Young Heroes of 2004
Gina invented a road-paving material from recycled plastic bottles. Ellie ran a web site with copyright-free literature for people learning English as a second language. Kevin placed detectors on school vending machines to regulate their electrical usage. Twelve year old Renee started a battery recycling initiative in her elementary school. Laurel founded an after-school program for disadvanta... posted on Oct 29, 1131 reads

Sydney Peace Prize
"I hate Miss Mitten." At 5, that was her first coherent sentence she ever put on paper. Today, Arundhati Roy is a celebrated author whose books have sold millions worldwide, winner of many awards including the Booker, and a human rights activist. Yesterday, she won the Sydney Peace Prize and she is donating all of her $50,000 prize to three Aboriginal community organizations in Australia!... posted on Nov 4, 1221 reads

Curing Poverty
In 1985, Jeffrey Sachs helped Bolivian government recover from 25,000 percent inflation. A few year later, at 35, he rescued Poland securing his reputation as an economic savior. And now, he's turning his attention to Africa. Sachs believes that Africa, through no fault of its own, is trapped. The economist is calling for $45/person in foreign aid for the next 10 years. As an American, he note... posted on Nov 10, 1075 reads

The Gates of Central Park
While February 2005 may seem like eons away, it is not, at least for Christo and Jeanne-Claude. That is when the artists will finally realize their 24-year-old dream of decorating 23 miles of Central Park's walkways with 7,460 gates, 16 feet tall and topped with translucent saffron-color fabric.... posted on Dec 10, 890 reads

Cognitive Overload
Richard Levy has a plan that's part technology, part caffeine, part rolled-up-sleeves simplicity: take a data Sabbath one day a week. The University of Washington professor says that technology tools have made our lives simpler but have also stirred up deep unease. The need for speed is shrinking our attention spans, prompting our search for answers to take the mile-wide-but-inch-deep route and s... posted on Dec 1, 1431 reads

Cashing-in Million Dollars
While most folks their age look forward to winding down, a married pair of Chicago chemists decided to cash-in their million dollars of retirement to change the world -- at least Africa, to start with. In reaction to money-motivated pharmaceutical giants and the U.S. refusing to join the United Nations in making AIDS drugs globally available, Paul Lartey and Alexandra Graham have launched a plan ... posted on Jan 8, 1454 reads

Returning a Favor
A Buddhist monk in Canada stunned his congregation by putting his temple up for sale, in a bid to raise half a million dollars for victims of the Asian tsunami tragedy. For the abbot, Thich Nguyen Thao, the pledge is an expression of gratitude to the people of Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia who provided them refuge when they fled Vietnam. "They housed and fed us. This is a small gesture to tha... posted on Jan 11, 1121 reads

A Dying Man's Dream Fulfilled
As the daylight hours began to fade, a strange group congregated on St. Paul's West Side. Minstrels with guitars and harps scampered quietly beside maidens with bells on. Cars slowed in wonderment. The sound of a tuning accordion could be faintly heard outside the window of Frank Tunison's home. He didn't have a clue Thursday evening that in minutes, a fantasy would come true. It began when Tuniso... posted on Oct 2, 3774 reads

The Slow Money Movement
What if you were told that one solution to crises such as global warming and the worldwide financial meltdown could be unearthed in the simple act of growing your own food? Nothing drastic; nothing revolutionary. Just a window box for a tomato plant in your kitchen."It's remarkable, but people who grow their own food, who reconnect with the soil, can immediately appreciate the implications of an e... posted on Nov 18, 3149 reads

Meditation and the Brain
Meditation can modify the brain. That's what Richard Davidson's new study shows, further disproving the old notion that our brains don't change in adulthood. With the help of Dalai Lama's eight most accomplished meditators, with 10,000 to 50,000 hours over a period of 15 to 40 years, Davidson's study unambiguously showed that meditation on "unconditional compassion" activated the trained minds o... posted on Jan 20, 1188 reads

Antiprenuer
Imagine a chain of restaurants serving only locally-sourced food. Or an artist-controlled radio network. Or a consumer co-op for organic clothing. No sweatshops. No ads. Just sustainable, accountable companies. Antiprenuer is a project to challenge the giant corporations by harnessing the entrepreneurial spirit of activists. Instead of protests and boycotts, they want to "start putting our creat... posted on Jan 21, 1775 reads

