This year, The Domino Project set out to change the future of publishing, and now it’s out to change the future of philanthropy. The project’s latest release, by author Michael Bungay Stanier of Box of Crayons fame, is out to tackle one of our civilization’s grimmest epidemics: malaria. (And if the gravity of the issue still hasn’t stopped you dead in your tracks — like, for instance, the fact that a child dies of malaria every 45 seconds — watch Bill Gates’ 2009 TED talk.)

End Malaria: Bold Innovation, Limitless Generosity, and the Opportunity to Save a Life, released on End Malaria Day today, is a fantastic anthology that will save lives — by helping you be better, smarter, more efficient at your job. The book features essays, tips and insights on great work by 62 leading writers and thinkers — including Brain Pickings favorites Sir Ken Robinson, Brené Brown, Kevin Kelly, Scott Belsky, Barry Schwartz, Daniel Pink, Derek Sivers and more — with $20 out of every $25 book sale (that’s 80%, for the mathematically challenged) going to Malaria No More to buy mosquito nets for Africa, still the most effective malaria prevention method. (For comparison purposes, most product-based charitable contributions are in the 5-10% range.)

Divided into eight key areas of insight — including creating freedom, disrupting “normal,” and taking small steps — the essays range from the pithy to the profound, equal parts actionable blueprint for optimizing your own work and fascinating peek into the workflow and creative process of some of today’s most admired thinkers and doers.

I don’t think there is a reliable twelve-step plan to being in your element that will guarantee the outcome. Human life isn’t like that. But it is possible to offer some navigational tools for those who are committed to the quest.” ~ Sir Ken Robinson

We seek to substitute rules for discretion, scripts for imagination.” ~ Barry Schwartz

Beta is an act of transparency and an admission of humility.” ~ Jeff Jarvis

Vulnerability is not weakness; it is our strongest connection to humanity and to each other. Choosing vulnerability means leaning into the full spectrum of emotions — the dark as well as the light — and examining how our feeling affect the way we think and behave. Vulnerability is equal parts courage, mindfulness, and understanding — it’s being ‘all in.’” ~ Brené Brown

End Malaria is an inspired effort to bridge the divide between selflessness and self-interest, inviting you to help eradicate both malaria and your own creative plateaus with something as humble yet potent as a book — what’s not to love?

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Deforestation and poverty are two of today’s most pressing socio-environmental problems, but most people don’t realize they’re closely connected. In Africa, the average dryland farmer will cut down 2,000 trees in her lifetime in order to power her home and farm, a necessity of basic economic survival. KOMAZA, Africa’s first nonprofit forestry company, is an inspired social enterprise that addresses this correlation through “microforestry” — small tree farms that offer profoundly lifechanging sustainable economic opportunities for farmers.

KOMAZA spends less than $1 to plant a tree, and each tree returns at least $20 to the family. That’s over $6,000 from half an acre — you can imagine the powerful impact this income can have on people many of whom live on under $1.25 a day.

Komaza is Swahili for “promote development” or “encourage growth.”

Please consider supporting KOMAZA with a modest donation — think about the negligible cost of going without Starbucks for a week and the remarkable gift this change allocation would be for an Elizabeth.

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A few months ago, we helped nonprofit Invisible Children fight the child soldier epidemic in Uganda — a country plagued by a tragic number of social ills fueled by a decade-long war — through music. Now, another music-driven effort is aiming to empower another one of the country’s severely victimized populations — the many women who live as widows, rape survivors and former abductees.

The Voice Project is an effort to support these brave women, who have come together in groups around the country, singing songs of hope and regeneration. The lyrics of these songs let their sons, former child soldiers, know that they have been forgiven and can now come home. Circulated via radio and word of mouth, these songs are actually working, bringing young men back home and giving a war-torn country a chance at peace for the first time in 24 years.

Inspired by these women’s songs, The Voice Project is bringing well-known artists together into “cover chains,” each covering the music of another. The videos are posted online and all proceeds from donations and sponsorships go towards peace programs and rebuilding efforts in Uganda.

Part Invisible Children, part Record Club, part Levi’s Pioneer Sessions, The Voice Project is a music-lover’s mecca. From indie dreams-come-true like Brett Dennen covering Citizen Cope to iconic intersections like Peter Gabriel covering Tom Waits to unlikely yet priceless pairings like The Submarines covering The Beatles, the effort uses the universal power of music to amplify a critical humanitarian message, allowing artists — and, in turn, their fans — to become a part of a cause best fought for by relinquishing the notion of “the other” and harnessing the power of community, a global community, in reconstructing the broken identity of a nation.

For a taste of The Voice Project‘s brilliance, grab a free download of Home by one of our favorite bands, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, featuring the Gulu Women’s Choir.

via

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UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who helped, Invisible Children met their goal and are now bringing three fantastic artists to Uganda. They’ve just revealed the third, another epic favorite of ours: Lykke Li. You can follow the project’s progress here.

