Leymah Gbowee, an Inspiration

Leymah Gbowee is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate with two extraordinary tales to tell — her own story and that of the untapped potential of girls in the world.  As a peace activist in Liberia, Leymah Gbowee led a women’s movement that helped end the country’s Second Civil War in 2003. She works to communicate the power […]

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A Practical Guide to Ending Global Poverty

Here’s a practical way to help end global poverty: join the efforts of the Global Poverty Project. No joke! Its vision is: “a world without extreme poverty within a generation. Our mission is to increase the number and effectiveness of people taking action to end extreme poverty. The Global Poverty Project is an educational and […]

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What the Millennium Development Goals Have Accomplished

According to John W. McArthur, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution who from 2002-2006 was Manager and Deputy Director of the UN Millennium Project, “the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] have mobilized government and business leaders to donate tens of billions of dollars to life-saving tools, such as antiretroviral drugs and modern mosquito nets. […]

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Sport as a Tool for Positive Social Change

Everyone knows the power that football, also known as soccer, has on the world. Played in over 200 countries and watched by millions upon millions of fans, it’s considered the world’s most popular sport, according to Encyclopædia Britannica and leading experts on the subject. Harnessing this power, streetfootballworld is a global network of almost 100 organizations that use […]

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The Frog that Lifts Communities Out of Poverty

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 […]

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Celebrating Women

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) […]

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Empowering Workers Everywhere

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 […]

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Success through Grit and Character

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, […]

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Emergency Rapid Response in Record Time

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 […]

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“Bad news is loud. Good news rules.”

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: […]

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