June 2009
2 posts
Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S.... →
We don’t need a single payer system - NAW… Bankruptcies are FUN!!
WHY PHISHERS LOVE FACEBOOK →
Kind of scary… If you’re a Facebook user, beware of phishing schemes.
May 2009
3 posts
Great Class!
Before we finish for the semester I want to wish everyone a great summer. This has been a truly inspiring class; I’ve learned SO much! It’s fun to be with people from all different disciplines and see things from different perspectives. Carrie and Brian both said that they might want to be mentors for my high school entrepreneur kids. If anyone else is interested, or knows someone...
A Portfolio of Young Business Owners →
Meet six students who have already taken the entrepreneurial leap. Here is one of them. Young business owners ROCK!
Omar Faruk
Age 18, BlueStream, New York City
Omar Faruk believes that social entrepreneurship can make the world a better place. He’s CEO of BlueStream, a Web management company that specializes in helping nonprofits with limited resources. The business grossed $40,000 in...
US homeless couple marry in dream wedding
It’s so nice to have a happy story!!
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The groom wore a black tuxedo, a damask-rose pink waistcoat and tie, and an ear-to-ear smile.
He picked out his wedding outfit at a mall in Virginia — his first time ever in one of the sprawling shopping centers that are monuments to consumerism in the suburban landscape across the United States.
During his 14 years living...
April 2009
15 posts
A new search engine that helps to fight hunger →
Using a certain search engine can now help provide meals to the hungry. “Hoongle” is similar to FreeRice.com, in that each time you use it, a few grains of rice goes to the United Nations Food Programme.
We found out about “Hoongle” though a write up in the New York Times Blogs, writer Jenna Wortham tells us all about the new search engine.
A search engine can pull...
Video: The challenges of the mega-city Lagos →
With over 15 million people the Nigerian city of Lagos has mega-problems dealing with the numbers of residents. The infrastructure has gone without upkeep due to corrupt governments, or simply due to lack of money. Even if it did have maintenance, the current infrastructure would not be enough for all of the people.
From the website Global Post comes this unique look at the struggle of getting...
Need a Graduation Gift?
A comment on Kiva
Columnist Chris Noseworthy of the Western Star from Newfoundland, Canada used his latest column to talk about Kiva.org. For his wife’s birthday this year, he chose to give gift certificates to the microcredit website.
This year I actually had a good idea. I got her gift certificates, among a couple of other lame things I won’t mention. The gift certificates...
Obama’s Stimulus Package Promises $30m for Micro...
From Business Week, Feb. 26
A micro lending phenomenon that has been slowly growing in the United States for the past 30 years is now picking up steam as a result of the credit freeze. The latest stimulus package announced by Barrack Obama, US President has provisioned 6 million dollars to fund micro loans in 2009 and 24 million dollars to market and manage micro lending programmes in the...
Private but public →
Here is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about forced corporate social responsibility. An interesting take from such a conservative paper.
Teens who can't find jobs make up their own
The Wall Street Journal had this article in it’s online edition. It’s longer in the print edition. I’m disappointed that they have a picture of a lemonade stand, when kids have such innovative and creative businesses.
By Sue Shellenbarger
Associated PressYouthful entrepreneurs selling their wares.
Amid the gloom, here’s a story to brighten your day: Faced with thedarkest...
An eco-friendly house and a series of rusted Texas... →
Check out pictures of the 10 winners of the AIA awards. Some are pretty cool, others are just weird. All are eco-friendly.
Groupe Danon →
Danon yogurt company is a multinational corporation that is doing some great work in conjunction with the Grameen Bank. They have created high nutritional value product for the very poor to ensure that people - especially children - get a full compliment of vitamins. The hire local people and produce the product in local plants. This is CSR at its finest!
“I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.”
– Sydney Biddle Barrows, in Marian Christy, ”Mayflower Madam’ Tells All,’ Boston Globe, 1986
Kids Starting Businesses →
Encouraging Kids to Launch Businesses Excerpts from The Lemonade Stand Most parents who want to motivate their kids to start their own businesses do it for one reason: They feel that in the long run, their children will lead more satisfying lives by being self-employed. While this may be an honorable reason, your kids will not be swayed to start businesses by this logic. Take it from someone...
Pacific Sociological Association
I presented a paper at PSA this week. It went well. The real story is all of the interesting and socially conscious papers that others presented. Here are some of the presentations that I heard: Culturally responsive curriculum: Transforming survival into resilience, The inequality of Obesity, Middle school disinvestment on Mexican American youth. While some of the sessions were about...
“The secret of eternal youth is arrested development.”
– Alice Roosevelt Longworth
Kresge Foundation Commits $4 Million to Eliminate... →
The Kresge Foundation in Troy, Michigan, has announced a two-year initiative designed to raise public awareness of the environmental health hazards posed by lead while advancing community efforts to eliminate childhood lead poisoning.
As part of its Getting-the-Lead-Out initiative, Kresge will engage with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its Lead Poisoning Prevention Program to...
Chase Community Development Competition Opens for... →
Chase, the U.S. consumer and commercial banking business of JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Enterprise Community Partners have announced the opening of the 2009 Chase Community Development Competition.
Held in New Orleans for the second consecutive year, this real-estate design competition matches the practical design ideas of college students working in partnership with local nonprofits with the...
Ashoka's Youth Venture and Staples Launch Annual... →
Ashoka, a world community of social entrepreneurs, and the Staples Foundation for Learning, a private foundation created by Staples, Inc., have announced the launch of the third annual Staples/Ashoka Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition.
The global competition is part of Ashoka’s Youth Venture, an initiative that identifies and fosters young entrepreneurs all over the world who are...
