A Light in India, by David Bornstein
we hear the word innovation, we often think of new technologies or silver bullet solutions — like hydrogen fuel cells or a cure for cancer. To be sure, breakthroughs are vital: antibiotics and vaccines, for example, transformed global health. But as we’ve argued in Fixes, some of the greatest advances come from taking old ideas or technologies and making them accessible to millions of people who are underserved. One area where this is desperately needed is access to electricity. In the age of the iPad, it’s easy to forget that roughly a quarter of the world’s population — about a billion and a half people (pdf) — still lack electricity. This is... posted on Nov 8 2014 (14,735 reads)

College for All: Sebastian Thrun, Udacity, by Andre Dua
Andre Dua Something big is up in higher education thanks to the advent of “massive open online courses” (MOOCs), which can reach millions around the world. What most people—including university leaders—don’t yet realize is that this new way of teaching and learning, together with employers’ growing frustration with the skills of graduates, is poised to usher in a new credentialing system that may compete with college degrees within a decade. This emerging delivery regime is more than just a distribution mechanism; done right, it promises students faster, more consistent engagement with high-quality content, as well as measurable results. This i... posted on Nov 26 2014 (13,322 reads)

Reading, Writing, Empathy: The Rise of Social Emotional Learning, by Courtney Martin
Brackett never liked school. “I was always bored,” he says, “and I never felt like any of my teachers really cared. I can’t think of anybody that made me feel inspired.” It’s a surprising complaint coming from a 42-year-old Yale research scientist with a 27-page CV and nearly $4 million in career funding. But Brackett knows that many kids feel the way he does about school, and he wants to do a complete emotional makeover of the nation’s schools. At a time of contentious debate over how to reform schools to make teachers more effective and students more successful, “social emotional learning” may be a key part of the solutio... posted on Oct 4 2014 (23,778 reads)

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, or Repair: The Pop Up Repair Shop in NYC, by Oscar Abello
away broken stuff has never been an easier choice. For some items, prices have never been lower; for others, instant obsolescence means you always have an excuse to upgrade, as if you needed an excuse. Can the possibility of repair begin to change consumer habits? New York City’s Pop Up Repair Shop was a one-month experiment this June “aimed at breaking the cycle of use-and-discard goods.” It was the first step of a larger exploration of the issue, led by Sandra Goldmark, a set and costume designer and theater professor at Barnard College. Sandra and her husband Michael Banta, a theater production manager at Barnard, launched the shop using funds from an Ind... posted on Oct 6 2014 (14,449 reads)

An Icebox, A Live Heart and the Man Who Drove and Drove, by Rohini Mohan
hospital to hospital, a 45-minute ride completed in 13 crazy minutes. A few weeks ago, Chennai traffic came to a standstill to allow a donor heart to reach a dying young woman for an urgent transplant. As families, doctors and cops waited with bated breath, this is what went down inside that wailing ambulance. In some ways, it was surprising that any good could ever come of a cadaver, a heart failure and a vehicle with a live heart in its trunk tearing through a crowded city. That it did on June 16, 2014 in Chennai, and that more than 50 people coordinated the whole thing with surreal precision to save a life, could tempt one to use words like ‘miracle’ or ‘... posted on Aug 11 2014 (16,142 reads)

The Crucial Role of Empathy, by Brittany Koteles
conversation with Molly Melching, founder and executive director of Tostan and the protagonist of Aimee Molloy’s However Long the Night.  Molly Melching was 24-years-old when she first arrived to Senegal as a University of Illinois exchange student in Dakar. She quickly fell into the rhythm of Senegalese life – in some ways, she says, feeling more at home than she ever did. School ended, but Melching stayed, teaching English at three different cultural centers to cover the rent of her $40 room. “It was enough to keep me there,” she remembers with a laugh. 40 years later, Melching’s story continues in Dakar. She is the founder and executive dir... posted on Oct 5 2014 (28,715 reads)

The Relationship Between Self-Compassion & Procrastination, by Linda Graham
something off can trigger a downward negative spiral. But a recent study suggests that being kind to yourself can help you achieve your goals. Why do we procrastinate? Often because we fear failing at the task and dread all the negative self-evaluations that might result from that failure. Unconsciously, feeling okay about one’s self becomes more important than achieving the goal. But the procrastination, of course, triggers other negative feelings about ourselves—recriminations and ruminations for “failing” to take action. In 20 years of providing psychotherapy, I’ve witnessed so many times how paralysis in the face ... posted on Oct 9 2014 (60,253 reads)

