I am in a bit of a unique circumstance while writing this blog as I am sitting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia preparing to leave for a five-day trip to where more than 64 million Ethiopians live- in rural poverty. So, the implication of being a change agent for me- and thus, my answer to this [...]
Education Not all volunteer opportunities are created equal. Instead of sending volunteers overseas to paint classrooms or hand out food – projects with ephemeral impact, Jane Reitsma makes sure the impact lasts. Jane’s vision is to help secondary students learn and make a difference through international community development. It is the crux of her mission [...]
Here’s something short and sweet to cure you of your workaholic blues during the recession. These four Ghanian postal workers use the sounds of their machinery to demonstrate how to make work not feel like work. So what exactly are you listening to? The two men seated at the table slap a letter rhythmically several [...]
The Foreign Policy blog recently gave charitable celebrity, Madonna, a chide or two for uprooting villagers in order to build her school in Malawi and I feel obligated to come to her defense. No one knows the real story, but what we do know is people love to complain about rich people who are trying [...]
Imagine if – when you were young – your chore list including playing soccer for four hours a day instead of washing dishes and taking care of your little brother. For most kids – especially in Third World countries – this would be a dream come true and thanks to four creative Harvard engineers, this [...]
Social reality game designer, Jane McGonigal, has been proving to the world for awhile now that video games don’t have to be a waste of time and on March 3rd, with the debut of her latest work, EVOKE, she’s going to do it again. EVOKE is like SIMS on steriods. You think it’s difficult raising [...]
Although I thoroughly enjoy my fair trade coffee, the real day I’m waiting for is when I can fill up with fair trade gasoline. Oxfam and other humanitarian organizations are receiving a lot of glitter over the Haiti crisis, but I think it’s important to recognize some of the other campaigns they have been working [...]
Entrepreneurship Hundreds of Sub-Saharan Africans won’t go hungry this year because of a backpack and one woman. The backpack, eco-friendly and filled with sustainable farming inputs, is a result of years of Change Agent Rachel Zedeck’s sweat and tears, literally. The backpack, essential to building community cooperative farms in Kenya, came out of Rachel’s trial [...]
One of the most exhilarating aspects of traveling the world is learning the life stories of new people, but the Doctors Without Borders web debut of their “Conditional Critical” videos from the Democratic Republic of Congo this week reminded me that this exhilaration is not universal, nor is it even the majority. The vast majority [...]
Kenyan social entrepreneur Teddy Warria, founder of Common Vocabulary and New Horizons Initiative, visits the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Thursday (Dec. 3) to share his vision for addressing two critical challenges facing Africa on its path to sustainable development – improving public health and expanding access to private capital markets. The [...]
Hundreds of thousands of concerned global citizens will join the call to fight AIDS on December 1, World AIDS Day, as Camfed (the Campaign for Female Education) hosts an interactive discussion following the premiere of an award-winning documentary that unveils the effects of AIDS on African women and girls. Where the Water Meets the Sky, [...]
Narrated by Morgan Freeman, Where the Water Meets the Sky is the story of a remarkable group of women in a remote region of northern Zambia, who are given a unique opportunity: to learn how to make a film, as a way to speak out about their lives and to challenge the local traditions which [...]
It is hard to remember the sharper edge of reality when wrapped in the warm cocoon of living abroad. For the better part of each day, I am granted reprieve from having to think about anything except “what shall I have for lunch today?” and “what concerts are on tonight?” The weekends are reserved for [...]
