How can we help the one billion people who are living in poverty? Where does creativity hide? How can a good design transform consumer interactions with products into meaningful cultural experiences?
photo by jurvetson
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) explores answers to these questions and more, through thought-provoking discussion of "ideas worth spreading." With the aim of fostering global community, the association boasts an impressive roster of leaders and innovators, from former United States President Bill Clinton to William Kamkwamba, a Malawian adolescent who built an electricity-generated windmill from spare parts.
Though membership may be hard to come by (to apply costs upwards of $6,000), access to the minds of TED is not. The website features a series of talks from the TED Conference, an annual convergence of some of the world's most original thinkers and doers. From open source architecture to ways mushrooms can save the world to how to nurture the next Einstein in Africa, the 18-minute talks offer plenty of food for thought. Afterwards, if you're sitting there scratching your head or feeling inspired, you can engage in dialogue with others.
Have a good idea but don't know where to start? There are plenty of ways to get your idea out there. Start by creating your own Idealist Group, or check out the nearly 800 existing groups in 92 countries that are making the world a better place.
We're very excited to announce the launch of a new blog for New Yorkers - Idealist in NYC.
Contributors will be posting all summer about the ways our city challenges us and inspires us to do wonderful, crazy things. Like make time stop in Grand Central Station. And go car-free for three Saturdays in August. And increase the number of foster parents in Bushwick.
We learned via a couple of recent surveys, including this one conducted by the Citizens Committee of New York City and one of our own, that plenty of New Yorkers would get more involved in their community if only they had more time or were aware of the groups and opportunities around them.
Given that we work at a website where, as of this morning, folks have posted nearly 900 volunteer opportunities, more than 3,000 nonprofit jobs, 47 events, and 50 community groups in New York City alone…we figured it might be time to play a more active role in, well, showing people that making time and plugging into those myriad opportunities might not be so difficult after all.
We hope you'll add http://nycblog.idealist.org to your favorites folder, leave comments, and help us to create more dialogue around the barriers to community involvement and the reasons you choose to overcome those barriers. How can we spend this summer making the Big Apple more shiny, healthy and delicious for everyone? If you have announcements, articles, or ideas we should share, don't hesitate to get in touch.
Back in January 2008, the East Oakland Community Project opened their newest facility, Crossroads. It's the first homeless shelter of its kind: it has a solar-paneled roof, nontoxic paint, hydronic heating, and furniture made from pressed wheat. The building is being promoted as the intersection of environmental and social justice issues, espousing an ideology that claims "the building has to be healthy to make people healthy."
photo by Flickr user whizchickenonabun
Indeed, Crossroads aims for the highest level of health and comfort for its residents. According to Wendy Jackson, the Executive Director of the East Oakland Community Project, most of the residents of the facility suffer from asthma, allergies, H.I.V., or diabetes. Inside the building there is an examining room for check-ups with medical volunteers, and in the wing for homeless families, there are bathrooms with tubs for bathing small children, as opposed to the more typical showers for all residents. Rooms and bathrooms are similarly set aside for transgender residents.
It may sometimes appear that green building is a novelty, but the additional features of the Crossroads building actually reduce the high energy costs of operating such a large facility, sparking discussion that many new shelters will be built using Crossroads as a model. If this is so, there are many green and ecologically friendly nonprofits to contribute: The Kresge Foundation has a Green Building Initiative geared towards grants which "advance environmental sustainability through green design and construction"; blueEnergy is a non-profit "that provides a sustainable solution to the energy needs of marginalized communities"; and GreenHOME, run out of Washington, D.C. is an example of "how to make affordable housing and its neighborhoods green."
It's not often that you come across a nonprofit whose Executive Director is in high school.
by Flickr user +CoSmOs+
But that's exactly the case with Girls Helping Girls, an international nonprofit based in the San Francisco Bay Area that practices within its own organization what it purports to do in the world: it empowers girls. By placing high school girls at the forefront of its national and international leaders, Girls Helping Girls achieves its mission internally, while "partnering girls in the United States with girls in schools and community organizations in developing countries to jointly identify problems in their communities and develop social change through micro-lending projects."