Margaret Wheatley: On Working With Human Goodness, by Margaret Wheatley
Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science, on self protection, good intentions, and what it means to greet one another as fully human. We need to remember the fact of human goodness. Of course, human goodness seems like an outrageous “fact,” since every day we are confronted by evidence of the great harm we so easily do to one another. We are numbed by the genocide, ethnic hatred and individual violence committed daily. Of the 240 or so nations in the world, nearly a quarter are currently at war. In our daily life we encounter people who are angry and deceitful, intent only on satisfying their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed a... posted on Sep 20 2014 (30,226 reads)

A Humanitarian's 4 Decades Long Adventure In Africa, by Brittany Koteles
Crucial Role of Empathy: Molly Melching A conversation with Molly Melching, founder and executive director of Tostan and the protagonist of Aimee Molloy’s However Long the Night.Molly Melching was 24-years-old when she first arrived to Senegal as a University of Illinois exchange student in Dakar. She quickly fell into the rhythm of Senegalese life – in some ways, she says, feeling more at home than she ever did. School ended, but Melching stayed, teaching English at three different cultural centers to cover the rent of her $40 room. “It was enough to keep me there,” she remembers with a laugh. 40 years later, Melching’s story continues in Dakar. S... posted on Oct 5 2014 (3,983 reads)

35 Images of Kindness Found Within Conflict, by Posted on February 13, 2014 by Kindness Blog
times of conflict and political or religious civil unrest, the power of the human spirit’s capacity for non-violent protest and kindness still shines through. Alberto Casillas, instantly became a national celebrity in Spain when he protected a group of youths who were protesting against the government’s austerity measures. The police were beating and attacking protestors who then ran into Casillas’s cafe for protection. When the police demanded he let them enter, he stood against them, with absolutely no weapons or way to defend himself and said, ”On my Life, you will not enter! It will be a massacre.” Ukrainian girl giving sandwiches to pro... posted on Sep 17 2014 (99,044 reads)

Moral Courage & The Story of Sister Megan Rice, by Michael Edwards
remain in prison for the rest of my life is the greatest honor you could give me: the story of Sister Megan Rice Where does moral courage come from - the energy and strength to challenge and transform much larger powers? A prison correspondence provides some answers. Credit:http://climateviewer.com. All rights reserved. The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oakridge, Tennessee, is supposed to be impregnable. But on July 28th2012, an 84 year-old nun called Sister Megan Rice broke through a series of high-security fences surrounding the plant and reached a uranium storage bunker at the center of the complex. She was accompanied by Greg Boertje-Obed (57) and Michael Walli (63).... posted on Oct 1 2014 (34,177 reads)

From Silos To Solution EcoSystems, by William D. Eggers and Paul Macmillan
couple of weeks ago, pianist Jonathan Biss was set to teach an online course on Beethoven’s Sonatas. A whopping 32,000 people signed up for the course when it went live, leaving Biss—who expected a mere 1000—astonished. Aptly named, Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs, are just one of the many forces redefining education as we know it. Whether it’s taking a refresher on linear algebra through Khan Academy; mastering the basics of computer programming with CodeAcademy; or pursuing actual course credit from online, for-profit institutions such as StraighterLine or the University of Phoenix, millions now draw from a rich array of educational resources. And ... posted on Oct 27 2014 (11,664 reads)

The Compassionate Instinct, by Dacher Keltner
humans are born selfish? Think again. Dacher Keltner reveals the compassionate side to human nature. Humans are selfish. It’s so easy to say. The same goes for so many assertions that follow. Greed is good. Altruism is an illusion. Cooperation is for suckers. Competition is natural, war inevitable. The bad in human nature is stronger than the good. These kinds of claims reflect age-old assumptions about emotion. For millennia, we have regarded the emotions as the fount of irrationality, baseness, and sin. The idea of the seven deadly sins takes our destructive passions for granted. Plato compared the human soul to a chariot: the intellect is the driver and the ... posted on Nov 5 2014 (22,749 reads)

