Media mogul and long-time environmentalist Ted Turner is making good on his intentions to invest in a large-scale solar utility project in the Southwest – in this case, a 30 megawatt AC solar power station slated for northern New Mexico.
The facility to be completed by the end of 2010 under contract to Turner Renewable Energy is expected to supply electricity to approximately 9,000 homes, displacing over 45,000 tons of CO2 on an annual basis.
READ More in Earth Techling blog …
As a rule, Irishmen only cry at football games. But on a recent walk around New York City, I ended up publicly emoting, with nary a football in sight.
In the middle of downtown Manhattan’s financial district, was a springtime Irish hillside, complete with a tumbledown stone cottage, bracken and grasses.
It was a tiny park, the Irish Hunger Memorial, containing stones from every county in Ireland.
During the Great Famine of 1847 and the exodus that followed, as one and a half million died, and two million more fled, many found shelter on these very quaysides of the Hudson River in New York City.
(READ the tribute to the Irish in New York City, on Irish Central )
As a rule, Irishmen only cry at football games. But on a recent walk around New York City, I ended up publicly emoting, with nary a football in sight.
In the middle of downtown Manhattan’s financial district, was a springtime Irish hillside, complete with a tumbledown stone cottage, bracken and grasses.
It was a tiny park, the Irish Hunger Memorial, containing stones from every county in Ireland.
During the Great Famine of 1847 and the exodus that followed, as one and a half million died, and two million more fled, many found shelter on these very quaysides of the Hudson River in New York City.
(READ the tribute to the Irish in New York City, on Irish Central )
UNICEF is helping to build child-friendly schools in Niger, where school attendance rates are among the lowest in the world and just 31% of girls become students.
Partnering with IKEA home furnishing stores, which over the 2009 holiday raised $6 million in its Soft Toy Drive to provide schools supplies, UNICEF delivered school materials, teacher training and water and sanitation facilities to the students here. The result is a new school that has become the heart of a community and part of the exciting trend of increasing access to education in this West African nation.
UNICEF is transforming not only education, but age-old practices as well, like the forced marriages of young girls before they are 18.
Jacquelin Marin has no running hot water at home. For a while, she had no real home at all. But soon she’ll have both, with the sun heating water for her showers.
Marin and her neighbors are part of a pilot program to install solar water heaters in the houses of low-income families. For Chile—a country with stark economic inequality and few fossil fuels—it’s a way to help the poor while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
(READ the story in GlobalPost.com)
An 80-year-old grocery magnate is donating $20 million to help train teachers for Catholic schools and universities.
Patrick Roche, 80, co-founder of the Roche Brothers chain of 18 supermarkets in Massachusetts, credits his childhood Catholic school with embracing his family after his mother died.
Boston College will funnel the donation to the renamed Roche Center for Catholic Education to train college students to administer and teach in Catholic schools and universities nationwide, while also conducting research on issues concerning Catholic schools.
(READ More in MSNBC) Editor’s Note: Ignore the typo which reads “$30 Million”
After experiencing a “tsunami of happiness” from orphans in Cambodia, a bike messenger from New York City started an organization that donates bikes to orphans around the world.
88 Bikes has donated hundreds of bicycles to children and given them a photo of the person who bought the bike — spreading smiles, two wheels at a time.
WATCH the video report at CBS News.com…
A report from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund says the world is on track to meet or even exceed the drinking-water target of the Millennium Development Goals, which aims to cut in half the number of people who do not have access to good water.
87 percent of the world’s population or approximately 5.9 billion people are using safe drinking-water sources, according to the new WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program report, “Progress on Sanitation and Drinking – 2010 Update,” released yesterday.
A report from the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund says the world is on track to meet or even exceed the drinking-water target of the Millennium Development Goals, which aims to cut in half the number of people who do not have access to good water.
87 percent of the world’s population or approximately 5.9 billion people are using safe drinking-water sources, according to the new WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Program report, “Progress on Sanitation and Drinking – 2010 Update,” released yesterday.
Two young women, American University Law School graduates, launched a Washington, DC program where volunteers are mentoring juveniles, trying to keep them from returning to jail in the future.
The two women had bonded over an unconventional vision: to help young men in jail leave Washington’s juvenile justice system and find their way to productive, fulfilling lives.
Five years later, Mentoring Today now has a solid track record, inspiring mentors to donate more than 1,800 volunteer hours, which have helped more than 30 young men to remake their lives. Last year, the nonprofit raised more than $350,000 from donors and grantmakers to fund its services.
(READ the story at CS Monitor)
First lady Michelle Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton honored human rights activists from around the world with this year’s Women of Courage awards at a special ceremony March 10 at the State Department.
“These 10 women have overcome personal adversity, threats, arrest and assault to dedicate themselves to activism for human rights,” said Melanne Verveer, the State Department’s first-ever ambassador-at-large for global women’s issues, in introductory remarks. “From striving to give more voice to politically underrepresented women in Afghanistan to documenting human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, these heroic individuals have made it their life’s work to increase freedom and equality in the world.”
For years, a high school in downtown Los Angeles has made doing good deeds a part of the school’s curriculum. Now social services agencies are counting on the students’ help.
Loyola High School students have donated more than a million hours of community service over the years.
WATCH the Making A Difference video below, or at MSNBC…
MIT graduate, Jodie Wu, had a vision that a bicycle could be more than just a machine for transportation, but a way to bring technology to the people who need it most. So, she created an organization to transform bicycles into a tool for income generation to empower the world’s 550 million small farmers.
To do this, she has engineered attachments for bicycles such as maize shellers, grinders and phone chargers. The designs are simple, affordable, and driven by pedal-power. With their adapter, the bicycle retains all functionality for transport, while gaining value as a tool for farmers.
