Similar to the process of producing clean water, one method China uses to attempt to reduce chronic smog pollution moves dirty air through a filtration system.
In Beijing, a Dutch invention cleans air using a 23-foot, cylindrical filtration tower powered by electricity from a coal-fired power plant. A 300-foot tower surrounded by coated greenhouses in Xian, Shaanxi province, is experimenting with a more complex process. In daylight hours, solar radiation heats polluted air in the greenhouses before it rises in the tower through a series of purifying filters and is released into a 3.86 square mile area. Thus far, the Xian tower, when treating severely polluted air, especially in winter when coal provides heat in the area, shows only a 15% reduction in the fine small particles most hazardous to health. Yet, Xian's developers have an ambitious plan to construct 1,640-foot anti-pollution towers, each surrounded by 11.6 square miles of greenhouses, in other Chinese cities.
Based on the Australian study mentioned in the earlier post, "Priority: Eliminate generating electricity from fossil fuels," coal-fueled power plants are the major source of pollution. These air filtration towers would seem to do the most good, if they were located in the vicinity of power plants.
Startups and traditional automakers throughout the world race to produce the electric cars that promise to eliminate a source of pollution, the fossil fuels that power today's cars and trucks. The challenge to up the percentage of electric passenger cars from less than 1% on the world's roads today to at least 33% by 2040 involves financing, designing, engineering, manufacturing, charging stations, searching for the lithium used in batteries, and marketing. China is the industry's acknowledged leader with Tesla in the U.S. and European automakers also in the hunt.
Although China is expected to continue to import lithium from South America's Argentina-Chile-Bolivia Belt (See the earlier post, "Technology's Hard Sell and the Public's Role in the Lithium-ion Battery Industry."), it has its own domestic supply. In the cold, thin air high in China's mountains between the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, mining in Chaerhan Salt Lake is on track to supply a plant that will produce 30,000 tons of lithium carbonate by 2020 or 2021 and eventually plants that produce 200,000 tons annually.
China also has ideas for creating charging methods to keep electric cars on the road away from home. When driving long distances, drivers could visit automated swap stations to switch their dying batteries for new ones in three minutes, or they could call mobile vans to come and recharge their dying batteries in ten minutes. (I cannot help but recall the toxic nano particles a high school student found, when her summer intern project at the University of Wisconsin studied the effects of decomposing lithium batteries. See the earlier post, "The Challenge of New Technologies: Prepare to Think.") By requiring foreign auto dealers to sell only electric cars and to provide charging options, China is in a position to restrict entry into the world's biggest market.
Showing posts with label Netherlands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Netherlands. Show all posts
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Friday, December 2, 2016
Could Colors Calm Our World?
Some colors elicit a positive response by humans living in today's culture. The creative company, The Brave New Now, reached this conclusion, while working on the Ven complex housing convention space, a hotel, 50 apartments, stores, a fitness center and spa, juice bar, and rooftop restaurant at the Sloterdijk rail station in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
When you visit the Ven Amsterdam site, you see the complex uses several colors together in the same space. Why?
Orange: Found to boost creative performance, increase endurance, and maintain motivation and a positive attitude during tough moments.
Blue: Found to enable a person to take control of a situation, focus on details, remain calm and combat stress.
Purple: Found to inspire intellectual thoughts, stimulate imagination, and arouse responses to creative concepts.
Hotel guests at the Ven complex will be able to choose rooms that are orange, blue, purple, or three other colors:
Yellow: Found to promote a feeling of happiness and optimism, to boost memory, clarify thought, and improve decision making.
Green: Found to help renew and restore depleted energy, improve efficiency, and calm.
Pink: A very interesting finding. Females lifting weights in a room painted pink gained the strength to lift heavier weights. Pink power helped energy levels and confidence soar.
Women negotiating in a sunny glen by the sea with glasses of orange juice or grape juice in their hands may be just what the world needs.
(You might also like to get colorful ideas from the earlier post, "Car Companies Match Colors to Country Moods" and from Harald Arnkil's book, Colours in the Visual World.)
When you visit the Ven Amsterdam site, you see the complex uses several colors together in the same space. Why?
Orange: Found to boost creative performance, increase endurance, and maintain motivation and a positive attitude during tough moments.
Blue: Found to enable a person to take control of a situation, focus on details, remain calm and combat stress.
Purple: Found to inspire intellectual thoughts, stimulate imagination, and arouse responses to creative concepts.