It’s a special occasion when three things we love are coming together for a world-changing cause. Case in point: Invisible Children, the fantastic social and political global movement using storytelling to empower and change lives, is partnering with La Blogotheque to take The Polyphonic Spree and Yeasayer (two of our favorite bands, so that technically takes it up to five favorites) to Uganda.

And they’re using the brilliant Kickstarter platform to crowdsource funds for it.

The project will only be funded if it raises $20,000 by 11:59PM EST on March 11. Right now, it’s at a little over halfway. Please — and we say this with our biggest, most hopeful optimism — help this absolutely life-changing cause by pledging a donation. Even if it’s as little as $10.

You know what they say, many hands make light work. And it’s a heavy burden Invisible Children is fighting. Lend a hand today.

via BOOOOOOOM

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In July, we had the pleasure of meeting inventor and TEDFellow William Kamkwamba. Today, the world welcomes his brilliant new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope — a wildly inspiring recount of how, at the age of 14, he built an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts and scrap.

To truly get a sense of how incredible this young man is, and how big he dreams, be sure to watch his fantastic talk from TEDGlobal.

We couldn’t recommend The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope more strongly — so grab yourself a copy and generate some mental electricity from this powerfully inspirational story.

And, speaking of book recommendations, we’ve launched a little spin-off project — follow @GreatReadFeed on Twitter for a curated stream of book recommendations spanning the entire spectrum of culture with must-read classics and hidden gems across subjects you didn’t know you were interested in until, well, you are.

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In 2008, in the midst of the “going green” craze, San-Francisco-based product designer and activist Emily Pilloton came to the restless realization that design can be so much more than pure aesthetics, and certainly more than a mere fad — it could, with a completely nonpageantry sentiment, really change the world.

So she launched, with $1,000 from her desk at Architecture for Humanity, Project H Design — a radical nonprofit supporting initiatives for “Humanity, Habitats, Health and Happiness.”

With hundreds of international volunteer designers and 9 global chapters, Project H crusades for industrial design as a potent solution for social issues. From education in Uganda to homelessness in L.A., the project’s global-to-local model offers a tangible, truly transformational implementation of design as a change agent.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ChglxSwiE

This fall, Project H is releasing Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People — a fascinating anthology of 100 contemporary design products and systems that change lives in brilliantly elegant ways.

From a high-tech waterless washing machine, to low-cost prosthetics for landmine victims, to Braille-based Lego-style building blocks for blind children, to a DIY soccer ball, the book reads like a manual, thinks like a manifesto, and feels like a powerful jolt of fire-in-your-belly inspiration.

Pilloton was recently awarded a $15,000 Adobe Foundation grant to support work on the book. Here, she talks — passionately and candidly — about the Project H mission and the very real, practical ways in which design matters.

Get yourself a copy of Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People — we couldn’t recommend it more.

via TrackerNews

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It’s no secret that we’re fans of data visualization. But even the most original ways of presenting data may fail to make that eye-opening, visceral impact on us — what usually remains in the heart are not scientific analyses and cold facts but emblematic events (Woodstock), inspiring words (Martin Luther King) or riveting photographs (D-day bombing).

Which is why we love Peter Menzel and Faith D’Alusio’s Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, a photographic journey to 24 countries, where the authors stayed with 30 different families for a week each, documenting on paper and film what these families ate and how much it cost.

Each photograph depicts all the family members in their home environment, surrounded by a week’s worth of groceries.

United States: The Revis family of North Carolina

Food expenditure for one week: $341.98

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Guatemala: The Mendozas of Todos Santos

Food expenditure per week: 573 Quetzales ($75.70)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

There’s something very special about the photograph and its ability to encapsulate the time’s vibe, condensing big amounts of information — cultural, political, economic — in a commentary that engages us emotionally. The student standing in front of a tank on Tiananmen Square. The Pulitzer-Prize-winning photo of a vulture stalking a starved child. National Geographic’s iconic Afghan girl. Even without the full contextual facts about these photos, they somehow make us get “it.” And Hungry Planet does just that.

Comparing these images makes for some shocking conclusions, both funny and sad — prolific fodder for sociology, economics, and anthropology college papers alike. But to stick to our point here, we’ll seize elaboration and let the photographs speak.

Australia: The Browns of River View

Food expenditure per week: 481.14 Australian dollars ($376.45)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Japan: The Ukita family of Kodaira City

Food expenditure per week: 37,699 Yen ($317.25)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Egypt: The Ahmed family of Cairo

Food expenditure per week: 387.85 Egyptian Pounds ($68.53)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Chad: The Aboubakar family of Breidjing Camp

Food expenditure per week: 685 CFA Francs ($1.23)

Image copyright Peter Menzel, menzelphoto.com

Grab a copy of Hungry Planet for a truly revelational journey into something we take for tragically granted.

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The best of photography goes beyond visual fascination and stunning imagery, and serves as a moving call to action.

That’s exactly what photographers Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt do in Blue Planet Run, their latest project with the ambitious goal of bringing clean drinking water to the world.

And if that’s where you roll your eyes because the blue-is-the-new-green card has been played before, stay with us: The seat of privileged is about to get a bit more uncomfortable.