Solar Paint
Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun's power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day. The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun's invisible, infrared rays. Like paint, the composite can be sprayed onto other materials and used as portable electricity. A sweater coated in the material could power a cell ph... posted on Jan 26, 1455 reads

Sacred Mirrors
The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York City, is the venue artist Alex Grey designed and built to house his most widely known series of paintings. His highly developed knowledge of human anatomy and consciousness are brought to life through his painstakingly detailed paintings that provide viewers a stunning visual language to map the different levels of their own being. ... posted on Jan 29, 1431 reads

Corporate Tricksters
On December 3, Dow Chemical "spokesman" Jude Finisterra appeared on the BBC to make an astonishing announcement: His company, now parent to Union Carbide, would mark the 20th anniversary of the lethal gas leak in Bhopal, India, which killed 20,000 and injured 120,000, by paying out $12 billion to the survivors—"simply because it is the right thing to do." Unbelievable? Sure it was. Within a few ... posted on Mar 4, 1538 reads

Invent
As an adolescent, Clifford Ross was an apathetic science student but obsessed by Tom Swift. Now 52, Mr. Ross has become a character appropriate to a boys' adventure novel. An artist and businessman, he recently became an inventor - of a camera unusual enough to capture the attention of serious scientists, including the kinds who work for the government, experimenting with nuclear fusion, space tra... posted on Mar 8, 959 reads

Environmental Evangelicals
A core group of influential evangelical leaders has put its considerable political power behind a cause that has barely registered on the evangelical agenda, fighting global warming. These church leaders, scientists, writers and heads of international aid agencies argue that global warming is an urgent threat, a cause of poverty and a Christian issue because the Bible mandates stewardship of God'... posted on Mar 15, 1371 reads

Stress Relief
In a small but highly provocative study, a University of Wisconsin-Madison research team has found, for the first time, that a short program in "mindfulness meditation" produced lasting positive changes in both the brain and the function of the immune system. The findings suggest that meditation, long promoted as a technique to reduce anxiety and stress, might produce important biological effects ... posted on Mar 16, 3542 reads

Wonder Welders
The self-styled "wonder welders" of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania were offered technical training in welding by a local businessman in an imaginative scheme which has changed the lives of polio victims who previously had to beg on the streets to live. The welder's artistic collective has built a reputation for designing innovative and unusual metal animal sculptures that has provided these men with pri... posted on Mar 22, 1866 reads

Marathon
Pondering life on his 30th birthday and finding something lacking, Dean Karnazes staggered home from a night out drinking with friends, put on his gardening shoes and went for a run. A 30-mile run. All night.When he survived that, he set his sights on a 100-mile race. Then 135 miles. Then 199 miles. Then a marathon at the South Pole. Last summer he completed 262 miles non-stop.... posted on Mar 31, 1343 reads

Free Patents
Why is IBM, which earns more than $1 billion a year from licensing and selling its intellectual property, deciding to share some its patents for free? Simple economics. It believes there is more profit in collaboration and open source on its ideas rather than jealously guarding its patents with a team of lawyers. ... posted on Apr 13, 1381 reads

Invest in Life
Oral Lee Brown made a promise to a group of 23 East Oakland, Calif. first-graders in 1987, “Stay in school, and I’ll send you to college.” The realtor began saving immediately, putting $10,000 per year in a fund from her $40,000 salary. Over the years she tracked their progress, mentored them, took them on recruiting trips to colleges, attended their high school graduations, and sent 19 of t... posted on Apr 14, 1909 reads

The Hunger Project
Despite a food distribution system that can put a can of soda within arms reach of every person, one-fifth of the world's population suffers from chronic hunger and 41,000 of them, mostly children, die each day. Instead of looking to just feed the one-billion hungry mouths with aid, one NGO views those one-billion mouths as hard-working creative people that are an instrumental part of the solution... posted on Apr 22, 1171 reads

Universe
The Hubble telescope celebrates its 15th birthday this week, and in that time it has provided scientists breakthrough images on everything from the birth of stars, to the age and expansion rate of the universe, to the presence of dark matter, to comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's impact with Jupiter. Take a virtual journey thru Hubble's top 10 discoveries. ... posted on Apr 29, 2766 reads

The Refugee
After Saigon fell 30 years ago, a 6-year-old Tran Nguyen Toan became a refugee as he left Vietnam in his pajamas aboard an overcrowded flotilla of 10 boats, 9 of which sank in the storms they encountered over the two week journey. With the help of strangers and the United Nations, Toan went on to became a doctor that never forgot his refugee roots, devoting himself to improving childbirth practic... posted on Apr 30, 1196 reads