Hotel guests at the Ven complex will be able to choose rooms that are orange, blue, purple, or three other colors:
Yellow: Found to promote a feeling of happiness and optimism, to boost memory, clarify thought, and improve decision making.
Green: Found to help renew and restore depleted energy, improve efficiency, and calm.
Pink: A very interesting finding. Females lifting weights in a room painted pink gained the strength to lift heavier weights. Pink power helped energy levels and confidence soar.
Women negotiating in a sunny glen by the sea with glasses of orange juice or grape juice in their hands may be just what the world needs.
(You might also like to get colorful ideas from the earlier post, "Car Companies Match Colors to Country Moods" and from Harald Arnkil's book, Colours in the Visual World.)
Friday, October 28, 2016
Gone Fishin'
Whether fishing with a worm or a fly in a lake or a stream, finding the perfect fishing 'hole''' and coming home with a catch is a day well spent by any child anywhere in the world.
Efforts are being made to insure fish continue to thrive in the world's waters. To prevent fish and other marine life from becoming hopelessly trapped in the plastic six-pack rings that hold beer and soda cans, some rings are being made from biodegradable materials. Florida's Saltwater Brewery has used wheat and barley waste from its beer-making process to construct packaging that begins to disintegrate two hours after hitting the ocean or the beach.
Bycatch is another problem fish face. To catch sushi-grade tuna, fishing boats bait thousands of hooks on a single line that can be 25 miles long. Along with tuna, longlining unintentionally catches other fish, including sharks, stingrays, and turtles. Although some of the unwanted fish are safely released, others perish from the stress of being caught and the dead fish upset the marine ecosystem balance already threatened by climate change from warming water and pollution. Experiments using circular, rather than J-shaped fishing hooks, and fish instead of squid bait have shown there are ways to reduce bycatch.
The ocean's plastic garbage could outweigh fish by 2050, according to a study cited by the UN's Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres. Tons of plastic and other floating debris already are turning beaches, marina areas, lakes, rivers, and oceans into garbage dumps. Trash causes fish. surfers, and the wealthy to suffer. In the July, 2018 issue of VOGUE, Helena Dunn, the designer of Tuulikki eco-conscious surfwear, reports, "As surfers, we have a front-row seat on environmenta lissues." Especially during storms, plastic bags, bottles, wrappers, and other debris run off from land. Large growths of seagrass add to the problems caused by debris that can clog cooling-water intakes and cause engine damage on the most expensive yachts and ships.
Modest and major efforts are being made to keep plastics out of the world's waters. The Dell computer company has begun to use plastic collected on beaches in Haiti as its packaging material. Hewlett Packard urges computer printer users to go to hp.com/recycle to find where they can take their used ink cartridges for recycling. When Dutch student, Boyan Slat, was 17, he founded the Ocean Cleanup Foundation for the purpose of removing the estimated 8 million tons of discarded fishing nets, water bottles, and assorted plastic debris that end up swirling in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii. Since the north Pacific Gyre, or current, funnels the plastic into the center, the foundation designed a long floating plastic boom that can be anchored across the flow of the Pacific Gyre. At this collection point, the waste can be lifted onto ships and taken to recycling centers on land.
Australian surfers, Peter Ceglinski and Andrew Turton, are developing a Seabin to collect and remove trash around marinas. Their Seabin is a submerged cylinder open on top just below the water surface. An electric pump pulls water and floating trash into a bag filter that collects the trash and allows water and small marine life, like fish eggs, to pass through. Seabins can hang from docks, where electricity is available, and maintenance employees can empty the filter bags on a regular schedule. A solar powered model could be attached to channel marker buoys in shipping lanes. The French company, Poralu Marine, is manufacturing a prototype that is being tested at Le Grande Motte, a large Mediterranean harbor near Montpelier, France.
Of course the best pollution solution is to refrain from throwing things in the water in the first place.
Efforts are being made to insure fish continue to thrive in the world's waters. To prevent fish and other marine life from becoming hopelessly trapped in the plastic six-pack rings that hold beer and soda cans, some rings are being made from biodegradable materials. Florida's Saltwater Brewery has used wheat and barley waste from its beer-making process to construct packaging that begins to disintegrate two hours after hitting the ocean or the beach.
