All People Making a Difference
- Gaza Sky Geeks backs tech startups in the Gaza Strip
The conflict-torn Gaza Strip produces more than 2,000 young graduates with technical degrees each year. Gaza Sky Geeks helps them launch their own high-tech businesses.
- Filmmaker Mira Nair tells stories 'no one else will'
Her latest feature film, 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist,' and her free film school in Kampala, Uganda, are just two ways she's broadening the stories being told on screens.
- 100 years on, Rockefeller Foundation still promotes 'the well-being of mankind'
The Rockefeller Foundation, chartered in 1913, took philanthropy in new directions with its global outlook and diligent, scientific approach that became a model for the field.
- From housing to health care, 7 co-ops that are changing the economy
How manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, and others are doing business the cooperative way.
- Difference MakerDave Valle plays on a new field: microloans that help to end poverty
As a pro baseball player in the Dominican Republic Dave Valle saw poverty up close. Now his microloans are helping to end it.
- Changing the world, McDonald's style: 5 great social franchises
Social franchises – businesses with a charitable purpose – develop and market cheap, innovative products that solve a social problem. Here are five examples.
- Dana Frasz wants to see a Food Shift – away from waste
Forty percent of all the food produced in the US is wasted. But a number of efforts in the US – such as Food Shift – and others abroad are taking on the problem.
- Geeks to the rescue: How to save the world in 54 hours
At Tech4Change participants pitch, build, and present tech-oriented social enterprise concepts that can create jobs and solve problems for the world's poorest of the poor.
- Oklahoma City tornado: more ways to help
A massive tornado tore through parts of the Oklahoma City area May 19, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Here are some of the ways you can help.
- An art museum uses technology to lure young patrons
The Cleveland Museum of Art is embracing cutting-edge technology to try to lure new audiences to its collection of masterworks.
- Steve Jobs widow: How is Laurene Powell Jobs spending her wealth?
Steve Jobs widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, is emerging as a education philanthropist and immigration reform campaigner. Since her husband, Steve Jobs, passed on, Mrs. Powell Jobs has joined the push for passage of the Dream Act.
- Actor, dressed as woman, feels Egypt's sexual harassment
As part of a documentary TV series, a young male actor took to the streets of downtown Cairo dressed as a woman and experienced sexual harassment firsthand.
- Difference MakerScott Budnick serves breakfast – with a side order of respect – to the homeless
Sunday breakfast at a Providence, R.I., church is more than a free meal. Half the volunteers are homeless themselves: 'It's their [own] breakfast that they're putting on.'
- How mussels could help clean polluted waters
Along the shores of New York Harbor, scientists are investigating whether mussels, a hardy bivalve, might be grown in urban areas as a way of cleaning coastal waters of sewage, fertilizers, and other pollutants.
- Sharing good news helps break down the myth of our own powerlessness
Scary stories of kidnappings and explosions lead our news feeds, but there are plenty of empowering stories of progress – if we look for them.
- US Navy ship to sail the Pacific on a humanitarian mission
The US Navy has been sending its vessels on humanitarian missions since 2006, when it sent the hospital ship USNS Mercy to the Philippines, Indonesia, and other Asian countries.
- Two extraordinary African women tell their stories
As disabled women refugees, Dahabo Hassan Maow and Aitm Caroline Ogwang faced tremendous obstacles. But they've overcome every one and now advocate for other women in need.
- Detroit calls on its Do-It-Yourself Department
A growing number of volunteers, some affluent, some just average guys riding their Toros, perform services, such as mowing the parks, that Detroit can no longer afford.
- Difference MakerMalcolm Boyd brought Christianity into the streets to promote civil rights
Episcopal priest Malcolm Boyd has taken the message of Christianity outside the walls of church to champion minority rights and show that God is everywhere.
- Mobile phones unleash farmers in Uganda
The information farmers in Uganda provide via mobile phones does more than just help them order and pay for supplies. It allows the collection of data that will help them sell their crops, build a credit history, and receive other services, such as crop insurance.