Jacqueline Novogratz founded and leads Acumen Fund, a nonprofit that takes a businesslike approach to improving the lives of the poor. In her new book, The Blue Sweater, she tells stories from the new philanthropy, which emphasizes sustainable bottom-up solutions over traditional top-down aid.
Jacqueline Novogratz tells a moving story of an encounter in a Nairobi slum with Jane, a former prostitute, whose dreams of escaping poverty, of becoming a doctor and of getting married were fulfilled in an unexpected way. Jacqueline Novogratz founded and leads Acumen Fund, a nonprofit that takes a businesslike approach to improving the lives of the poor. In her new book, The Blue Sweater, she tells stories from the new philanthropy, which emphasizes sustainable bottom-up solutions over traditional top-down aid.
0 Comments
Ernesto Sirolli is a noted authority in the field of sustainable economic development and is the Founder of the Sirolli Institute, an international non-profit organization that teaches community leaders how to establish and maintain Enterprise Facilitation projects in their community. The Institute is now training communities in the USA, Canada, Australia, England and Scotland. In 1985, he pioneered in Esperance, a small rural community in Western Australia, a unique economic development approach based on harnessing the passion, determination, intelligence, and resourcefulness of the local people. The striking results of "The Esperance Experience" have prompted more than 250 communities around the world to adopt responsive, person-centered approaches to local economic development similar to the Enterprise Facilitation® model pioneered in Esperance. I always wanted to help people, but then from Sirolli's speech i understood a new perspective. Yeah, i realized that we cant help someone who dont need it. We need to know what is needed to develop those individuals or as such a community. I have not read the book Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo mentioned by Sirolli, but now i am interested in reading it. I guess, that this book reveals on atleast, how not to provide aid. Sirolli, sure knows to talk well, he can make us listen to him. Looking at this speech, i understand the difficulties we have to face when do such kind of work, not in this well established state, but when it was on the budding stage. I got inspired by him & below is the link to his website. Quotes by Ernesto Sirolli : “What you do [to provide better aid is] you shut up. You never arrive in a community with any ideas.” A teacher, writer and member of the Kenyan parliament, Joseph Lekuton has an inspiring vision for Kenya. Born into a Maasai tribe in Northern Kenya, Joseph Lekuton was chosen to attend a missionary boarding school as a child -- sometimes walking 50 miles during vacations to find and rejoin his nomadic family. He won a scholarship to St. Lawrence University, then attended Harvard, and worked as a writer and history teacher in Virginia. He was named a National Geographic Energing Explorer for his work in sharing the culture of Kenya with America, including efforts to share educational resources with nomadic children through the BOMA Fund and Cows for Kids. In 2006, after a plane crash killed five members of the Kenyan parliament, Lekuton decided to return to Kenya and stand for election to fill the seat in his region. He won a parliamentary seat in the 2006 by-election, and was a member of the winning party in the December 2007 elections -- the results of which continue to be contested throughout Kenya. "In his first year in office, [Lekuton] compiled an impressive record. He channeled public funds to construct schoolrooms and boreholes for wells, lured Western development agencies to his constituency, mediated between ethnic groups in the region that have been clashing over livestock-grazing rights and access to water and distributed some of his ample salary to pay school fees and health-care costs for the indigent." New York Times Magazine Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past ten years studying vulnerability, courage, authenticity, and shame. She spent the first five years of her decade-long study focusing on shame and empathy, and is now using that work to explore a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness. She poses the questions: How do we learn to embrace our vulnerabilities and imperfections so that we can engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to recognize that we are enough – that we are worthy of love, belonging, and joy? "Brené Brown is an absolute legend. This is groundbreaking - not in terms of peoples awareness of these subjects and what they mean... But in these messages enhanced communication made accessible to a wider audience on this level. I have a jumbled up jigsaw in front of me with pieces I've been putting together my whole life- and Brene Brown has just connected so many pieces. This makes so much sense on so many levels. Really awesome stuff. I will watch this a few times and recommend it to people!" jakesandersonaudio on YouTube Brene Brown's thought & speech is very inspiring. I have learned a lot from her talk & I would recommend it to others. The following are some of her quotes: “Maybe stories are just data with a soul.” Deb Roy studies how children learn language, and designs machines that learn to communicate in human-like ways. On sabbatical from MIT Media Lab, he's working with the AI company Bluefin Labs. MIT researcher Deb Roy wanted to understand how his infant son learned language -- so he wired up his house with videocameras to catch every moment (with exceptions) of his son's life, then parsed 90,000 hours of home video to watch "gaaaa" slowly turn into "water." Astonishing, data-rich research with deep implications for how we learn. Deb Roy directs the Cognitive Machines group at the MIT Media Lab, where he studies how children learn language, and designs machines that learn to communicate in human-like ways. To enable this work, he has pioneered new data-driven methods for analyzing and modeling human linguistic and social behavior. He has authored numerous scientific papers on artificial intelligence, cognitive modeling, human-machine interaction, data mining, and information visualization.
