Sunday, November 28, 2010 The Starbucks Cup Dilemma  Eighty percent of drinks walk out of Starbucks stores. An astonishing 3 billion of the 200 billion-plus paper cups thrown into US dumps each year bear its familiar green logo. In October 2008, Starbucks CEO Howard Shultz pledged to make 100 percept of Starbucks cups recyclable by 2012. This lofty-yet-laudable goal has led Starbucks to move from solo redesign efforts to enlisting paper mills, NGOs, and municipal governments to help. Getting more cups out of the waste stream and into places like composting service Cedar Grove, though, has proven to be a lot more complicated than expected. "Think about it," writes Anya Kamenetz. "What would it take for you to never throw away another cup?" Read More >>
back to top  Saturday, November 27, 2010 Random Acts of Kindness Across the Country  At New York City's Ground Zero Visitor's Center, one anonymous individual drops $10,000 cash in the donation box for the 9/11 memorial. A couple in Kansas City pledges to give $25,000 to Salvation Army, an organization that housed and helped them when they had nowhere to go. On his fifth birthday, Matthew didn't want any gifts. Instead, he told his friends to make a donation to charity, raising $288 dollars for the Ronald McDonald House. These days, charities across the country report receiving less while people need more. Fortunately, many people are stepping up to help. Read More >>
back to top Friday, November 26, 2010 A Checking Account of Smiles  Jorge Munoz is a bus driver in New York City who started feeding the hungry in Queens five years ago, using food that would otherwise have been thrown away. Since then, he's been there, day-in and day-out, distributing 121,000 meals over the years. And that's how he discovered a secret- the power of sharing. "People are telling me, 'Jorge, you have no money, you do all this and get nothing back.' And I say I have a checking account full of smiles." Recognized as a Top Ten CNN Hero of 2009, Munoz recently received the US Citizens Awards from President Obama. Read More >>
back to top Thursday, November 25, 2010 Be Selfish, Be Generous  As we consider all the things we are grateful for on this Thanksgiving Day, we also reflect on how we can turn that gratitude in action. What does it mean to be generous? Why do we feel inspired to give? And what can we share with the world? What follows is a five-minute video montage of CharityFocus volunteers reflecting on how being truly selfish leaves us with no choice but to be generous. Read More >>
back to top Wednesday, November 24, 2010 Job Perks of an Optimist  A new study by researchers at Yale and Duke Universities find that optimism pays off in job hunting and promotions. After studying the effect of an optimistic disposition on MBA students' job searches, the researchers found that optimists fared better than their less-optimistic peers. Optimistic grads found jobs more easily, with less-intensive job searches. Even better, two years after graduation, the optimists were more likely than their less-optimistic peers to have been promoted. What's the rationale? Some suggest that people who are optimistic by disposition are good at coping with problems and flexible about trying new courses of action when needed. And, the authors point out, there's the question of self-fulling prophecies. Read More >>
back to top Tuesday, November 23, 2010 Why Social Value is Good for Business  In a recent interview, David Schmittlein, Dean of MIT Sloan School of Management, hones in on the importance for business to be able to state their social value. "The social contract that businesses, organizations in general, have with the world is changing, and unless organzations can demonstrate and explain the social purpose and the social value that they've fulfilled, they will fail. They will run into insurmountable obstacles. That wasn't the case 50 or 60 years ago, indeed probably not even 10 years ago. And it isn't just a consequence of the economic events of the last few years." Read More >>
back to top Monday, November 22, 2010 Engineering Solutions for Africa's Rural Poor  It's a question posed by many immigrants. "When you come here and are successful, you have this nagging feeling. What have you done for the people at home?" Born, raised, and educated in Uganda, William Kisalita is now a University of Georgia bioengineering professor. He designs three-dimensional cell-based biosensors, a promising new technology that could revolutionize how pharmaceutical companies test new drugs. But his true passion lays in bringing simple engineering solutions to rural Africa. Though devoting his energy and talents to the nameless has cost him a promotion and recognition, Kisaalita's rewards are much greater. He is slowly revolutionizing the milk market in Uganda, improving hen breeding in Burkina Faso, and helping nut-oil cooperatives in Morocco. Read More >>
