amte's A... posted on Aug 29, 2322 reads

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Due to the vast destruction of tropical forests, the remaining shade-grown coffee plantations of Mexico, Central America, Colombia and the Caribbean have become the last safe haven for songbirds, hummingbirds and other native and migratory birds.... posted on Oct 25, 1306 reads

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Gregory Smith is not your average 12 year old. A college sophomore with mighty aspirations, he travels the world over, speaking to heads of state and nobel laureates, advocating world peace and children's rights. At 12, he has already dedicated his life to serving children, and is noted to pass each day singing as he goes.
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If you found yourself on the early bus in Jackson, Mississippi, you might just be lucky enough to have Sheila O'Flaherty as a fellow passenger. She would look you over, and if you happened to be under age ten, she might fumble in her canvas bag and pull out a library book, and offer to read to you between stops. If this turned out to be your regular route, say, on the way to a public school across... posted on Oct 26, 552 reads

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Started by Ben Cohen, cofounder of Ben and Jerry's, TrueMajority.com sifts through all the stuff going on in Congress. When your voice counts to create a just and sustainable world, you get an email alert. Then just by clicking one button a fax is sent to your congressperson in your name. It takes about 2 minutes a month and it’s free. ... posted on Sep 28, 988 reads

The Science of Boredom
Virtually everyone gets bored once in a while. Most of us chalk it up to a dull environment. "The most common way to define boredom in Western culture is 'having nothing to do'" says psychologist Stephen Vodanovich of the University of West Florida. And indeed, early research into the effects of boredom focused on people forced to perform monotonous tasks, such as working a factory assembly line. ... posted on Aug 30, 3582 reads

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While on a teaching and trekking expedition, Dr. Irvine-Halliday had an idea -- to light up rural homes without electricity. He invented White Light Emitting Diodes (WLED) which are powered by energy-renewable water mills, solar panels, wind and water turbines and pedal generators.... posted on Dec 12, 1260 reads

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One of Geneen Roth’s perhaps most well-known and controversial exercises helps people to experience what they have as "enough": in conjunction with her advice to "carry a chunk of chocolate everywhere," Roth teaches how to eat that chocolate slowly and with complete awareness. The exercise, she writes, "reminds us to wake up, pay attention, stop reaching for what we don’t have, and focus on wh... posted on Oct 15, 1138 reads

How To Get Unstuck
"Do you feel overwhelmed? Exhausted? Directionless? Hopeless? Battle-torn? Worthless? Alone? These symptoms are what I call The Serious Seven -- the seven most common indicators that you're stuck. If you're feeling one of these emotions, it's likely you -- or your organization -- is stuck. I think one of the most interesting observations we gleaned from studying stuck teams is that successful team... posted on Sep 4, 6211 reads

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After any disaster, people and resources organize without planning into coordinated, purposeful activity. Everything happens quickly and a little miraculously. These self-organized efforts create effective responses long before official relief agencies can even make it to the scene. But organizational theorists have had a hard time explaining or replicating this concept. Now, Margaret Wheatley ... posted on Jan 3, 1001 reads

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The 50 Cistercian Sisters of Mount Saint Mary Abbey rise each morning at 3, pray until nearly 8 and then begin their work day making chocolate, the labor they have chosen to support themselves and their life of what they call "beautiful simplicity." Except that now 20% (and increasing) of their orders are coming in online.... posted on Apr 17, 1022 reads

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Dawn and Ed started their family by adopting two children. A year later, they adopted a child from an Native Adoption Program and three from Vietnam. Then, two more from DHS and one from India! With a 500 dollar grant from a local club, Dawn started an adoption agency in 1977 to share her knowledge. Today, MAPS helps children worldwide ... from starting an orphanage to building a one-room sch... posted on Jan 11, 804 reads

Newspaper by Children from the Slums
Children from New Delhi's slums have come together ... to start their own newspaper! 'Udayachal' has become a vehicle for highlighting the problems and concerns of the slum dwellers. Trained by the Gandhi Media Literacy program, the paper's associate editor enthusiastically noted, "Just watch us for the next six months and we will be able to do wonders. Udayachal is not just meant to be a newsp... posted on Aug 6, 1083 reads