Bycatch is another problem fish face. To catch sushi-grade tuna, fishing boats bait thousands of hooks on a single line that can be 25 miles long. Along with tuna, longlining unintentionally catches other fish, including sharks, stingrays, and turtles. Although some of the unwanted fish are safely released, others perish from the stress of being caught and the dead fish upset the marine ecosystem balance already threatened by climate change from warming water and pollution. Experiments using circular, rather than J-shaped fishing hooks, and fish instead of squid bait have shown there are ways to reduce bycatch.
The ocean's plastic garbage could outweigh fish by 2050, according to a study cited by the UN's Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres. Tons of plastic and other floating debris already are turning beaches, marina areas, lakes, rivers, and oceans into garbage dumps. Trash causes fish. surfers, and the wealthy to suffer. In the July, 2018 issue of VOGUE, Helena Dunn, the designer of Tuulikki eco-conscious surfwear, reports, "As surfers, we have a front-row seat on environmenta lissues." Especially during storms, plastic bags, bottles, wrappers, and other debris run off from land. Large growths of seagrass add to the problems caused by debris that can clog cooling-water intakes and cause engine damage on the most expensive yachts and ships.
Modest and major efforts are being made to keep plastics out of the world's waters. The Dell computer company has begun to use plastic collected on beaches in Haiti as its packaging material. Hewlett Packard urges computer printer users to go to hp.com/recycle to find where they can take their used ink cartridges for recycling. When Dutch student, Boyan Slat, was 17, he founded the Ocean Cleanup Foundation for the purpose of removing the estimated 8 million tons of discarded fishing nets, water bottles, and assorted plastic debris that end up swirling in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii. Since the north Pacific Gyre, or current, funnels the plastic into the center, the foundation designed a long floating plastic boom that can be anchored across the flow of the Pacific Gyre. At this collection point, the waste can be lifted onto ships and taken to recycling centers on land.
Australian surfers, Peter Ceglinski and Andrew Turton, are developing a Seabin to collect and remove trash around marinas. Their Seabin is a submerged cylinder open on top just below the water surface. An electric pump pulls water and floating trash into a bag filter that collects the trash and allows water and small marine life, like fish eggs, to pass through. Seabins can hang from docks, where electricity is available, and maintenance employees can empty the filter bags on a regular schedule. A solar powered model could be attached to channel marker buoys in shipping lanes. The French company, Poralu Marine, is manufacturing a prototype that is being tested at Le Grande Motte, a large Mediterranean harbor near Montpelier, France.
Of course the best pollution solution is to refrain from throwing things in the water in the first place.
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Will African Roses Replace Dutch Tulips?
World events can have both positive and negative effects on countries. By voting to leave the EU, Britain's new tariff relationships hold promise for Africa. On the other hand, the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket explosion on a launch pad at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 1, 2016 casts doubt on a deal between a US and Chinese company and much more.
While the UK currently imports most of its fresh fruit from Spain and 70% of its fresh vegetables from Spain and the Netherlands, African countries anticipate they will gain a larger share of the UK market for flowers, vegetables, fruit, and tea, should tariffs on EU goods increase and tariffs on African imports end. South Africa already is the second largest source of the UK's fresh fruit, and a quarter of Kenya's fresh produce exports go to Britain. Changes in taste also might continue to boost UK imports of African produce, like pineapples, melons, and avocados, not grown domestically. Retailers caution African exporters, however, that regulations require imported produce to be safe and responsibly produced.
Although African countries might gain from Britain's EU exit, they suffered from the Falcon 9 rocket explosion. The Amos-6 satellite that was destroyed would have given Africa internet access to Facebook.
While the UK currently imports most of its fresh fruit from Spain and 70% of its fresh vegetables from Spain and the Netherlands, African countries anticipate they will gain a larger share of the UK market for flowers, vegetables, fruit, and tea, should tariffs on EU goods increase and tariffs on African imports end. South Africa already is the second largest source of the UK's fresh fruit, and a quarter of Kenya's fresh produce exports go to Britain. Changes in taste also might continue to boost UK imports of African produce, like pineapples, melons, and avocados, not grown domestically. Retailers caution African exporters, however, that regulations require imported produce to be safe and responsibly produced.
Although African countries might gain from Britain's EU exit, they suffered from the Falcon 9 rocket explosion. The Amos-6 satellite that was destroyed would have given Africa internet access to Facebook.
Monday, June 20, 2016
Why Will Africa Overcome Poverty?
In the 200 years of transformative moments compiled at citi.com/200, few of those moments transformed Africa. Slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1834, work began on the Suez Canal in 1880, the Berlin Conference partitioned Africa in 1884, the first cases of AIDS were reported in 1981, Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990, and the Arab Spring occurred in 2011. What were missing were advances in manufacturing, transportation, communications and information technology, science, and medicine.