By bringing groups of girls together to discuss broad social issues such as poverty, education, health, and the promotion of peace, Girls Helping Girls strives to address statistics such as these: that 94% of youth in America feel powerless to make a difference, or that one-third of girls in the San Francisco area report feeling depressed. Using a close-knit format, groups of girls in the United States make connections with girls around the world -- called "Sister Groups"-- and develop social service projects around what they learn from each other.
Want to learn more about ways you can support girls to build a better world? Watch this video from Girl Effect and help increase the sustainability of the planet. You can also join the over 1,300 organizations on Idealist working to improve the lives of women and girls worldwide, from Girls Scouts to Global Girl Media.
From July 18 to 20, women bloggers (and some men too) from all over the United States will be convening in San Francisco for the BlogHer '08 conference, and a couple of Idealist staff members will be there! BlogHer is "a community for women who blog"—whether they blog about parenting, race, the environment, technology, politics, fashion, or anything else—where participants can gain exposure, resources, and empowerment, both online and through in-person events.
We're excited to join our fellow bloggers in sessions such as "Blogging with a Global Perspective," "Building Traffic via Content and Community," and "Tools for Online Fundraising and Activism." And from the "newbie mixer" before the conference starts, to the wrap-up session on the last day, we're eager to meet others who are blogging for social change.
Another thing to look forward to is that this year, BlogHer is taking extra steps to "green" the conference. Sponsors provided a limited number of hybrid vehicles for conference attendees to carpool to the event, a "Recycling Room" to ensure that all unwanted conference swag is appropriately recycled or donated, and over 200 tons of carbon offsets.
Ah, summer camp. A time traditionally full of nature hikes, sing-a-longs, pillow fights, and so much more. But there's a new kind of summer camp on the scene. Around the world, camps are increasingly sending youth back to school both sun-kissed and fired up to enact social change.
By Flickr user johntrainor
Take Israel's Sadaka Reut summer program, for example. Sadaka Reut is a joint Jewish and Arab youth activist organization that strives to explode stereotypes and foster understanding in the region. This summer, youth from all over the country will convene to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Using art forms from theatre to graffiti to explore the unrest, the program aims to equip youth with the necessary tools to build an alternative, peaceful future.
Meanwhile, in Togo, Summer Camp 2008 focuses on the theme of reforestation. In between debating and playing sports, youth who are 18 years or older will learn about sustainable environmental practices and have the opportunity to nurture young plants. And over at Chicago's Camp Firebelly, college age graphic designers will hike up their sleeves and strategize solutions for a social justice issue. At the camp that claims it's "intense but not actually in tents," designers will collaborate with a real-world nonprofit and see their work all the way to print.
Did you sing "kumbaya" (or not) in an equally innovative setting? Leave a comment below!
By Flickr user danielle_blue
While out dancing, you obviously expend a lot of energy. Have you ever wondered why you can't channel that all that energy toward solving our planet's energy crisis? Or maybe you've realized, while riding a stationary bike at the gym, that you're acting much like a windmill or generator; but where is all that energy going?
Thanks to All Day Buffet's blog, we just found out about a new nightclub opening in King's Cross, London, that has turned some of these questions into a green business plan and nightlife destination. The club, called Club4Climate, will feature a dance floor that absorbs energy from dancing, and converts it into electricity. It opens tonight, July 10! Club4Climate isn't the first club to think of using this technology; the idea for the first Sustainable Dance Club was born in Rotterdam in the Netherlands in 2006, and is scheduled to open for business this September.
A similar idea has taken root in the fitness gym industry. A Hong Kong gym, California Fitness, established a program called "Powered by YOU" in which three types of exercise machines help to generate electricity, rather than just using it up. The president of California Fitness says, "One person has the ability of producing 50 watts of electricity per hour when exercising at a moderate pace….If a person spends one hour per day running on the machine, he/she could generate 18.2 kilowatts of electricity and prevent 4,380 liters of CO2 released per year." And in Seattle, Washington, a personal training studio has opened as a "green microgym" where spinning bikes are connected to wind-generator motors to power the gym's music system.
