Stranger Dinners
A few years ago, Ari Davalos started an art project called Stranger Dinner -- invite six strangers to dinner at her house. In a world separated by Internet connections, she aimed to reclaim the serendipity in her life. "Instead of going to the library and researching on the internet, I want to stroll through the stacks, smell the pages of old books, pick a random book off the shelf, and let some ... posted on Jun 22 2012, 12,887 reads

10 Ways to Love Where You Live
Community is not just for extroverts. For thousands of years, our ancestors lived in barrios, hamlets, neighborhoods, and villages. Yet in the time since our parents and grandparents were young, privacy has become so valued that many neighborhoods are not much more than houses in proximity...And when the links among neighbors are weak, security relies on locks, gates, and guns, rather than a close... posted on Jun 21 2012, 34,432 reads

The Opposite of Poverty is Justice
Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who spends most of his time in jails, prisons, on death row and in low-income communities, shares some hard truths about America's criminal justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of young black men between the ages of 18 and 30 has been incarcerated at some point in their lives. In this video Bryan urges the TED audience to think abo... posted on Jun 20 2012, 3,295 reads

On Seeking Stillness in Business
Pico Iyer -- essayist, author, travel writer and thinker -- has a unique perspective on many things. His physical domain ranges from California (where he lived as a child) and England (where he studied) to Cuba, North Korea and Ethiopia (which he visited) and Japan (where he resides). His mental domain knows no limiting boundaries. In this interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Iyer spoke on an unusual... posted on Jun 19 2012, 19,692 reads

The Threshold Choir: Songs Bridging Life & Death
"In November of 1990 I was invited to spend a day with a friend of mine who was dying of HIV Aids. He was comatose, but very agitated...I sat down by his bedside and didn't know what to do. I waited and waited. All I knew to do, to calm myself, was to sing. So I sang one song and I sang it for two hours. I sang it over and over again. I watched his breathing slow, and he got much calmer. And I got... posted on Jun 18 2012, 4,708 reads

Infinite Family
Amy Stokes uses the internet to connect South African teens affected by HIV/AIDS and poverty with volunteer mentors from around the world. She is the founder of Infinite Family an effort in South Africa -- where nearly two million children have been orphaned by AIDS. A diverse and growing team of Infinite Family's mentors have stepped forward "to fill the void of adults -- to teach, discuss, encou... posted on Jun 15 2012, 2,543 reads

Rickshaw Puller Starts Clinic for the Poor
Joynal Abedin still remembers the rainy and windy night when he saw his father die because there was no medical treatment. His village in a northern district of Bangladesh did not have any medical facility at the time, and the nearest hospital was about 12 miles away. The death of his father, about 30 years ago, changed the life of Abedin, a rickshaw puller. He vowed to establish a basic medical c... posted on Jun 14 2012, 5,655 reads

How Gift-Giving Creates Community
"Wherever I go and ask people what is missing from their lives, the most common answer (if they are not impoverished or seriously ill) is "community." What happened to community, and why don't we have it any more? There are many reasons -- the layout of suburbia, the disappearance of public space, the automobile and the television -- and, if you trace the "why's" a few levels down, they all implic... posted on Jun 13 2012, 26,399 reads

When Life is Ugly Make it Beautiful
"The Josephine beauty parlor in northern Paris is celebrating its first birthday Thursday. Some 1,200 disadvantaged women -- abuse victims, former convicts or addicts, disabled women, single unemployed mothers -- have come here for a professional haircut and makeup, or to borrow clothes for a job interview, since it opened on International Women's Day a year ago. Thanks to volunteer workers and pr... posted on Jun 09 2012, 7,684 reads

The Boy Who Fell Into The Water & Lived
"The only way to get to this island village is by boat. The current in these parts is treacherously strong and the sun beats down in sheets of heat. About 2000 people live in this village. 125 died in the tsunami. Twenty-six of them were children. There is no bridge connecting the village to the mainland, only a jetty that wanders partway into the water and stops. When some of the children saw the... posted on Jun 06 2012, 12,217 reads