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What would you do if you won 11.3 million dollars? If you're Allen and Violet Large, you give it away. The couple discovered they had won the jackpot last July, while Violet was undergoing chemotherapy therapy for cancer. "That money we won was nothing," Allen explains with tears in his eyes. "We have each other." Since July, they've given almost all of it away, first taking care of a family in need, and then donating to two-pages' worth of groups like the Salvation Army. Their rationale? The money was a "headache". It brought anxiety that people would take advantage of them. But more than that, "Money can't buy you health or happiness." Violet smiles. [ 
When researchers at Harvard University tracked the happiness level of iPhone users, they discovered that, for almost half of our waking hours, our minds are wandering. Using an iPhone app, participants rated their happiness on a scale of 0-100 and included what they were doing, and whether their mind was wandering beyond the task at hand. The results reveal that a wandering mind has a bigger influence on happiness than any other activity a person happens to be doing. Such wandering minds appeared to cause unhappiness, even with people were doing the least enjoyable activities, like daily work. Perhaps the more able we are to stay in the present, and resist the temptation to follow our minds down its endless paths, the happier we may find ourselves. [ 
Leanne Sarco, a ranger at Grand Isle State Park located on a barrier island off the coast of Louisiana, remembers the day she discovered oil in her lagoons, after the April 20 explosion of a BP oil rig. While countless government, university and wildlife organizations drew up plans to solve the litany of complex problems created by the huge spill, Ms. Sarco thought small. She decided her best contribution was to collect, wash, and release into safer waters hermit crabs, the most neglected creature in the area. She assembled a small army to help and with the help of Facebook, turned her small army into about 150 volunteers from as far away as California and Quebec. To date, they have collected about 7,000 crabs, scrubbed them of oil, and released them into a saltwater marsh about 15 miles inland. And the help has รข€œreally saved [her] from quitting." [ 
At first glance, a room filled with a group of people practicing meditation may not look unusual. But the men and women who are sitting calmly, trying to focus their minds, are a little different from most. They are prisoners in the central jail in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, serving sentences for committing violent crimes. Their objective? To reduce anxiety and make a new beginning. This is the first time prison officials in Bangladesh have introduced a meditation program for inmates. As meditation trainers play audio that teaches them how to focus their minds, prisoners follow the instructions dutifully and peacefully. Both male and female inmates have been given a chance to try meditation - not only to lower their stress levels but also to give them a chance to reform and succeed in the outside world. [ 
When it comes to economic growth, bigger is better. Or so says the mainstream wisdom. But more and more people -- including, increasingly, governments -- are realizing that equating growth with quality of life is to follow a broken compass toward a host of social and ecological problems. The state of Maryland recently announced the launch of the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), an alternative economic indicator that will allow the state to keep track of which activities actually contribute to quality of life -- and which detract from it. The GPI will take into account 26 different quality of life indicators, putting price estimates, in dollars, on the negative and positive impacts of economic growth. The indicator considers, for example, the future costs of climate change and the strain of income inequality on social services; it also accounts for the value created by volunteerism and forest preservation. Already, the GPI is telling a very different story about the connection between economic growth and quality of life. [ 
International diplomat, author and visionary environmentalist James George was just about to get married at the age of 86. At an age when most people are on the way out, James George is fully engaged in the urgent task of waking people up. "You see, Consciousness is permeating human beings to the degree that it can, but we're not receptive. We're not allowing that penetration. Our fixed ideas, our cultural conditioning, are shedding consciousness like a raincoat sheds water! We're not getting the shower of blessings that we could, at any moment. Even in the course of this conversation, there has been a good deal of floundering, but at times something has come through. I don't feel what I've said is just from Jim George. The only decent stuff is coming through Consciousness itself. The same for you, isn't it?" [ 