Well before these new technologies were developed, though, the concept of eco-friendly exercise programs already seemed quite natural: take the Green Gym program, which was started by the UK environmental organization BTCV. Participants improve their health and the environment's by spending time outdoors to work on gardening or environmental projects. This year, Green Gym is celebrating its tenth anniversary of starting its first local program; now there are 95 Green Gyms across the UK.
In the world of creating positive social change, it often takes hard work, diligence, and an impressive amount of fundraising to make something happen. Today, all you need to do is send some emails and chat online--that is, go about your normal business--and money in your name will be donated to one of ten social organizations of your choosing, including UNICEF, stopglobalwarming.org, and the National AIDS Fund.
Skeptical? Just check out Microsoft's program, i'm. You register for the program, decide which organization to support, and begin emailing or chatting. For every time you use their program, Microsoft "shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with an organization of your choice from a selection of some of the world's most effective organizations dedicated to social causes." There's no cap on the amount Microsoft with donate, and since initiating in March 2007 has donated $1,579,720. And, for the next week or so, you can get involved with the i'm talkathon, chatting and emailing with other folks to get Microsoft to surge in their giving!
Already have an account with someone else, but interested in the idea? Consider using Facebook applications to advocate for your cause: (Lil) Green Patch, for example, donates money to Rainforest Reforestation projects based on the volume in which people that use the application. Similarly, Carpool allows you to see who else is driving along the same route you do, and connect with them so that you can ride together.
What other programs for positive social change have you found online? Post your comments and suggestions here!
By Flickr user Wolfgang Staudt
Each week we bring you a roundup of what you can find on our site related to a specific country, region, or city. Today we spotlight the Kingdom of Belgium.
As of this afternoon, there are 136 organizations listed on Idealist that are based in Belgium. If you'd like to work with one of them, there are 17 jobs and internships, and more than 20 volunteer opportunities currently available.
Want to connect with Idealists in Belgium? Today we found more than 375 people whose profiles mention Belgium and more than 250 volunteer profiles. Why not reach out to them?
Would you like to help make more connections among people, organizations, and resources in Belgium through the Idealist network? Start or join an Idealist Group or visit our Spread Idealist page to get connected.
Ramya Raghavan is the new Nonprofits & Activism Manager at YouTube. We invited her to share some recent developments at YouTube to help nonprofits leverage their free online video tools. Here's a note from Ramya, who can be reached at rraghavan@youtube.com:
Hi Idealists!
Last September, we launched the YouTube Nonprofit Program with the help of 13 nonprofit partner organizations. Today, thousands of nonprofits (including many of y'all here on Idealist) have joined the program and are using YouTube to raise awareness about important issues, fundraise for causes, and engage with supporters. Take it from a former nonprofiteer -- it's totally worth getting set up. If you're a United States-based 501c(3) organization, you can sign up now for a designated "Nonprofit" channel, which comes with a slew of awesome perks like increased branding and video uploading capacity, the chance to be featured in one of the "promoted videos" areas on YouTube, and the option to embed a Checkout gadget on your channel to drive fundraising (and which also has no processing fee!).
I also want to give a shout out to all of the activists out there who aren't affiliated with a particular organization. Whether you're a filmmaker trying to expose new AIDS prevention techniques, a student organizer working to make your campus greener, or a citizen who just wants to make the world a better place, we want to help you share your ideas and experiences through online video. Just a few months ago, YouTube debuted the Nonprofits & Activism video page where your content can bubble to the top and get seen by a global audience. Our goal is to build a vibrant community that draws attention to the world's most pressing issues. You can also build the Idealist community using YouTube by tagging the videos that you upload with "idealistcommunity." Click here to check out some videos which have already been added by Idealist members!
I'll be checking in with the YouTube community on my channel, www.youtube.com/agentchange. And I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas about nonprofits and activism on YouTube - email me at any time at agentchange@youtube.com. Also, if you see brilliant uses of YouTube popping up on the Nonprofits & Activism page, please let me know!
Ramya
When Jean-Philippe Soule lived with the Mentawai people in Indonesia, he learned to how to live in a way that had previously been unknown to him: the people in his adopted community gave him the ability to live in " harmonious relationship with the rainforest," and they shared their culture's traditional wisdom. His life, as he recounts it, would never be the same.
