Five-year-olds from low-income communities have one-quarter the vocabulary of their more affluent peers, and half of them enter first grade as much as two years behind in preschool skills. That’s a severe handicap, which will persist for life unless something powerful intervenes. That's ...
One of the toughest challenges facing social innovators today is attracting the talent needed to build world-class organizations. That's why we feel it's significant when a high-ranking business leader decides to redirect his or her focus to solve global problems. Allen Wilcox is ...
Foster care kids don’t get many breaks. Imagine being abandoned by or forcibly separated from your parents, and then having to adjust to life in a new family or within an impersonal, bureaucratic system Some 30,000 young people age out of foster care ...
Aleta Margolis, founder and executive director of the Center for Inspired Teaching, believes all kids have an innate desire to learn. She also believes our schools are beating it out of them. As a teacher, Margolis rejected the idea of trying to motivate ...
At 32, after a two-decade battle with drug addiction, Gary Field walked out of a rehab center and shortly thereafter discovered a passion for helping others. Field began working as a social worker focusing on mental health care in New York City, but ...
Kristin Hayden, the founder of the Seattle-based OneWorld Now!, faced her share of rejection while trying to get her global leadership organization off the ground. She spent two years trying (unsuccessfully) to raise grants. When things looked bleak, Hayden stayed on course by ...
Elmira Bayrasli and her colleagues are always on the lookout for the up-and-coming Bill Gateses and Steve Jobses of developing countries. She handles policy and outreach for Endeavor, a New York-based organization that supports high-impact for-profit entrepreneurs in emerging markets—the enterprising men and ...
Who made the shirt you're wearing? Were the cloth cutters or seamstresses treated fairly? Did the factory comply with reasonable environmental standards? If you have no clue, then check out the work of Alice Tepper Marlin. She believes we all have a right ...
Eric Schwarz wants Americans to re-imagine how and when learning happens. In 1995, he founded Citizen Schools, a network of afterschool programs that enlists adult volunteers to provide hands-on apprenticeships to middle school students from disadvantaged communities. Citizen Schools currently works with 37 ...
The day Darell Hammond read a Washington Post story about two children who had suffocated in a car because they had nowhere else to play, he knew he had reached the point of no return. Hammond had worked as a community organizer in ...