Thinking Outside & Inside The Box
This takes a little outside-and-inside-the-box thinking. What looks like and lives like a house is actually a shipping container. "I call it my bunker," says Rosalynn Kearney of her container home. Used to import almost everything we use and wear, shipping containers are now a new concept in affordable housing. The containers are claimed to be hurricane-proof, fire-resistant. Increasingly too expe... posted on May 09 2007, 4,193 reads

Kindness Meters
Thirty-six Denver parking meters have been refurbished and redesigned to allow people to easily give spare change to the homeless, thanks to a public-private effort. The change that goes into the randomly placed meters will help with Denver's Road Home project: a 10-year plan to end homelessness in Denver. "You might be asking yourself how much good can spare change really do," Manager of Public W... posted on May 07 2007, 1,868 reads

So That All May Play
Justin Clemens loves baseball. Cerebral palsy may limit this 13-year-old's use of his left arm and both legs, but he plays his favorite sport on the Montgomery Miracle League. With help from parents and coaches he swings at pitches and scoots to first base with his walker. "When he's going for home, he feels like a million bucks," says his mother. For the most part, baseball diamonds are unplayabl... posted on May 04 2007, 1,762 reads

The Art of Powerful Questions
When was the last time you sat through a meeting and said to yourself, "This is a complete waste of time!"? Was it yesterday, or even just a few hours ago? Why did that gathering feel so tedious? Perhaps it’s because the leaders posed the wrong questions at the start of the session. Or, worse yet, maybe they didn’t ask any engaging questions, and as a result, the meeting consisted of boring re... posted on Apr 30 2007, 3,963 reads

A Governor's Food Stamp Challenge
If Gov. Ted Kulongoski seems a little sluggish this week, he's got an excuse: he couldn't afford coffee. He has $21 to buy a week's worth of food -- the same amount that the state's average food stamp recipient spends weekly on groceries. Kulongoski is taking the weeklong challenge to raise awareness about the difficulty of feeding a family on a food stamp budget. A mother of three who went on foo... posted on Apr 27 2007, 1,413 reads

Smiles Per Hour in Australia
In a bid to create a more harmonious society, Port Phillip, Australia, is putting up road signs indicating a street's smiles per hour! The city has been using volunteers to find out how often people smile at those who pass them in the street. It then put up signs that look like speed limits, but tell pedestrians that they are in, for example, a "10 smiles per hour zone." Mayor Janet Bolitho says t... posted on Apr 24 2007, 2,033 reads

The Good Pied Piper of Haiti
10 years ago, when American Douglas Perlitz visited Cap-Hantien –- Haiti's second-largest city -– he soon found a trail of street children following him. One child, Wilnaud Pierre, only 8 years old, especially touched his heart. "He pulled me aside and said 'Would you send me to school? I want to learn to read and write.'" Five months later, Perlitz talked to some local priests who offered him... posted on Apr 23 2007, 1,472 reads

Memoirs Of A Boy Soldier
At the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Ishmael Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. At sixteen, he was removed from fighting by UNICEF, and through the help of the staff at his rehabilitation center, he learned how to forgive hims... posted on Apr 15 2007, 2,783 reads

The Universal Concept Of Ubuntu
There is no English equivalent to the word Ubuntu. The Nguni word from South Africa refers to the capacity to express compassion, justice, reciprocity, dignity, harmony and humanity in the interests of building, maintaining and strengthening community. It is about the self being so rooted in the community, that your personal identity is defined by what you give to the community. 'I am because we a... posted on Apr 14 2007, 3,746 reads

Bangladeshi Housewives Overcome TB
Mohammed Salim Sheikh crosses the threshold of a village home. The housewife inside, Zahida Khatun Jharna, rises from her cooking fire, fetches his medication, fills his water glass, ticks off his chart for the day and sends him home. This routine plays out in countless villages across Bangladesh, representing a remarkably simple but effective national tuberculosis treatment program to overcome th... posted on Apr 12 2007, 2,305 reads