A “flying toilet” is a particularly Kenyan device: a small grocery bag used as a toilet and then tossed out the window onto the street. The first encounter is both fascinating and grotesque—was that seriously what I just stepped on? Granted, finding a ...
Several weeks ago, as GOP presidential hopefuls Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry wrangled over the ethics and implications of vaccinating preteen girls against the human papillomavirus (HPV)—the virus that causes cervical cancer--Rwanda began rolling out the world’s first comprehensive nationwide effort to eliminate ...
Chances are, if you have a college or postgraduate degree, you also have student loans to pay back. Nationwide, Americans have around $1 trillion in education debt; each year, the cost of tuition at universities is rising (it rose 5.9 percent in 2008 ...
One of the toughest challenges we face in solving social problems is that the three sectors of society—government, business and the citizen sector—do not have strong bridges that connect one another. Just as a strong economy requires a healthy balance of free-market incentives ...
Global Entrepreneurship Week Invokes the Startup Spirit “New firms are indeed the greatest source of new wealth for struggling economies and a powerful weapon against poverty.” - Jonathan Ortmans, president of Global Entrepreneurship Week With events in the UK, US, Chile, India, Pakistan, ...
The concept of “wicked problems” refers to issues that are considered near impossible to solve because of complex interdependencies within a system; only discrete and context-specific interventions can be applied to wicked problems. Examples: climate change, the U.S. health care system, and the ...
Our sputtering economy needs workers with more of that entrepreneurial spirit. Think tank Civic Ventures suggests they might come from an unexpected demographic: workers who are approaching middle age or their retirement years. The group found that one in four Americans between 44 ...
Past the debate around Solyndra and tension around how, exactly, government should support green tech, another energy story is emerging. The combination of new emissions regulations and cheaper alternative energy sources has caused, occasionally, rather large-scale shifts toward more sustainable energy production. Case ...
While attending Opportunity Collaboration, a professed non-conference conference focused on eradicating poverty last week in Ixtapa, Mexico, I started jotting down my learnings along the way. Here are a few of them, in no particular order. A visitor is a blessing. Peter Ndungu, ...
One of the first reasons that Jon Rubin and his partner, Dawn Weleski, started the Conflict Kitchen was as a response to what was missing in Pittsburgh. The Conflict Kitchen is a take-out restaurant that serves cuisine from countries with which the U.S. ...