Women Build
Women Build is a partnership of Habitat for Humanity and the Lowe's chain of home improvement stores that has built 650 home so far. This year’s partnership will kick-off around Mother’s Day in 15 US cities and will give women a chance to help needy families. ... posted on May 6, 802 reads

The Nature Challenge
When Dr. David Suzuki, a noted Canadian scientist, broadcaster and environmentalist, speaks to an audience on the importance of protecting nature, the question most often asked is, “What can I do?” Based on his foundation’s scientific research, they came up with The Nature Challenge, outlining the ten most effective ways to conserve nature and improve our quality of life. ... posted on May 19, 1631 reads

Green Business
General Electric's CEO Jeffrey Immelt has launched Ecomagination in an effort to invest in green technologies that will clean GE's own processes and capture business from the increasing demand for green technologies from developed countries. Is this green washing? Perhaps, however if this green effort is legitimate it could be a catalyst for more companies and perhaps the US government to take sus... posted on Jun 1, 1301 reads

10,000 Year Clock
The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and "Library" projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to todays "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. The hope is that by building a 10,000 year clock, it will inspire people would build institutions with si... posted on Jun 7, 1320 reads

The Illiterate Surgeon
Fistula is a horrible condition that afflicts many African woman with uteruses that have been badly damaged by a trauma in the birthing process, often leaving them shunned by their husbands and communities. Mamitu Gash is one of the leading fistula surgeons in the world, having treated thousands of patients and trained hundreds of doctors. She is also illiterate. ... posted on Jun 15, 1535 reads

Educational Entrepreneur
Five years ago, Teddy Blecher started a university with no resources other than sending out letters of invitation from his fax machine to 350 schools asking the brightest and poorest students to apply to the new university – promising them the “best business education in Africa”. After beginning with a borrowed building, a handful of business collogues for teachers, and photocopies of keyboa... posted on Jun 21, 1306 reads

Friendship among Women
Up until recently is was generally believed that when people experienced stress, it triggered a hormonal cascade that sent the body into a flight or fight response. However a UCLA study now suggests that women respond to stress differently than men, with a calming release of the hormone oxytocin that causes them to make and maintain friendships with other women. Oxytocin release in the brain has ... posted on Jun 23, 2354 reads

Kickstart
Dedicated to the proposition that low-tech hardware could transform the lives of Kenya's farmers by making their work profitable, Martin Fisher and Nick Moon developed a revolutionary small pressure pump for irrigation called the MoneyMaker. The invention allows subsistence farmers to irrigate significantly more land, and begin growing cash crops. There are now more than 24,000 pumps in operation,... posted on Jul 2, 1235 reads

Sompop
Sompop Jantraka's life is threatened everyday by the power, big money and corruption that rules Thailand's sex industry. Despite the risks, he works tirelessly to save young women from being sold by their families to the violence of the prostitution by providing these girls an education, job training & employment assistance. One of his organization, Daughters Education Program has given over 1,000... posted on Jul 9, 1022 reads

The Support Economy
Shoshana Zuboff, a professor at Harvard Business School, argues that consumers today want more than cheap goods and derisory customer service, instead, they are crying out for organisations that can be trusted to act on their behalf and help them to navigate the complexities of modern life. Dubbed the support economy, these organizations could be trusted to act as personal assistants by assuming r... posted on Jul 15, 1332 reads

E-Aid
The bureaucracy of traditional aid organizations like the USAID has lead to the funding of ineffective projects because there is little feedback from recipients. Tired of failed projects, Mari Kuraishi and Dennis Whittle, former World Bank strategists, created an “E-Bay” style foreign aid marketplace in which individual donors can chose projects to fund directly. The website also tracks the pr... posted on Jul 20, 1732 reads

The Great Communicators
Can cell phones empower women in poverty? Iqbal Quadir, founder of Grameen Phone in Bangladesh, has seen that giving women connectivity leads to dependability, which then leads to specialization and then productivity. Not only have Grameen’s phone ladies provided their villages necessary communication for economic development and services, they have also balanced their villages’ traditional pa... posted on Jul 22, 1424 reads

Collective Good
As of 2004, more than 600 million cell phones were waiting to be recycled. These phones contain toxic elements like Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, and Arsenic which will pollue air and water supplies if they enter the waste stream.... posted on Aug 2, 691 reads