Deb Roy was the co-founder and serves as CEO of Bluefin Labs, a venture-backed technology company. Built upon deep machine learning principles developed in his research over the past 15 years, Bluefin has created a technology platform that analyzes social media commentary to measure real-time audience response to TV ads and shows. How can a super-thin 3-inch disk levitate something 70,000 times its own weight? In a riveting demonstration, Boaz Almog shows how a phenomenon known as quantum locking allows a superconductor disk to float over a magnetic rail -- completely frictionlessly and with zero energy loss.
In October 2011, Boaz Almog demonstrated how a superconducting disk can be trapped in a surrounding magnetic field to levitate above it, a phenomenon called “quantum levitation.” This demonstration, seemingly taken from a sci-fi movie, is the result of many years of R&D on high-quality superconductors. By using exceptional superconductors cooled in liquid nitrogen, Almog and his colleague Mishael Azoulay at the superconductivity group at Tel Aviv University (lead by Prof. Guy Deutscher) were able to demonstrate a quantum effect that, although well known to physicists worldwide, had never been seen and demonstrated in such a compelling way. David Gallo shows jaw-dropping footage of amazing sea creatures, including a color-shifting cuttlefish, a perfectly camouflaged octopus, and a Times Square's worth of neon light displays from fish who live in the blackest depths of the ocean.
It is an interesting site with loads of movies, which show us the things happening around us, and their own solutions. I've not watched many, but i've watched a few of them. http://www.filmsforaction.org/walloffilms/ Film offers us a powerful tool to shift awareness and inspire action. It offers a method to break our dependence on the mainstream media and become the media ourselves. We don't need to wait for anyone or anything.
Just imagine what could become possible if an entire city had seen just one of the documentaries above. Just imagine what would be possible if everyone in the country was aware of how unhealthy the mainstream media was for our future and started turning to independent sources in droves. Creating a better world really does start with an informed citizenry, and there's lots of subject matter to cover. Our country has to come to terms with the true history of Western civilization. It has to learn about basic ecology. It needs to understand some basic truths about peak oil and the monetary system, the truth about capitalism and governments. Our society needs a new story to belong to. The old story of empire and dominion over the earth has to be looked at in the full light of day - all of our ambient cultural stories and values that we take for granted and which remain invisible must become visible. But most of all, we need to see the promise of the alternatives - we need to be able to imagine new exciting ways that people could live, better than anything that the old paradigm could ever dream of providing. And all of this knowledge and introspection, dreaming, questioning, and discovery is essential for a cultural transformation that addresses root causes. This knowledge is vitally necessary. Taken together, this knowledge, which is documented throughout the 350+ documentaries we've featured above, will lay the foundation on which the next paradigm will be built, post empire. So take this library of films and use it. Host film screenings, share these films with friends, buy and give copies to your elected officials and school faculty. Get this information out in to your community and you will be laying the foundation for a local movement for mass societal, environmental and economic change. Sebastian Thrun is the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab and is working, through robotics, to change the way we understand the world.
Sebastian Thrun helped build Google's amazing driverless car, powered by a very personal quest to save lives and reduce traffic accidents. Jawdropping video shows the DARPA Challenge-winning car motoring through busy city traffic with no one behind the wheel, and dramatic test drive footage from TED2011 demonstrates how fast the thing can really go In this intimate talk filmed at TED's offices, energy innovator Amory Lovins shows how to get the US off oil and coal by 2050, $5 trillion cheaper, with no Act of Congress, led by business for profit. The key is integrating all four energy-using sectors—and four kinds of innovation. Amory Lovins was worried (and writing) about energy long before global warming was making the front -- or even back -- page of newspapers. Since studying at Harvard and Oxford in the 1960s, he's written dozens of books, and initiated ambitious projects -- cofounding the influential, environment-focused Rocky Mountain Institute; prototyping the ultra-efficient Hypercar -- to focus the world's attention on alternative approaches to energy and transportation. His critical thinking has driven people around the globe -- from world leaders to the average Joe -- to think differently about energy and its role in some of our biggest problems: climate change, oil dependency, national security, economic health, and depletion of natural resources. Lovins offers solutions as well. His new book and site, Reinventing Fire, offers actionable solutions for four energy-intensive sectors of the economy: transportation, buildings, industry and electricity. Lovins has always focused on solutions that conserve natural resources while also promoting economic growth; Texas Instruments and Wal-Mart are just two of the mega-corporations he has advised on improving energy efficiency. "It was visionary. Every now and then someone wanders into a field and starts talking and has a dramatic impact." Cary Bullock, chief executive of GreenFuel Technologies Corp. in The Washington Post |
Author I am Harshavardhan B, a radiologist by profession. But I want to be more than that. I would like to live up to the meaning of my name HARSHAVARDHAN - creator of joy & happiness. Archives
June 2018
Categories
All
|