By Flickr user Jungle_Boy
Upon realizing the community's assimilation into the broader cultures of Indonesia and its potential extinction, Soule made a lifelong commitment to the preservation of indigenous lifestyles around the world. He founded Native Planet, a non-governmental organization dedicated to the self-empowerment of indigenous peoples and the preservation of world ethnic cultures.
By providing global education and active on-site humanitarian projects, Native Planet assists indigenous groups in their own cultural preservation and self-empowerment. With input from knowledgeable members of the communities, Native Planet plans and implements projects tailored to the unique needs of each individual culture. Helping these groups speak for themselves to a global audience is crucial to their protection, and Native Planet's documentation of indigenous lifestyles gives traditional peoples a voice the world can hear.
Native Planet is staffed entirely by volunteers—which means you can get involved! Or, if you're looking for less of a time commitment, you might consider traveling sustainably with the organization, or even go with them on a bicycling tour!
For tons of other volunteer opportunities in communities around the world, check out our volunteer listings.
This month's Idealist Careers Podcast features an interview with Eileen Conoboy, Director of the Office of University Programs at Peace Corps.
Click here to listen!
If you're still thirsty for more Peace Corps information, here are some related podcasts:
Volunteer Voices: Stories from Peace Corps volunteers around the world, from Bulgaria to Uzbekistan. You can find folk tales from different countries, experiences about working in the health and environmental fields, narratives centered around the theme of water, language lessons, and much more.
RPCV Podcast: Similar to Volunteer Voices, this podcast features interviews with Returned Peace Corp Volunteers who have finished terms of service around the globe.
Peace Corps Entrepreneurs: Innovative programs and initiatives started by Peace Corps volunteers in the field.
Minnesota Public Radio: Midmorning Podcast (Hour 2) with Kerri Miller: An interview with the chiefs of both Peace Corps and Americorps talking about how Peace Corps is not just for the young anymore, but for retirees as well.
Peace Corps Georgia Podcast: Stories of life after Peace Corps, in the voices of people from the state of Georgia.
As a Content & Support Associate here at Idealist, Lisa W. reviews organizations' profiles and provides general support to Idealist users. Here's a tip from Lisa to help you make the most of Idealist:
Lisa (on the right) with her teammates!
The other day, a woman called from New York to ask me if it was possible for her to repost and edit an old job listing that her organization had posted a couple of months ago. Last week, another woman emailed me from Chicago asking if she could repost a job that had just expired. These are common questions among our users, and I'm happy to say that there is a very easy way to repost a listing. Here´s how:
1. Login to your account by visiting www.idealist.org and entering your email and password into the Member Login box on the right side of the screen. You will be taken to your control panel.
2. Click on the "Groups and Listings" tab and then on the "Edit & Post" link next to the name of your organization.
3. Click on the name of the type of listing that you wish to manage. Below, a list of all of your active listings of this type will appear. Click on "Add New."
4. You will be given the option to create a new listing, or to use a template from a previously posted listing.
5. Select the listing you would like to repost, make the necessary changes, and click "Submit."
Idealist allows you to repost and edit an archived listing so that you don't have to create a new listing from scratch. Just remember to archive, and not delete, your listings so that you can repost them in the future.
Also, once the expiration date for a listing passes, the listing is automatically archived to our database. If you would like to extend the listing past 60 days, you will have to repost it. Reposting a listing requires a fee of $60, or one job credit if your organization has a job pack.
By enabling you to reuse a template from a previous listing, you can spend more of your time focusing on the bigger tasks of achieving your organization's goals and less time on the details that get you there.
Hope this helps! Until next time,
Lisa
Each week we bring you a roundup of what you can find on our site related to a specific country, region, or city. Today we spotlight Pakistan.
by Flickr user Michael Foley Photography
As of this afternoon, there are 386 organizations listed on Idealist that are based in Pakistan. If you'd like to work with one of them, there are over 30 jobs and internships, and 6 volunteer opportunities currently available.
Want to connect with Idealists in Pakistan? Today we found 147 people whose profiles mention Pakistan and 273 volunteer profiles. Why not reach out to them?