Sherwin Nuland on the Art of Dying as a Lens on the Art of Living Meaningfully, by Maria Popova
greatest dignity to be found in death is the dignity of the life that preceded it.” “To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago,” Montaigne wrote in his timeless meditation on death and the art of living. And yet in the half millennium since his day, we’ve made paltry progress on coming to such nonchalant terms with the reality of death. We are stillprofoundly unprepared when it strikes our loved ones and paralyzed by the prospect of our own demise. Our discomfort with “the idea of a permanent unconsciousness in which there is neither void nor vacuum... posted on Nov 3 2014 (24,972 reads)

Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella, by Kristijojedlicki
Credit: Pinterest Recently, I have felt like I live in Seattle instead of Louisville, thanks to the rainier than usual weather. While the rain has put a damper on some outdoor activities, it hasn’t washed out one of my favorite weekday morning rituals. Nearly every morning when I arrive at work, which happens to be at a day shelter for homeless men, I am greeted warmly by some of the finest gentlemen in all of Louisville. It is one of these gentlemen who refused to let the morning rain showers dampen his spirits or mine. James used to be a frequent guest at the day shelter, and he quickly earned a special place in my heart, due to his twinkling eyes, shy smi... posted on Dec 8 2014 (23,226 reads)

Folding up the map, by Snigdha Manickavel
knew that one day maps would become obsolete, unwanted, unloved, languishing under piles of telephone books, VCRs and reams of writing paper? To unfold a map is to unfold adventure. Listen carefully as you smooth out those well-worn creases and you will hear the snapping of sails over a perfect blue ocean. Close your eyes and you will feel the steady, increasing rhythm of a train leaving the station. Your map is your ticket. To sit before an unfolded map, tracing out uneven lines of untouched road, is to feel small and humble. This world is large, barely knowable, our time here already running out. I have loved maps since I was a little girl and my days were fil... posted on Nov 11 2014 (23,574 reads)

So Much Magic around the Garden, by Michael K. Stone
do you want to work here?" asked Cleveland Elementary School's principal, interviewing Mary Schriner for a position as a special education kindergarten teacher at the Oakland, California school. "Because your school looks like a prison yard, and I'd like to change that," said Schriner. Six years later, Cleveland sports six lovely gardens that serve as real-world classrooms, an ecoliteracy program for all students, community support and recognition, and student research projects that are making tangible changes in the district food program. For 2010-2011, Cleveland was chosen to serve as a pilot school within a suite of "iconic projects" ... posted on Dec 27 2014 (32,433 reads)

Habits of Successful People: Start Before You Feel Ready, by James Clear
1966, a dyslexic sixteen-year-old boy dropped out of school. With the help of a friend, he started a magazine for students and made money by selling advertisements to local businesses. With only a little bit of money to get started, he ran the operation out of the crypt inside a local church. Four years later, he was looking for ways to grow his small magazine and started selling mail order records to the students who bought the magazine. The records sold well enough that he built his first record store the next year. After two years of selling records, he decided to open his own record label and recording studio. He rented the recording studio out to local artists, including one na... posted on Jun 25 2015 (24,574 reads)

Habits of Heart & Mind in Leadership, by Zenobia Barlow
address to the graduates of the 2009–2010 Center for Ecoliteracy Schooling for Sustainability Leadership Academy. Over the spring break, we hosted a student-organized class on food systems from a prestigious university. The students, among the nation's best and brightest, crowded into our meeting room to discuss their research about our participation in the Food Systems Project, Berkeley School Lunch Initiative, and Rethinking School Lunch. We spoke to them about creating models of schooling for sustainability, and then they peppered us with questions. We were increasingly incredulous in that virtually every question they posed posited a false dichotomy. They want... posted on Nov 17 2014 (17,141 reads)

A 19-Year-Old's Book Of Untranslatable Words, by Maptia, Co-founder Team
year Maptia.com published a blog post titled ‘11 Untranslatable Words From Other Cultures’ with illustrations by Ella Sanders, who was interning with them last summer in Morocco. The next morning they woke to a torrent of emails and tweets from thousands upon thousands of people who had commented, shared, or volunteered more suggestions for these untranslatables. We’ll let Ella share the story of what happened next... JONNY (co-founder at Maptia): Hi Ella! Wow, where to even begin... 400 days ago you were interning with us out in Morocco and today you are are holding your very own book that has just been published with Random House, 48 hours before you... posted on May 10 2021 (47,982 reads)