How can you help fight for sustainable agriculture, forestry and tourism, and contribute to mitigating climate change, protecting wildlife habitats and combating child labor on farms? By looking for the green frog seal on the products you buy. It’s Rainforest Alliance’s green frog. That green frog symbol allows consumers to identify a legitimately sustainable product or service and […]

For International Women’s Day, The Good Times would like to share the following story about the positive effects women have on other women. It’s told by someone who takes an evening class at Stanford: “The last lecture was on the mind-body connection – the relationship between stress and disease. The speaker (head of psychiatry at Stanford) […]

workers

Fair labor. Worldwide. That’s what Verité proposes. Verité ensures better labor conditions for workers everywhere.  According to the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship who cites the United Nations, “more than 450 million people are low-wage agricultural workers, 165 million children work, 12 million people are slaves and 105 million people cross borders each year in search of […]

A short few columns in the January 19-25 issue of The Economist brings good news about school reform that could help improve the education and lives of poor (and other) students. The article states that such traits as curiosity, optimism, conscientiousness and determination are indicators of success. Intelligence and learning alone don’t bring about academic achievement. And, […]

The volunteer emergency medical technician dropped the book she was reading, slung her jacket on, fastened her helmet and jumped on her ambucycle, weaving through traffic to reach the accident before the ambulance could make it to the scene through the busy Israeli streets. A United Hatzalah medic, she was responding to one of about 550 calls […]

The Good Times is not in the habit of re-posting other people’s texts, but this message of hopefulness warrants all the attention it can get. It’s a blog post written by John Yemma, Editor of The Christian Science Monitor. Click here for the entire text. This is the last paragraph: “Here are some reasons for hope: […]

Lots of good news is coming from social entrepreneurs. For instance,  The Guardian has published a piece called “The young social entrepreneurs who are changing the world,” which mentions the important and brilliant accomplishments of some of these inspiring individuals. One of those featured in this article is Fraser Doherty. He founded SuperJam, and invests […]

  At the end of this year, let’s celebrate some of mankind’s accomplishments. We chose to attack some salient global health issues, and we can now legitimately say that we can look forward to the end of HIV/AIDS, and that we can end mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS within a few years. We’ve reduced death by […]

How can luxury benefit the environment?  Here’s one example. &Beyond is recognized as a world leader in luxury adventure travel and safaris. Yet &Beyond’s company vision reads: “Our roots are in Africa where we run over 40 magical safari lodges and camps in the most breathtaking parts of the continent and, through this, sustain hundreds […]

Publicly available but worth repeating, here are Richard Branson’s 5 top tips to starting a successful business: “1. Listen more than you talk We have two ears and one mouth, using them in proportion is not a bad idea! To be a good leader you have to be a great listener. Brilliant ideas can spring […]