Would you like to help make more connections among people, organizations, and resources in Pakistan through the Idealist network? Start or join an Idealist Group or visit our Spread Idealist page to get connected.
As an Experience Analyst here at Idealist, Scott Stadum spends a lot of time exploring the latest tools and ideas the internet has to offer. He's also this week's Featured Changemaker on Change.org. Here's a piece he wrote recently about BitTorrent:
For most nonprofits, sharing content they've created, such as videos, large documents, or audio files, with people who might benefit from access to the materials is cost prohibitive. As a result, they offer little or rely on third parties for storage and distribution. Nonprofits have the potential to reach new audiences by taking advantage of a file sharing technology called BitTorrent.
It works like this: you (the nonprofit) have a file you want to share. You can create and "seed" what's called a torrent file and then point "tracker services" such as LegalTorrent toward that file. Other people with BitTorrent can start to download it, and the more that happens, the faster it is to download, and the more accessible it becomes. When enough other people are sharing it, you won't have to host it on your server anymore. See the benefits?
With BitTorrent users in parts of the world with slower connection speeds will have access to video, audio, images and other documentation. Content that otherwise would never have seen the light of day can be set free.
Despite the well-documented controversy around peer-to-peer file sharing services, finding legitimate torrents isn't difficult: Legaltorrents.com and Torrentfreak have terabytes (read: lots and lots) of legal and Creative Commons-licensed content between them.
I would love to see nonprofits with large repositories of archived information open up their files for the rest of the world. There's plenty of value in the content we're sharing, but what about the content we aren't sharing?
We got wind from the Omniglot Blog about a multilingual online volunteer project that's going on. The goal is to make audio recordings of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights available in 30 different languages. This is how it works: volunteers pick a language that they can read and speak well; then they follow the script and the instructions given to them, and read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights aloud in that language while recording themselves. When they are satisfied with their version, they simply upload the audio file to the LibriVox website, and it becomes available for anyone's listening pleasure.
photo by Flickr user kayray
LibriVox is a community of volunteers whose objective is "to make all books in the public domain available, for free, in audio format on the internet." Volunteers, who don't need to have any previous experience, work to record audio versions of chapters and documents, in any language. As long as the work is part of the "public domain" (meaning that no one holds the copyright), it is fair game to become a volunteer project, which means that most books published before 1923 are on the to-do list. Click here to learn how you can get involved in what LibriVox calls "acoustical liberation."
This month's Idealist Careers Podcast features an interview with Eileen Conoboy, Director of the Office of University Programs at Peace Corps.
Click here to listen!
If you're still thirsty for more Peace Corps information, here are some related podcasts:
Volunteer Voices: Stories from Peace Corps volunteers around the world, from Bulgaria to Uzbekistan. You can find folk tales from different countries, experiences about working in the health and environmental fields, narratives centered around the theme of water, language lessons, and much more.
RPCV Podcast: Similar to Volunteer Voices, this podcast features interviews with Returned Peace Corp Volunteers who have finished terms of service around the globe.
Peace Corps Entrepreneurs: Innovative programs and initiatives started by volunteers in the field. This series is produced by Social Edge with help from the National Peace Corps Association.
Minnesota Public Radio: Midmorning Podcast (Hour 2) with Kerri Miller: An interview with the chiefs of both Peace Corps and Americorps talking about how Peace Corps is not just for the young anymore, but for retirees as well.
Peace Corps Georgia Podcast: Stories of life after Peace Corps, in the voices of people from the state of Georgia.
Are you interning with a nonprofit in New York this summer? Or do you work in the nonprofit sector and want to help interns practice networking skills?
A shot from our networking event last summer
Join Idealist on July 29th for the Second Annual Idealist Intern Networking Event! This will be an excellent opportunity to meet and network with fellow New Yorkers, learn more about working in the nonprofit sector, and enjoy a delicious catered meal.
Learn more on our Idealist in NYC blog, or go directly to our event listing to RSVP today!
The cargo ship is to the ocean what the Hummer is to the highway: inefficient and expensive. But by harnessing a new innovation called Giant Sail Technology, the German company SkySails is looking to change the seascape of commercial shipping.