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He's 22, leads an organization with four employees, and through his website is able to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of days and move thousands of people to action. That's Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org ... he's redefining peace activism and highlighting the power of the web as a tool for organization.... posted on Feb 13, 1709 reads

Friends Until the End
They were neighbors, then became buddies and now they're friends till death do them apart. Walter Jednak, 85, just had a heart attack and his best friend, Howard Hunter, 73, is helping him stay alive. The inspiring story of this uncommon friendship has inspired tons of emails and letters from readers, after it was first published.... posted on Sep 24, 1301 reads

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A decade ago, big food companies dismissed animal welfare research in slaughter houses as "emotional", but now McDonalds, KFC, Wendy's and Burger King are actually funding them. McDonalds, for instance, buys 2 billion eggs every year and has pressed the industry to increase by half the amount of space it allocates to egg-laying hens in factory hen houses. They also told its egg suppliers to stop... posted on Jul 4, 1059 reads

Doctors Going the Extra Mile
Every year, about 160 Filipino born doctors in California, pack-up and head to the Philippines to provide free medical services, including medication and operations, for the indigent. This year, 160 of them made the trip and saved many lives.... posted on Jan 9, 1418 reads

Free Wheelchairs
Twenty five years ago, when mechanical engineer Don Schoendorfer saw a disabled Moroccan woman dragging herself across a dirt road with her one good arm, he asked himself a question: what would it take to build and ship simple, durable, and inexpensive wheelchairs for those in need in the developing world? A whole lot of heart and $41.17. The Free Wheelchair Mission was born. Instead of patentin... posted on Jul 31, 1382 reads

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Dolores and Linda have an idea that's coming to life -- buy a cruise ship that can hold 700 people, house a World Peace Museum honoring heroes of peace, and deliver volunteer support and humanitarian aid to needy countries. Meet the Peace Ambassadors!... posted on Mar 8, 988 reads

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A growing body of research suggests that millions are managing their stress in precisely the wrong way. They compartmentalize by stressing out all day — and then push off relaxation to isolated blocks of time like evening yoga classes and weekend getaways. But this binge-and-purge approach to stress management won't work. Wall Street Journal reports: you have to deal with stress as it happen... posted on Mar 20, 1224 reads

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Jeff Lowenfels had an idea. There are over 70 million gardeners in the U.S. alone, many of which plant vegetables and harvest more than they can consume. If every gardener plants one extra row of vegetables and donates their surplus to local food banks and soup kitchens, a significant impact can be made on reducing hunger. Jeff's idea was pretty good -- last year, 1.3 million pounds of produce ... posted on Apr 15, 593 reads

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Before the caterpillar turns into a butterfly, biologists note that there is a huge occurence of 'imaginal cells'. At first, they aren't recognized by the immune system so the caterpillar's immune system wipes them out as they pop up. It isn't until they begin to link forces and join up with each other that they get stronger and are able to resist the onslaught of the immune system, until the imm... posted on Apr 16, 1739 reads

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She has sold 143 million albums but now this mother of two children is on a quest to find the meaning of life! She's publishing a series of kiddie storybooks, working with scientists who have discovered how to neutralize radiation and plotting to make a documentary about Kabbalah, a religious philosophy based on Jewish mysticism. And she says her songs are about "letting go of illusions and thin... posted on Apr 22, 2323 reads

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He was solving math problems at 14 months, reading and correcting adults' grammar by 2 -- the same age he decided to become a vegetarian. He was explaining photosynthesis to kindergarten classmates at 5. He breezed through 10 grades of school in three years, graduated with honors from high school at 9, founded an international youth advocacy organization, met with prime ministers and presidents, a... posted on Apr 29, 1570 reads

