Three years ago New York City launched Opportunity NYC, an ambitious experiment to see if low-income, mostly single mothers could effectively be bribed to be more responsible parents. The idea was modeled on a successful Mexican program called Oportunidades, which makes cash payments ...
For decades, city dwellers have grappled with the question: to car or not to car? Own one, and you’ve got to park it somewhere, a process that’s nearly guaranteed to be a daily intrusion on your time, wallet, and sanity. But go car-less, ...
Gillian Caldwell had a dream job. She was running WITNESS, an organization that safeguards human rights through multimedia technology. Everything about the work aligned perfectly with her values, talents and interests. She had also realized her long-time ambition of launching “a YouTube for ...
In Tribes, Seth Godin discusses the importance of leadership and the surprising places where leaders appear. A leader can be the CEO, but she can also be the intern. A leader can be President Obama, but he can also be the first person ...
When the punditocracy convened in late 2009 to assess the “aughts” (or whatever we’re calling the just-concluded decade), they focused on the War on Terror, the proliferation of reality TV, the fall of Wall Street, and, of course, that series of tubes that ...
Remember how dull (and awkward!) your high school sex ed and life skills classes were? Maura Minsky, co-Founder and Executive Director of Scenarios USA, has a different approach: let young people do the teaching - through film. Scenarios USA solicits screenplays from youth, ...
PROBLEM: Seventh Generation seeks to blend purpose and profit, but when it comes to politics, the company is careful not to mix activism and business. That's a lesson that co-founder and CEO Jeffrey Hollender learned during the 1992 presidential election. Hollender believed that ...
Geoff Cape, whose background was in carpentry and real estate development, founded Evergreen in 1991 to help city-dwelling Canadians reconnect with nature at a time when urban planning was obsessed with expanding the built environment. He has enlisted tens of thousands of volunteers ...
Social entrepreneurs like to use the word “scrappy” to describe the way they tackle big problems. Think of doing whatever it takes—writing emails until 4 a.m., living in your best friend’s basement, etc.—all for the big-picture change you seek. Then there’s Tim DeChristopher, ...
PROBLEM: Like the youths it serves, the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center (SMYRC) often finds itself living close to the edge. Through its 11 year history, it has had to scramble continuously to keep the money flowing and the doors open, explains project ...