By Flickr user ChibiJosh
Imagine parasailing behind a cruise ship in the Mediterranean (nice, right?)—except that instead of pulling you behind the ship, the parachute instead flies ahead of the boat, pulling it along by catching the wind like a kite. With sails as large as a football field, the parachute works something like a tugboat, flying up to 1,000 feet in front of the ship and cutting the vessel's use of fossil fuels by 30-35 percent. And on a good day, when the winds are blowing in the right direction, the helpful kite can offset half of the fuel the ship would otherwise have used.
The technology is still very new. The MS Beluga, for example, only set sail (now literally) on its maiden voyage from Germany in January 2008, landing in Venezuela in March. And while at first glance the technology appears expensive, the sail can easily be run on autopilot and saves the shipping company about $1600 a day.
SkySails hopes to expand their business, manufacturing a sail the size of a cruise ship by 2010, and having up to 1500 ships equipped for the sails by 2015, from oil tankers to cruise ships to buoy tenders. Who knows? Maybe the by the time you do take that cruise you've always wanted, you'll be tugged along by a friendly kite of your own.
By Flickr user abmiller99
Each week we bring you a roundup of what you can find on our site related to a specific country, region, or city. Today we spotlight the Peru.
As of this afternoon, there are 208 organizations listed on Idealist that are based in Peru. If you'd like to work with one of them, there are 28 jobs and internships, and over 200 volunteer opportunities currently available.
Want to connect with Idealists in Peru? Today we found 160 people whose profiles mention Peru and 1,515 volunteer profiles. Why not reach out to them?
Would you like to help make more connections among people, organizations, and resources in the DR through the Idealist network? Start or join an Idealist Group or visit our Spread Idealist page to get connected.
We're women, and we blog! But in the midst of the networking session on the first morning of the BlogHer '08 conference, I was starting to wonder if that was enough to bring us together. Most of the people I was meeting in the room of 1,000 "BlogHers" (and a few "BlogHims") introduced themselves to say that they blog primarily about their personal lives, parenting, food, crafts, celebrities, television shows, or consumer products. They seemed like great people and they were fun to talk to, but how was I going to relate all of this to Idealist?
By Wendy Piersall/Sparkplugging.com
Pretty soon, my doubts fell by the wayside. I started gaining inspiration from those around me, as I met the passionate and creative women who blog for Mothers With Cancer, Fake Plastic Fish, the Global Fund for Women, Urban Sprouts, Have Fun Do Good, Green LA Girl, Beth's Blog, and more. And at the same time, I was absorbing a lot of essential knowledge about blogging in general—the importance of being generous with comments and links, how to write descriptive anchor text for links, etc.
And it kept getting better: the third and last day, the Unconference, was the most productive. We got the chance to set our own agenda and talk in smaller, more flexible groups. For my Idealist colleague and me, it was a great opportunity to share experiences with people who work with group blogs and guest contributors; to strategize with people interested in blogging for social change; and to talk about blogging on behalf of an organization or company.
I must have done okay after all, because by the end of the last day, I was feeling both exhausted and wistful like other attendees. The whole conference reminded me of summer camp, because I made unlikely friends (those "mommy bloggers" turned out to be awesome), felt overwhelmed while having a lot of fun (like at the official conference reception in the shoe department of Macy's), and learned a whole new culture ( Twitter, anyone?)—and now that I'm back in the real world, I'm having trouble doing it justice when describing my experience to others.
We'd like to thank Joanna for this report. She works on Idealist.org's Community Outreach Team and blogs frequently on the home page and the Idealist in NYC blog.
Did you know that during the last few years over one-quarter of the U.S. population volunteered? Or that last year alone, 60.8 million volunteers gave 8.1 billion hours of service?
Yesterday, the Corporation for National and Community Service (who bring you such national service programs as AmeriCorps and Senior Corps) released their annual report on volunteering in America. Some of the more interesting tidbits? According to their data, volunteers in the U.S. watch significantly less television than non-volunteers. Also, more than 3.7 million volunteers in the U.S. traveled more than 120 miles from their home to serve (especially in the Gulf Coast region affected by 2005's Hurricane Katrina) while 1.1 million volunteered abroad with an organization outside the U.S.
