Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on May 13, 2010 at 1:03am —
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- WHICH great challenges and social problems should the EVOKE Network tackle next?
1) The most urgent is climate change.
Mark Mulkerin, one of my favorite agents here, cited the lack of focus on it as one of the reasons he withdrew.
2) Just as urgent, but more difficult to tackle is the question of how to ensure that everyone is able to participate freely, without fear of being attacked, insulted, scorned…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on May 10, 2010 at 10:54pm —
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Looking at the shining faces of these young girls is moving like nothing I've ever experienced. Many of them wouldn't be alive at all if it weren't for some of the initiatives supported by
Women Deliver and the
Safe Motherhood Initiative over the years. Those that lived would have lost their mothers and been left to care of male relatives in this still very…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on May 8, 2010 at 2:53am —
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As a follow up to my previous post I am following
Women Deliver on
Twitter and
Facebook. I've asked on their Facebook page about the possibility of teaming up with
HopePhones. I'll be making my first donation to HopePhones next week and will ask at the conference I'm attending in the middle of the month if others have…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on May 8, 2010 at 2:20am —
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In some places people still believe in the ancient law of Hammurabi: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth-- and a life for a life. In no time or place, however, have people ever believed in the 'law' which nature all too often enforces: a mother's life as the 'price' for giving birth to her child. United Nations Secretary General Ban says,
"No woman should have to pay with her life to be a mother." Few…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on May 7, 2010 at 11:41pm —
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My hundredth birthday. Of course we don't celebrate birthdays anymore the way we used to, and I am just as glad. Both the frugality and the respect for age that have become the new cultural norms around the world suit me just fine. I was never happy in the consumer culture that I was born into so long ago-- in 1953-- and although I didn't always fight it as fiercely as I perhaps should have, I find life much more pleasant now that we all use money so rarely. One thing is very much the same as…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on May 7, 2010 at 7:15pm —
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For residents of Seattle, Washington, the opening this afternoon of the Potlatch Mutual Bank is only the formalization of an informal local economy that has been growing since 2010, when the US economy went into the second 'dip' of the recessionary/deflationary cycle from which it has still not fully recovered. For people outside the area, however, the practices which have created a vibrant, sustainable local economy require a little more explanation.
First of all, the word '…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on May 4, 2010 at 3:50am —
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In 1989, Kenya's National Museums, with the help of two NGO's,
began a program to compile a database of indigenous food plants. Included in the data collected was information on the agronomy, nutrition, culture and markets for priority
species. The purpose was to promote cultivation, consumption and marketing of these ancient food sources. With participation from nearly 140,000 people, who reached a further million people and the taste for…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on May 3, 2010 at 3:00am —
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Seven and a half billion. That's how many people share our planet in 2020. That's a hard number to grasp, so we've decided to show people just how much it is in drops of industrial waste water. How much water is 7 and a half billion drops? 375,000 liters. What can you do with 375,000 liters of pure water? Grow 17 kilos of roasted coffee, make 15 hamburgers, refine 250 kilos of sugar, or build 2 or 3 cars.
Of course we can't use our water for any of those things-- even if we wanted to.…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 23, 2010 at 12:30pm —
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Although I've had friends caught in the middle of natural disasters (the Los Angeles earthquake and the Prague floods), most of my personal experience of threat has been from people rather than nature. From being near Detroit and having a father working in the city during the riots in the 60's, to sharing a neighborhood with warring gangs in Los Angeles in the late '70's and early '80's, to living half a mile from the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, everything I've… Continue
Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 22, 2010 at 9:00pm —
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I discovered
Manna Energy Foundation among
Ashoka's Change Makers finalists. Their web page declares a revolutionary agenda: "The Manna Energy Foundation represents a revolution in philanthropy,
with the vision that positive change can come from a combination of both
philanthropic action and social enterprise.
Our goal is to positively impact the
lives of one…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 16, 2010 at 10:00am —
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It's late June, and now that my husband and I have celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary and my parents have marked an incredible 76 years together, we're about to celebrate the anniversary of a much younger relationship: the opening of our net positive energy co-housing project 4 years ago. The idea was born long ago, in 2009 or 2010. I was looking for a place near my parents, but my eyes kept straying, instead, to the rustbelt cities of Ohio,… Continue
Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 14, 2010 at 9:30am —
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It's true that as women have joined the workforce it's become the new 'norm' for middle-class families to have two incomes. (Working class women have always worked, as do the poor.) Elizabeth Warren has done some of the best research on the subject. You can hear one of her best lectures here:
The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class.On the other hand, the the women's movement gave a lot of women AND men the opportunity…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 13, 2010 at 6:56am —
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I'd like to make a
treadle-powered washing-machine generator. I have no idea how much power it would actually produce, but I'd love to be able to at least partially charge my lap-top battery with it. I often sit at the computer most of the day, and treadle-power would give me some much-needed exercise along with meeting at least some of our energy needs at…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 9, 2010 at 7:30pm —
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Food security in Prague is less of a problem in some ways than in many places: many Czechs own or rent a 'country cottage' -- often little more than a garden shack, on small plots in 'garden colonies'. During the growing season it's common for relatives and neighbors to stop by with extra produce that would otherwise go to waste. Many are also adept foragers, with mushroom picking being almost a national sport.
However, since the Revolution in 1989, food security has begun to be…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 9, 2010 at 12:00pm —
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I'm currently dividing my time between the Washington DC area and Prague, CZ. If anyone in the region has a cellphone to contribute to the
Hopephones project and can get the phones to me I'll be happy to deliver them to the Bethesda, Maryland collection center near where I live in the DC area. I'll be stopping off in Hamburg before I leave on April 26th, so you can also get phones to me there if that's more…
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Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 5, 2010 at 6:54pm —
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It's early March, and, not unusually these days, it's already beginning to feel like spring. That's very bad news for some countries (though we've done a lot to reduce both global warming and the effects on the worst hit countries) but in our climate here in Bohemia, it's not so bad.
It's one of the days of the week when the multi-generational co-housing my husband and I moved into the year I turned 62 has its joint meals. One thing we both love about these meals is… Continue
Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 5, 2010 at 4:48pm —
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I've been a part of a number of 'experiments in money' over the course of time. The first one was as a member of a residential coop when I was 17. We had a group house where about 20 people lived. For a low rent we all contributed 'work-credits' intended to be the equivalent of about 4 hours of work a week. We bid on the jobs we wanted to do-- which ranged from picking up food for the group meals at wh***sale outlets outside the city to cooking meals, to washing the floors. Jobs… Continue
Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 5, 2010 at 1:30pm —
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My colleagues and I have been waiting for this year for a long time. When I first started talking to people about starting a 'wide-open-book' social innovation business one of the ideas we came up with was to have a special '2020 Vision' department designed to train people's creativity using the newest… Continue
Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on April 2, 2010 at 1:30pm —
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Many thanks to
Eileen Hurley for bringing this delightful woman to my attention:
Inderjit Khurana is a school teacher who decided that if the street children couldn't come to school, the school should come to them. She now has 20 'platform' schools that bring basic education to many children who would have no access to schooling otherwise.
Added by Sarah Shaw Tatoun on March 31, 2010 at 10:45am —
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