The book, which Amazon offers as a free PDF for a limited time, is a tumultuous blend of photography both stunning photography, chilling revelations and — ultimately — a call to action that puts the solutions to the water problem front and center, and each of us in the driver’s seat to change.

Here are a few factoids about “the other half”:

• 1.1 billion people don’t have access to clean water. That’s 1 in 6.

• Half of the world today doesn’t have access to the quality of water available to Romans 2,000 years ago

• 1.8 billion children die of waterborn disease every year. That’s one child every 15 seconds, or 3 dead children by the time it took you to get this far in the post.
• 4,800 people die every day of waterborn disease. That’s the equivalent of 11 jumbo airplane crashes.
• 5.3 billion people — or two thirds of the world — will suffer from water shortages by 2025

And a few factoids about the kind of excess we Westerners roll in:

• A single quarter-pound hamburger — just the meat — takes 2,900 gallons of water to make
• The average American uses 100-175 gallons of water per day. And that doesn’t include agriculture.
• 3,350 gallons of water are used to water the grass for every single round of golf — there are 16,100 golf courses in the U.S., on which 90 rounds are played every day. That’s 4,839,678,000 gallons of water. Supporting golf. Every day.

But because information is useless if it doesn’t effect change, the book ends on a hopeful note — Blue Planet Run Foundation was born, an ambitious hunt for solutions both at the individual and organizational levels.

In 2007, the foundation held its first real run — a 95-day, 15,200-mile race where 20 dedicated runners from 13 countries go around the world — literally — to raise awareness about the water problem.

Proceeds from the race go to the Peer Water Exchange, the foundation’s radical initiative to tackle thousands of grassroots water and sanitation projects around the world by revolutionizing the funding model and funneling it through a pool of NGO’s rather than an endless loop of bureaucracy.P

But perhaps most importantly, there are things each of us can do to alleviate the severity of the water problem. Because simple behavioral changes have a greater long-term impact than we could ever suspect.

Grab a copy of Blue Planet Run, even only for the gripping, magnificent photography. But, we promise you, somewhere in the 122 pages you’ll discover a drowning desire to get up and do something about it.

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The other day, we established that we’re all African. Fitting, since today we’re looking at one of the coolest awareness campaigns we’ve seen in a long while, which happens to address Africa’s most serious malady: Mosquitoes.

And if you think we’re kidding, or making an awful joke that belittles the AIDS epidemic or genocide, we’re not — every year, mosquito-carried malaria takes more children’s lives in Africa than all other diseases combined. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 3,000 children die from malaria every day.

So African nonprofit África Directo unleashed a brilliant campaign to make this simple point so powerfully:

“Nothing and no one takes more lives than malaria”

The portraits are, of course, composed entirely of mosquitoes — a stencil technique that puts Banksy to shame.

Out of Spainish agency Sra. Rushmore.

via Arab Aquarius

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GENEALOGY ON STEROIDS

We’re all African.

No, seriously — this isn’t some charity slogan, it’s an evolutionary fact. And our DNA — yours, ours, Chuck Norris’s — contains a historical record of it. The big question, really, is how we ended up so scattered across the globe and so incredibly diverse as a species — 6.5 billion of us, speaking 6,000 languages, sporting all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors.

Now, genographer Spencer Wells is closer than ever to building a family tree for all of humanity. For the past couple of years, he’s toured dozens of countries tackling that great big question of origins in order to explain our amazing diversity.

And it all comes down to mitochonodrial DNA — the maternal ancestry component you get from your mother and your grandmother and so forth. Turns out, a single African woman, “Mitochondrial Eve,” gave rise to all of today’s mitochondrial diversity about 200,000 years ago. And just to prove your mother right when she told you boys were “late bloomers,” turns out “Y-Chromosome Adam” — the source of the Y-chromosome, the male side of the ancestry story — only lived about 60,000 years ago, a mere 2,000 human generations ago. Which, of course, is measely in evolutionary terms.

Watch Wells’ fascinating yet easily digestible TED Talk on it all.

In 2005, Spencer Wells partnered with National Geographic on a film version of his book, The Journey of Man. The NG folks became so interested in the concept that they offered Wells a 5-year partnership, dubbed The Genographic Project, with the goal of studying millions of people’s DNA in order to trace humanity’s migration patterns over history.

Here comes the cool part: You can order a kit and test your own DNA. At home. Then submit the results to the National Geographic database for analysis, not only finding out your own geneticgenetic journey but also becoming a little flag on the great big map of human geneaology.

So far, they’ve received results from nearly 300,000 people and raised over $8 million.

The whole thing is, of course, a non-profit and any money they raise, after covering the cost of the kit and the data processing, gets funnelled back into the project, mostly into The Legacy Fund — a grant-giving charity that gives money to indigenous groups around the world for various sustainability, educational, philanthropic and otherwise awesome projects they’ve applied for.

So go ahead, order the kit — it costs less than our college Biology textbook back in the day, and it goes towards greater things than the Barnes & Noble bottom line.

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