Perhaps, if done right, my blog will have the power to galvanize people into taking action by shining a light on the work these non-profits are doing; the responsibility they feel to leave the world a better place than they found it; the struggles they’re facing in living up to that responsibility; and, most importantly, the impact their dedication is having on the lives of those who are really struggling, the impoverished, the disenfranchised, the powerless. Pick a movement. Get involved. The world needs you.
Reese Fernandez-Ruiz was teaching children math, science, and reading skills in Payatas--one of the Philippines' biggest dump sites--when she noticed something: local mothers were making foot rugs out of scrap cloth that was furnished to them by a group of middlemen, who got the cloth directly from a factory and retrieved the finished products to sell. The mothers made a total of 20 cents per day. Before the middlemen came along, the mothers took the scrap cloth directly from the local dump site. And so, Fernandez...
What if you could take a picture of a blood sample with your smartphone and have an app tell you if someone has malaria. That's exactly what Lifelens, a breakthrough technology project designed by five young recent college grads and graduate students is able to do. Given the mortality rates of malaria across the developing world, the technology has the potential to save millions of lives. The five creators of the app—Wilson To, Jason Wakizaka, Tristan Gibeau, Cy Khormaee, and Helena Xu—range in age from 23 to 31...
This post is in partnership with CITGO Wander downtown on any given day in Birmingham, Alabama, and in the heart of the bustle of the busy streets you can see small groups of school children marveling over vegetables like radish or spinach grown on Jones Valley Urban Farm's 3.5 acres. The children are participants in Seed 2 Plate, a K-8 healthy food curriculum program aimed at counteracting "food imbalance" and educating children about where their food comes from. Birmingham, Alabama's largest city, contains some...
In the last three years, a largely unnoticed foreign aid project has delivered sanitation to 5.4 million people around the world, helping prevent thousands dying from cholera, dysentery, and other diseases. And it achieved all of this without paying for a single toilet. The Global Scaling-Up Sanitation Initiative, a marriage of Madison Avenue marketing and Main Street self-reliance, aims to drastically decrease the number of people without access to basic sanitation in the developing world, estimated at 2.5 billion...
As a young aide to President Jimmy Carter in 1978, David M. Rubenstein attended the first Kennedy Center Honors, now a gala and television show that each year celebrates several performing-arts icons and benefits the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In 2010 Mr. Rubenstein again attended the Honors but this time as the center’s chairman—and as a donor of $10-million, including $200,000 to pay for programs like the Honors. Charities can expect plenty more big gifts from Mr. Rubenstein, a co-founder...
I couldn’t resist opening an appeal that landed in my mailbox the other day from Smile Train, a charity that provides surgery to correct cleft palate in children worldwide. What intrigued me was the message stamped on the outer envelope of its solicitation: “Make one gift now and we’ll never ask for another donation again.” Really? That’s not how most direct mail works. In fact, making a gift almost ensures that you get bombarded with additional mailings. So I called Brian Dearth, Smile Train’s chief marketing...
The Livestrong Foundation is staring down the barrel of a shotgun. Its heroic founder and chairman of the board, Lance Armstrong—known for his ascendency to the pinnacle of professional cycling after a grueling battle with cancer—may finally have met his match in the form of the U.S. Justice Department. As a federal grand-jury investigation continues to hear testimony from Mr. Armstrong’s former teammates, increasingly damaging details about his alleged use of performance- enhancing substances gush into the digital...
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