Find out more about Global Cycle Solutions at their Website.
WATCH the video below (from Clip Syndicate ), or read the article at MIT…
When a Washington, D.C., couple moved to Burlington, Vermont, they were having trouble getting to know the neighbors. So, they cooked up a plan to use the internet as a way to meet NOT people who lived half a world away, but half a block.
“I invested $15 at the copy shop, printed up 400 fliers, and put one on every door in our neighborhood,” Wood-Lewis explains. “It pretty much just said, ‘Share messages about lost cats and block parties.'”
Someone wrote in: “Neighbors, FYI: Late last night I observed a large possum ambling across my front yard. Not as bad as a skunk, but I understand that possums can damage gardens and dig up lawns.” Twenty-four hours later, another neighbor responded: “They have very soft feet that aren’t good for digging and aren’t likely to cause lawn damage–and they’re very clean animals and spend much of their rest time grooming themselves.”
A Wisconsin man says his football loyalties to the Green Bay Packers helped save his life. He sold his blood for $15 per pint in order to attend Packers games for 56 years.
His doctor later found that the man could have died from the same disease that claimed his father at age 43 had he not sold his blood regularly, which cleared his system of excess iron.
(READ the AP story via WFIE-14)
Canada’s largest supermarket chain plans to install rooftop solar panels on many of its Loblaws stores in Ontario, becoming one of the first companies to jump aboard the province’s new renewable-energy program.
The program, billed as the first of its kind in North America and a cornerstone of the McGuinty government’s Green Energy Act, pays premium prices for renewable power.
(Read more in the Toronto Globe and Mail)
Last fall, Eric Alperin, a San Francisco artist, heard about blackberries, plums and loquats growing on public property in his city and free for the picking.
“It was great,” he said. “We picked as much as we could carry and had beautiful, fresh, free city fruit,” Alperin said. “I’ll definitely go (picking) again.” Fruit-picking opportunities like that are becoming more common, as volunteers in cities including Boston, Detroit, Philadelphia and Madison, Wis., mobilize behind a goal of planting fruit trees on public land in city parks and neighborhoods.
(READ the inspiring story in USA Today)
For millions of gluten sensitive sufferers, eating even a microscopic amount of gluten — foods laced with wheat or other grains — frequently leads to illness.
A new drug called Larazotide Acetate, developed by a University of Alberta doctor, has been called ‘revolutionary’ for its promise to help such people to lead a normal life.
Larazotide Acetate was shown in three clinical trials to reduce the effects of gluten in up to 85% of subjects with celiac disease. The pill may offer patients the freedom to eat out at restaurants, or go to a friends house for dinner without getting sick from gluten contaminated food.
A fourth clinical trial is slated for later this year, and the drug could be made available by 2012.
(Compiled from reports in both CTV.com or Celiac.com)
For millions of gluten sensitive sufferers, eating even a microscopic amount of gluten — foods laced with wheat or other grains — frequently leads to illness.
A new drug called Larazotide Acetate, developed by a University of Alberta doctor, has been called ‘revolutionary’ for its promise to help such people to lead a normal life.
Larazotide Acetate was shown in three clinical trials to reduce the effects of gluten in up to 85% of subjects with celiac disease. The pill may offer patients the freedom to eat out at restaurants, or go to a friends house for dinner without getting sick from gluten contaminated food.
A fourth clinical trial is slated for later this year, and the drug could be made available by 2012.
(Compiled from reports in both CTV.com or Celiac.com)
Joining Cadbury in the pantheon of sweet-makers to announce commitments to fully embrace the Fair Trade movement, Ben & Jerry’s vowed that all its flavors in every country where the ice cream is sold will be manufactured using Fair Trade Certified™ ingredients by the end of 2013.
Ben & Jerry’s was the first ice cream company in the world to use Fair Trade Certified™ ingredients starting in 2005, and today it’s racing ahead as the first ice cream company to make such a significant commitment to Fair Trade across its global portfolio.
Company co-founder Jerry Greenfield said, ”Fair Trade is about making sure people get their fair share of the pie. The whole concept of Fair Trade goes to the heart of our values and sense of right and wrong.”
Fair Trade means that certified farmers are using environmentally sound practices to grow and harvest their crops in a sustainable way. Farmers selling Fair Trade products earn a better income, which allows them to stay on their land.
Ben & Jerry’s Fair Trade commitment means that every ingredient that can be sourced Fair Trade Certified™, now or in the future, will be purchased as such. Globally, this involves converting up to 121 different chunks and swirls, working across eleven different ingredients such as cocoa, banana, vanilla and other flavorings, fruits, and nuts. It also means working with Fair Trade cooperatives that total a combined membership of over 27,000 farmers.
Rob Cameron, Chief Executive of Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) said, “Congratulations to Ben & Jerry’s on the scale and the depth of this commitment to take their whole product line Fair Trade. Tackling poverty and sustainable agriculture through trade may not be easy but it is always worth it, and Ben & Jerry’s has demonstrated real leadership in laying out this long-term ambition to engage with smallholders, who grow nuts, bananas, vanilla, cocoa and other Fair Trade-certified ingredients.”
Paul Rice, President and CEO of TransFair USA, says, “Ben & Jerry’s has been a model for socially responsible business for 32 years, proving that being responsible and sustainable are good for business. Their entry into Fair Trade in 2005 builds on that history and has had a real impact on the lives of family farmers around the world. By converting their ingredients to Fair Trade, Ben & Jerry’s will help galvanize its suppliers to join the Fair Trade movement. That represents a huge leap forward for Fair Trade in the United States, and it’s once again the kind of bold, pioneering move for which the company is known and admired.”
