Secure Land Ownership Lands Secure Rights

Conscious of the fact that having legal rights to land is a foundation for prosperity and opportunity, Landesa Rural Development Institute forms partnerships with governments and local organizations to ensure that the world’s poorest families have secure rights over the land they till.  Founded as the Rural Development Institute in 1967, Landesa has helped more […]

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Knitting for Newborns

Dr. Heli Bathija has started a simple yet remarkable program called Hope for the Babies to save newborn babies in Afghanistan. In a nutshell, women in several countries are knitting a specific design of baby sweater for newborns.  One is given to each baby born in a hospital. This serves two important purposes: 1) The mother comes to the […]

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Preventing Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV

Did you know? 1 baby is born with HIV every day in the US and Europe. 1,000 babies are born with HIV every day in Africa. Yet mother-to-child transmission of HIV is preventable. The organization mothers2mothers (m2m) is doing just that, preventing mother-to-child transmission of the virus. m2m’s vision “is a world in which babies […]

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More Good News in the World

The Good Times is excited to find a site that posts links to good news: it’s the Great News Network.  Some of the latest good news stories on that site are: Tokelau islands shift to 100% solar energy New opportunity for rapid treatment of malaria EU on track to exceed Kyoto emissions goal Costa Rica’s […]

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Solar Mamas

Bunker Roy is truly a visionary. He’s the now well-known founder of Barefoot College in Tilonia, India. Recently The Good Times had the privilege to meet Bunker and hear about one of his new ideas: Solar Mamas. The initiative provides grandmothers from Africa with training in solar engineering. The women who are sent to Barefoot College for six months to […]

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Extraordinary Projects by Exceptional People

Extraordinary Projects, Exceptional People, that’s how Rolex describes its Rolex Award laureates. Since back in 1976, the Rolex Awards for Enterprise have supported individuals whose dreams, spirit of enterprise and creativity have advanced human knowledge and well-being. Take Barbara Block, for instance. She is a 2012 laureate from the US. Her aim is to, “move the […]

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Putting Sustainability at the Center of Business Strategy

According to the 1994 Oslo Symposium, which aimed to examine a new approach to consumption, production and consumerism, Sustainable Consumption is defined as: “the use of services and related products which respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life while minimizing the use of natural resources and toxic materials as well as emissions […]

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Where People Live Long and Well

Here’s a story worth repeating from The New York Times. It’s about a place they call “The Island Where People Forget to Die“. The place is the island of Ikaria, in Greece. Already in the 17th century it was known as a place of longevity: its bishop wrote at the time, “The most commendable thing on this […]

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Attacking the Global Plastic Crisis

According to the large American company General Electric, ecomagination is the conglomerate’s “commitment to imagine and build innovative solutions to today’s environmental challenges while driving economic growth.” Here’s one imaginative feat highlighted on the ecomagination forum: Jeremy Rowsell, an Australian pilot and insurance industry executive, is planning to fly from Sydney to London on fuel made […]

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Find the Bright Spots

The concept of positive deviance is the the idea of identifying what is going right in an area in order to amplify it, as opposed to focusing on what is going wrong and fixing it. The term was first used in the 1990s by Tufts professor Marian Zeitlin who documented “Positive Deviant” children in poor communities who […]

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