india
Vandana Shiva: To Feed Ourselves, First Feed Other Species - #Commons
Dr. Vandana Shiva, a physicist and powerful leader in the worldwide, growing movement towards organic food, describes her vision for the diverse, healthy ecosystems that once sustained, can provide ample food for humanity. Part of her experience is the nearly 5,000 years of agriculture in India - one of the longest, and perhaps an example for other places seeking a sustainable future.
In a stunning critique, she describes her research demonstrating that organic, diverse food-ecosystems provide far more food, better quality food, better ecosystems/habitat, and more profitability for organic farmers. From the interview:
Prerna Means Inspiration: Girls Refuse Forced Marriages to Gain an Education
Prerna Girls School is a part of the Study Hall School in Lucknow, India. It serves the largely impoverished girl children of the surrounding slums, by providing educations to 540 girls from kindergarten through 12th grade (as of June 2010). Founded by Dr. Urvashi Sahni, herself a dynamic force of nature, Prerna is one of those places that show a good future can become a reality.
The astounding success of the Prerna Girls School program is a lesson to many others working for education, women's empowerment and solving a host of issues identified in the Millennium Development Goals as critical: health, education, poverty eradication, literacy, population pressure, environmental degradation, to name a few.
Rogpa - Happy Kids and Fair Trade
The Rogpa Charitable Trust in Dharamsala, India, started providing daycare for Tibetan kids - mostly from refugee families - but its mission has steadily grown to providing job training for refugees, and business creation for sustainable livelihoods.
Now, Rogpa has started a Cafe to serve great pastries, sweets, coffee - and to sell the Fair Trade goods they make, and that others bring to the store. All of this is done with a Fair Trade model - a very exciting looks at a new kind of business.
Street Kids of Old Delhi
These street kids ran up to us.
They were great, and hungry and also being kids. At first, they faked some crying, then they were mostly curious....and some were supposed to be in school - at 11:00am Monday. They all had energy, they were all great...they also had a 'handler' woman telling them what to do... See how it turned out.
Produced by PierreTerre.com as part of our public service programming. Pierre
