Utilize your space: A Tiny Apartment Transforms Into 24 Rooms

Sesame Street:Song: I Love My Hair

    

Joey Mazzarino, the head writer of Sesame Street, is also a Muppeteer who wrote the song for his daughter. Mazzarino is Italian. He and his wife adopted their 5-year-old daughter, Segi, from Ethiopia when she was a year old.  Mazzarino says he wrote the song after noticing his daughter playing with dolls.
"She wanted to have long blond hair and straight hair, and she wanted to be able to bounce it around," he tells NPR's Melissa Block.
In writing the song, he wanted to say in song what he says to his daughter: "Your hair is great. You can put it in ponytails. You can put it in cornrows. I wish I had hair like you."

Award to Artist Who Gives Slums a Human Face

The TED prize for 2011 will go to J R, who plasters colossal photos in downtrodden neighborhoods around the world.

See Article and View Slideshow:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/arts/design/20ted.html?ref=arts

Tanvi Girotra: Empowering Girls Before Poverty Drives Them to the Streets of India

Tanvi Giotra started "Becoming I",  a new youth-led organization to create a platform for young people to come together and make a positive difference in society. The project on women’s empowerment is called Project Fiza and works with a community of commercial sex workers using art, handicrafts, dance, music and theatre.

See the full article:
http://www.humnews.com/humnews/2010/9/28/tanvi-girotra-empowering-girls-before-poverty-drives-them-to.html

The Greatness Of Ambition Made Real In The Alps

The longest tunnel in the world has been completed under the Swiss Alps.

There is a certain majesty in projects of grand engineering. A majesty and an ambition to reshape the very make up of the world. You can't stand before the Hoover Dam, or transit the Panama Canal, or drive over the Golden Gate Bridge without being moved. They are sublime in their impact, symphonies of concrete and steel that just make you proud to be human.

See article:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/10/15/130588051/the-greatness-of-big-dreams-made-real

Taking Power Away from the N-WORD

Jarrett Mathis is a man on a mission. The Brooklyn native and Dartmouth alum created an interactive workshop to empower black youth, reduce violence in the inner-city, and uplift the community. He then turned it into a 75 minute documentary, which you can view online at empoweringourselvesnow.com.

Real-Life Design: Erecting Solutions to Social Problems

Architecture is rediscovering its social conscience. That’s the message behind “Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement,” an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

See Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/arts/design/15change.html?_r=1&ref=arts

The Peace Dividend

Mixing politics and performance in Sarajevo.

Oscar winning filmmaker, Danis Tanovic, has used his success to galvanize a cultural movement in which artists, actors and musicians are trying to transcend the ethnic divisions that contributed to — and have prevailed since — the Bosnian war. His newly formed political party, Nasa Stranka (Our Party), promotes a platform of post-ethnic Bosnia.

See full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/t-magazine/26remix-sarajevo-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=travel

 “If we don’t do something, nobody will do it.”

BRAVE THINKERS

For more than 150 years, The Atlantic has celebrated the moral and intellectual bravery of leaders who espouse unpopular or controversial positions. In this special report, their second annual, they highlight men and women who embody this great tradition today.

View Slideshow:
http://www.theatlantic.com/special-report/brave-thinkers-2010/#

"19 people risking their reputations, fortunes, and lives in pursuit of big ideas"

Melinda French Gates: What nonprofits can learn from Coca-Cola

At TEDxChange, Melinda Gates makes a provocative case for nonprofits taking a cue from corporations such as Coca-Cola, whose plugged-in, global network of marketers and distributors ensures that every remote village wants -- and can get -- a Coke. Why shouldn't this work for condoms, sanitation, vaccinations too?

Watch this video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/melinda_french_gates_what_nonprofits_can_learn_from_coca_cola.html

Mechai Viravaidya: How Mr. Condom made Thailand a better place

"It's everybody's job to change attitude and behavior."

At TEDxChange, Thailand's "Mr. Condom," Mechai Viravaidya, walks us through the country's bold plan to raise its standard of living, starting in the 1970s. First step: population control. And that means a lot of frank, funny -- and very effective -- talk about condoms.

Watch Video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/mechai_viravaidya_how_mr_condom_made_thailand_a_better_place.html

 

In Ghana Women Are Riding Their Way To Power On Tractors

Leticia Brenyah's story, the second in this four-part series on economic empowerment of women in the developing world, she says, is about how poor and uneducated women need to learn to use modern day gadgets and equipment for their own economic improvement.

See full article:
http://smblog.changemakers.com/in-ghana-women-are-riding-their-way-to-power

Swedish Museums Stunning Architectural Homage to Wood:

Deep in the Swedish forest there is an exquisite art museum. Created from an abandoned furniture factory, the Virserum Art Museum connects seamlessly with the context and surrounding community, all with a rich tradition in wood.

View Slideshow:
http://www.treehugger.com/galleries/2010/10/swedish-museums-stunning-architectural-homage-to-wood.php

Oxfordshire town sees human waste used to heat homes

Householders in Didcot have become the first in the UK to use gas made from their own human waste and supplied via the national grid to heat their homes.

See full article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11433162

Optimism 2.0

How an optimistic outlook can help improve your state of health, not just your state of mind.

Full article: http://www.odemagazine.com/doc/72/optimism-2.0/3

The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking

Hall of Fame: Arcade Fire Culture: vanityfair.com

Michael Hogan nominates Arcade Fire for championing Haiti.


"...Because by the end of last year Arcade Fire, whose much-anticipated third album, The Suburbs, comes out this month, had helped raise more than $800,000 for (DR. Paul) Farmer’s organization. Because Chassagne and Butler, in 2008, went to Haiti and performed at Partners in Health’s facilities. Because Chassagne, alarmed by the chaos bred by thousands of NGOs working in isolation, and often at cross-purposes, is helping to launch Kanpe (Creole for “to stand up”), a project to coordinate nonprofits in the battle against poverty. “We have to be organized,” she says. “We have to do better by Haiti.”"

Full article: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/arcade-fire-201009

Budrus Trailer

Budrus is an award-winning feature documentary film about a Palestinian community organizer, Ayed Morrar, who unites local Fatah and Hamas members along with Israeli supporters in an unarmed movement to save his village of Budrus from destruction by Israel’s Separation Barrier. 

"It takes a village to unite the most divided people on earth."