March 2009
9 posts
Kids with learning disabilities →
This is a research area of mine. I found this site that seems to be a clearing house. Learning disabilities are difficult to support because many teachers are clueless about them, and there are so many types. These kids have a really hard time in lots of ways. There are many more kids with LDs than one might expect.
Hard times are had by all
This is a request more than a post. My brother, who is 40, has just been laid off from his job. He has his rent paid through the end of the month and $20 left over. He is in need of work (duh) and possibly a new place to live if he doesn’t get a job. He is putting out resumes, etc. to all sorts of places including McDonald’s. His line of work is telemarketing. He will also need...
“Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to...”
– Mark Twain
Bad microlending →
Overall microlending has had amazing positive effects, but, like everything else, there is always a dark side. This short article is about one Mexican bank that is gouging the poor. Sheesh!
Thoughts on Presentations
The presentations last week were all so good! Everyone did a great job, and I learned a lot. I was struck by the diversity of interests in our class - from what grocery stores do to how to connect using internet technology. I’m sure that next week will be just as enlightening. I actually had trouble putting together a presentation because there were a number of things that I wanted to...
“Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of...”
– Sir Winston Churchill
“After the Projects” on American Radio Works →
This is a great one-hour broadcast that interviews people who are thinking about moving from the projects into a new housing development. Some go, some don’t. It gives some good insight into how people are thinking about their housing.
Moving out of poverty →
This is a long study, but worth reading. It talks about housing choices through a tenant-based model.
Denver's Road Home →
The plan is quite comprehensive. You can download the entire plan at Denver’s Road to End Homelessness.pdf (1.527 Mb) It’s good reading and so interesting
February 2009
12 posts
12-year-old Makes Homeless Shelter from Trash →
12-year-old Max Wallack stole the show at Design Squad’s Trash to Treasure contest with his “Home Dome.” The contest asked kids to repurpose trash into practical inventions.
More Bo
After further consideration and having read the newsletter piece on the Fourth Quarter, I have some serious misgivings about the doings of the Matthews Center. The heart is in the right place, but I think that the method is all wrong. They will have a helluva time getting this past the community, it seems.
While I understood Tiff’s comments regarding best practices, I think that looking...
“Education: that which reveals to the wise, and conceals from the stupid, the...”
– Mark Twain
Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn →
Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other groups.
Major Interruptions In Antiretroviral Therapy... →
The vast majority of HIV-infected Texas prison inmates who receive antiretroviral therapy while incarcerated experience significant interruptions in HIV treatment after their release into the community. This disturbing finding is the result of a 4-year study of more than 2,000 inmates with HIV infection released from Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons between January 2004 and December...
“It’s a job that’s never started that takes the longest to finish.”
– J. R. R. Tolkien
The Environmental Food Crisis: A Crisis of Waste →
Over half of the food produced globally is lost, wasted or discarded as a result of inefficiency in the human-managed food chain, finds a new study by the United Nations Environment Programme released today.
This staggering amount of waste plus environmental degradation is putting an end to a 100-year trend of falling food prices, the study warns. Food prices may increase by 30 to 50 percent...
Chevy Volt →
Theoretically, I love this concept - a totally electric car (well, sort of). This is supposed to travel 40 miles before it uses any gas. Here is how it works.
Would GM be in all this trouble if they had come out with this car even 3 years ago? You can put you name on a waiting list for when the car actually comes out.
Who are we as agents of change?
Sorry, no cool links on this post - just some thoughts. How many times have you tried to do something fabulous only to fall on your face? I have a bunch of times. It seems that the harder you try, the harder it is to get it done. Are we trying too hard? Maybe. I work with an organization that I’ve mentioned before - Global Citizens Network in St. Paul, MN. My job is to take families...
Legal Issues
The other night I zoned in on Noreen Keleshian’s comment about the lack of affordable legal services. I wondered how that could be remedied. Below are two web sites that I found that offer legal help. Overall there didn’t seem to be much out there. Most of the sites I found offered general legal information, but not advice on specific matters. If you are a poor person, where do you...
Microlending in Denver
The Adelante Foundation is a micro finance organization based in Denver. They work in Honduras. Using the Grameen model they have been working with women in rural areas of the country since 1999. I was fortunate to meet their director of development, Lindsey Daly, a couple years ago and was really impressed with their organization.
http://www.adelantefoundation.org/
Adelante’s mission is to...
Social Stock Market
There have been a number of people calling for the formation of a social stock market. The basic idea is that companies that are socially responsible are traded, but investors take a lesser gain. Of course, there are those who think it’s a dumb idea. Read these conflicting articles and see what you think.
http://www.rockfound.org/about_us/news/2008/033108social_investing.shtmlt
...
January 2009
11 posts
Guatemala
Every summer I take my son and at least a couple other people and go to Guatemala to help in villages there. I am a team leader for Global Citizens Network, an organization based in St. Paul. http:/www.globalcitizens.org
We do different projects, depending on what the village elders want to get done. Sometimes we dig ditches, other times we work on the school, other times we talk about how they...
365 Act - 365 ways to change the world →
Today I was thinking about what to post and decided to see if I could Google how to change the world. Here is a web site that has something that you can do every day.
Now, many of the ideas are pretty simple - like buying slave-free chocolate, and that’s a start. But, as Thomas Friedman says in his new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, changing the world is NOT easy and we shouldn’t...
Interesting books that I've read
Here are books that I have read this year and recommend. I hope to be referring to them throughout the semester because it’s a shame to read good books and then forget about them.
Yunus: Creating a World Without Poverty
Sachs, Jeffrey: A World Without Poverty
Nazario: Enrique’s Journey
Yunus: Banker to the Poor
Each was inspirational and directly relevant to this class....