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Searching for the comics in the local paper, a front-page article caught Craig Kielburger's attention. He read about a young boy from Pakistan who was sold into bondage as a carpet weaver, escaped and was murdered for speaking out against child labor. Craig gathered a group of friends and founded the organization 'Kids Can Free The Children'. Seven years later, he has visited 40 countries, writt... posted on May 7, 988 reads

Hug the Trees!
The mountain people had used the forests, sustainably, for their food, shelter, medicines and fodder for animals. But one fine day, the government restricted their access and sold licenses to fell trees to the highest bidder. When the first loggers, from a sporting goods manufacturer, arrived to chop the trees, Chandi Prasad Bhatt swiftly moved to action. Along with the locals, they hugged the t... posted on May 27, 1279 reads

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Allan Snyder seems to be able to turn on a person's inner "Rain Man", and then turn it off again, with the flick of a switch. All it takes is a strange set of electrodes; and a radical new theory of autism, genius and the human brain. He asked a NY Times columnist to draw a picture of a cat four times, each time with different doses of these magnetic impulses. The results were stunning. Check t... posted on Jun 28, 2939 reads

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While it is well known that the high-tech revolution has radically transformed late 20th century civilization, it is less well-known that high-tech development also harms people's health as well as the environment that sustains all life. The dark side of high technology reveals polluted drinking water, waste discharges that harm fish and wildlife, and high rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and... posted on Jul 30, 582 reads

Gorillas of Saharan Africa
Five million metric tons of bushmeat are traded each year, in the Congo Basin alone. Unfortunately, most of it is illegal and poses a major threat to African wildlife. And a scientist, David Greer, is risking his life virtually every day to run anti-poaching patrols to protect some of Africa's most significant animals, including western lowland gorillas and forest elephants. Smithsonian's Paul R... posted on Jan 14, 1237 reads

Ike Says "Vamos" to Poverty in Mexico
In 1987, three neighbors in tiny Weston, Vermont, gathered over coffee to compare notes on their recent trips to Mexico. Years later one of them, Ike Patch, would say it was the best cup of coffee they ever had. Mexico has more billionaires than any other third-world country, yet 40 percent of its people live in extreme poverty -- compared with 25 percent in India -- and are not helped by their g... posted on Oct 15, 974 reads

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Raging blizzards and a wind-chill factor of minus 100 degrees didn’t deter scientist Subhankar Banerjee from quitting his high-paying job, becoming a photographer and exploring the stark wilderness of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge! With an introduction by former President Jimmy Carter, he published his images in 'Seasons of Life and Land', which quickly became the center of a political fi... posted on Aug 28, 1041 reads

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Sprinting slightly more than a mile from Brooklyn to Manhattan does not sound like an extraordinary feat of athleticism until you close your eyes and imagine the desperate conditions under which one brave firefighter did it last Sept. 11. In those impossibly frantic moments, a married father of five -- who was technically off-duty -- abandoned his vehicle at the entrance of the Brooklyn-Battery T... posted on Sep 12, 958 reads

He Gave His Life for Others
He climbed aboard boxcars filled with people and would handout scores of protective passes, then jump from the train and demand that those with Swedish "protection" be allowed off the trains. He built safe houses to keep them away from danger. He would leverage his Swedish diplomat status to alter the course of humanity. In 1944, Raoul Wallenberg saved tens of thousands of Jews in Hungary when ... posted on Sep 5, 1028 reads

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Gary Erickson's company has grown 30% every year since 1998 but still, it's different. He and his wife refused a $100 million offer to sell their business. In 2000, Gary hired a staff ecologist, who took steps such as eliminating shrink-wrap on bulk-product boxes, which now saves 90,000 pounds of plastic annually. From inception, they launched the 2080 program at work where employees can do vo... posted on Oct 9, 885 reads

Helping Children in China
Most of the children arriving at Tim Baker's doorstep, in China were abandoned because of physical problems. When Tim and his wife moved to China 15 years ago to teach English, they also volunteered at a local orphanage. But they wanted to "do more" and so now, Tim is helping build a "children's village" that takes in unwanted babies and gives them a chance at adoption.... posted on Sep 25, 1423 reads