Imagination
In an effort to reduce student's fear of failure and encourage them to take musical risks, Music conservatory professor Benjamin Zander, decided to give them, in advance, the grade the wanted most, A's. The one condition is that two weeks into the school year students must write a letter, in the past tense and dated May of next year, to Mr. Zander describing what they have learned, what type of p... posted on Aug 10, 1242 reads

DVDs to ashes, CDs to dust
In the future, you may be able to dump crummy movies and second rate music into the compost heap. The Japanese company Pioneer is developing biodegradable DVDs and CDs. The discs are made of a starch derived from corn. When the new technology goes into mass production, it is expected to be cheaper than the current plastic discs.... posted on Aug 16, 1299 reads

US Dream Academy
Twenty years ago, when a friend brought him to perform at a prison, singer Wintley Phipps was alarmed by the number of African American inmates. When he realized that nearly 70% of children of prisoners will become prisoners themselves and 80% of prisoners were high school drop-outs, he knew had to do something. So with the motto, "a child with a dream is a child with a future" he created the US D... posted on Aug 20, 992 reads

Non-Toxic Technology
What can clean up oil spills, toxic waste, nerve gas and harmful bacteria with nearly zero energy consumption and at virtually no cost? Paul Stamets is a pioneering US researcher that has discovered the solutions that the lowly mushroom can offer in cleaning toxins out of our environment. ... posted on Sep 6, 2697 reads

Natural Painkiller
Instead of popping pills to cure your next body ache, try olive oil instead. The active ingredient - found in greater concentrations in fresher olives - is called oleocanthal and inhibits the activity of enzymes involved in inflammation in the same way as ibuprofen and other anti-inflammatory drugs.... posted on Sep 7, 1360 reads

Service Vacation
Bud Philbrook and Michele Gran opted out of a honeymoon cruise to spend a week in a rural village in Guatemala. After the local newspaper wrote a story about their unusual honeymoon, people started contacting them asking how they could plan a similar trip. In response they established Global Volunteers to provide people with an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of children around the g... posted on Sep 9, 2625 reads

Locks of Love
After witnessing her own child's hardships with hair loss due to a medical condition called alopecia areata, Madonna Coffman started Locks of Love. The non-profit collects donated hair, manufacturers them into hairpieces, and distributes them to financially disadvantaged children. The protheses provide help restore self-esteem, enabling the children to face the world and their peers. ... posted on Sep 20, 1258 reads

Against All Odds
On August 28th 2005, Bobby Martin recorded his first high-school varsity football tackle, shredding the center and taking down the quarterback at the line of scrimmage. The tears in the audience's eyes were not just from the awe of seeing a legless football player march up and down the field with his arms, but from the inspiration of witnessing the determination of this extraordinary 17-year-old. ... posted on Sep 26, 1335 reads

One World Youth Project
What if globalization was more than access to fast food and bad television? One World Youth Project is the globalization of compassion among the world's youth. The non-profit pairs elementary schools from places as different as Mongolia and New Orleans in a sister school network. So powerful are the connections that when Hurricane Katrina destroyed the New Orleans school, their sister school in Mo... posted on Oct 5, 1032 reads

What Should I Do With My Life?
What Should I Do With My Life? It's a question that haunts many of us, especially in regards to work. Po Bronson, who wrote a book with that title, posits that the answer to that metaphysical question lies in finding meaning in work and life, then deciding what values are essential in the latter and making sure they're in sync with the former.
... posted on Oct 11, 2834 reads

Stop Genocide
A year ago, a group of Swarthmore students decided to take on an unusual extracurricular activity: stopping genocide. Their Genocide Intervention Fund has raised $250,000, found backing from Mia Farrow and Bill Clinton, and has inspired over 100 colleges to raise money for the fund. ... posted on Oct 12, 923 reads

Destined to Happiness
Following a study of 4,000 twins, David Lykken, a professor emeritus in psychology at the University of Minnesota concludes that 50 percent of the satisfaction a person experiences is genetically determined. Genes influence many character traits such as the ability to handle stress. Environmental factors such as income, marital status, religion and education account for only eight percent. And the... posted on Oct 14, 981 reads

Omega Boys Club
Dr. Joe Marshall does what many consider impossible, get troubled teens, former drug dealers, and gang members off the streets, out of jail, and into colleges. By reaching out to troubled teens with dozens of programs through the Omega Boys Club in Oakland, CA, Joe has been able to send 160 kids to college. ... posted on Oct 28, 1545 reads