Along with the release of new stats for the country, the Corporation also launched a new interactive website where citizens across the United States can learn more about how their community volunteers. For example, at www.VolunteeringInAmerica.gov, you can check out the rankings to see which states and large and mid-sized cities have the highest volunteering rates (this year's trophies go to Utah, Minneapolis-St Paul, and Provo, UT, respectively). You can also read up on trends, stats, and highlights for your region, state, or any one of 162 communities. Finally, if you happen to work as a leader or manager of volunteers, you can also check out their collection of tools and effective practices.
Wanna learn more? Head over to www.VolunteeringInAmerica.gov and start clicking. Oh, and if you're from Utah, Minneapolis-St Paul, or Provo, feel free to gloat shamelessly. At least until next year…
On Friday Dan blogged about the tragic death of a 22-year-old cyclist in Washington, DC. It’s a sad but true fact: over 1 million people worldwide die in car accidents every year. From drunk driving to confusing right-of-ways, the reasons more people are dying on the road are increasing. So much so that by the year 2030, the World Health Organization predicts accidents are going to be the 8th leading cause of death. Two progressive thinkers, however, are working towards putting the brakes on this statistic.
By Flickr user PINEAPPLE XVI
Pioneered by engineer Hans Monderman, the naked-streets movement (also known as “shared space”) is picking up speed in the Netherlands. The idea is this: streets are stripped of traffic lights, stop signs and other markings to encourage an organic traffic flow. Believing humanity is inherently responsible and unselfish, Monderman has proven that road efficiency increases when people are forced to look each other in the eye, slow down and thus be more cautious. Already Amsterdam has seen the number of deaths and traffic jams decrease, and other small towns in countries such as Sweden and the UK are following suit.
Another forward thinker in terms of traffic solutions is Hanyoung Lee, a South Korean product designer with Yanko Design. Lee’s brainchild is a Virtual Wall, which shines larger-than-life pedestrians via laser projectors at crosswalks. Best used on busy city streets, drivers roll up to the mammoth-sized wall of laser beams and are forced to pay more attention to the live bodies on the other side of the screen. The result Lee hopes for? Crosswalk rules will be strictly observed, thus decreasing the amount of accidents. Though not on the market yet, Lee’s design could render traffic lights obsolete.
Does this topic rev you up? Check out our database for other ways people around the world are securing street safety.
This entry is by Celeste, a Community Outreach Coordinator who blogs regularly from Idealist's Argentina office.
By Flickr user 0olong
I love to read. Aside from the obvious benefits of reading, like entertainment, having something to do on the subway, and an impressive bookshelf, reading stimulates your mind and keeps it from decline in old age. And now, by reading books, you can help improve the world!
Sound a little farfetched? Well, take a look at two organizations I love, Better World Books and BookCrossing.
Better World Books (which also has a blog I happen to like a lot) "collects and sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide." That means for each book you buy from them—used or new—a portion of the profits go to fund literacy projects around the world, and they ship it with carbon-neutral offsets. So far, they claim to have raised over 4 million dollars for global literacy, and saved over 11 million books from sitting in a landfill.
BookCrossing is a site that allows you to share your books with complete strangers, and lets you track where they've gone! By registering with the site, you can donate books for other users to read, leaving them on a plane, your local coffee shop, even your orthodontist's waiting room. Other members will see where you've left the book, read it, review it on the site, and leave it in a new place. As the BookCrossing people say, help make the whole world a library by reading a book and passing it on!
Thus, the perfect solution: buy a (used) book, stimulate your brain, pass it on, make the world a better place. Can life get better than this?
This entry is by Alison, who works with our Community Outreach Team. She also blogs at Idealist in NYC.
If you use Twitter, you can follow our work in real time by adding us as a contact. We're using the microblogging and social networking tool to keep our friends in the loop about our projects and goings-on in our network.
Here's our Twitter in English:
http://twitter.com/idealist_org
And in Spanish:
http://twitter.com/idealistas_org
If you're new to Twitter, beware: soon you may love it a little too much. Or you might love to hate it so much that you start spending precious time blogging about how the service could be improved!
Either way, we'll be around...hope to see you there.
Posted by Blog Editor
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