An Inspirational Teacher

Rita Pierson is an educator in Houston, Texas. She believes strongly in the power she and other teachers have to influence children and young people. Her impact is illustrated in a story she tells about a boy’s reaction after doing poorly on a quiz. The student missed 18 out of 20 questions, but Pierson graded the test a +2 and drew […]

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Fourteen Years of Helping People in India

The Good Times has already reported on the sustained efforts of Friends of India, but more good news has ensued from the non-profit charity. Despite hard times, an anonymous donation of 100,000 Swiss francs is helping the organization achieve its goals. What are Friends of India’s achievements? Through the Richard Walsh Music Project, for example, Friends […]

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New Light

Urmi Basu is a woman from India who is making a difference. She founded New Light, a non-profit organization in Kolkata, whose mission is to “promote gender equality through education and life-skill training, thereby reduce harm caused by violence and abuse to women and young children.” New Light describes itself on its website as a “community development […]

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Shining Hope in Kenya

“Shining Hope for Communities combats gender inequality and extreme poverty in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, by linking tuition-free schools for girls to accessible social services for all.” That’s how this non-profit organization founded in 2009 describes itself. It operates in the slum where one million people live without roads, electricity, or hospitals. Founder Kennedy Odede […]

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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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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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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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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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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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