Nowadays efforts to conquer disease in Africa have been effective. The world rallied to stamp out eBola in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. People like President Carter have worked tirelessly to eradicate Guinea worm disease, river blindness, polio and other diseases. President Bush has made sure treatment for AIDS has been funded. And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has focused on stopping the scourges of malaria and dengue fever with mosquito nets and more.
It is easy to trace the lack of security in Africa from the bands of boy soldiers, terrorists, and robbers that pose a threat from Libya to Nigeria to Rwanda to South Africa to the lack of education and job opportunity on the continent. I remember learning that when Belgium granted independence to the Congo, the new state had only one college graduate. Unlike Mansa Musa, who crossed Africa from Mali to Mecca to find the Arab scholars he brought back to a university and library at Timbuktu in the 14th century, the countries that plundered Africa for slaves and raw materials and claimed territory at the Berlin Conference had no interest in identifying genius and educating the population.
Just as disease now has less impact on Africa's poverty, training and education have the power to overcome a lack of development. In a speech at the University of Pretoria on July 18, 2016, Bill Gates suggested teachers may be able to use mobile phones both to teach students basic skills and to receive instant feedback that enables them to catch problems and tailor the pace of instruction. Samaschool, a non-profit founded by Leila Janah, already provides digital training online and in Kenya. When Gates noted Africa's need to invest in high-quality public universities essential for the education of scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, and government leaders, I was reminded of John Zogby's idea of forming a Technology Corps. The tech-savvy educators in this corps would be ideal professors at such universities (See the earlier post, "Work Around the World.").
Africans now work in computer fields. According to an item on trendwatching.com, a Dutch organization, Butterfly Works Foundation, has launched Tunga, a platform in Kenya that brings African programmers together with tech companies looking for coders. Leila Janah's Samasource employs marginalized women and youth in Uganda, Kenya, India, and Haiti to turn data, images, content, and voice surveys into algorithm-ready, clean, searchable data for projects at Google, eBay, and Walmart. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg discovered Angela, campuses in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, that provide six months of intensive training for male and female engineering programmers who go on to work as software developers with technology firms, such as Google, Microsoft, and startups like 6Sense and the Muse. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Dr. Priscilla Chan, has given Angela $24 million. Other investors in Angela include 2U, Spark Capital, Omidyar Network, Learn Capital, GV, and CRE Ventures.
Zuckerberg observed, "We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not....Priscilla and I believe in supporting innovative models of learning wherever they are around the world--and what Angela is doing is pretty amazing." Jeremy Johnson, head of the 2U startup and co-founder of Angela, said the goal was "to cultivate a next generation of founders and executives of great companies across Africa." Two African entrepreneurs have tourism startups. David Ssemambo in Uganda, provides transportation, hotel bookings, and tours for visiting foreign dignitaries, investors and tourists. (See his website at sendeetravels.com.) Ssemambo is even studying how to use China's social media to attract Chinese tourists to Africa. If you wish to climb Mount Kilimanjaro or bask on a beach in Zanzibar, you can contact Licious Adventure (liciousadventure,com), which is run by another local entrepreneur in Tanzania.
(Also see the later post, "Africans Learn to Play the Game," and, for additional information about business opportunities in Africa, see the earlier posts, "Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future" and "Want An Exciting Career?")
Nowadays efforts to conquer disease in Africa have been effective. The world rallied to stamp out eBola in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. People like President Carter have worked tirelessly to eradicate Guinea worm disease, river blindness, polio and other diseases. President Bush has made sure treatment for AIDS has been funded. And the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has focused on stopping the scourges of malaria and dengue fever with mosquito nets and more.
It is easy to trace the lack of security in Africa from the bands of boy soldiers, terrorists, and robbers that pose a threat from Libya to Nigeria to Rwanda to South Africa to the lack of education and job opportunity on the continent. I remember learning that when Belgium granted independence to the Congo, the new state had only one college graduate. Unlike Mansa Musa, who crossed Africa from Mali to Mecca to find the Arab scholars he brought back to a university and library at Timbuktu in the 14th century, the countries that plundered Africa for slaves and raw materials and claimed territory at the Berlin Conference had no interest in identifying genius and educating the population.
Just as disease now has less impact on Africa's poverty, training and education have the power to overcome a lack of development. In a speech at the University of Pretoria on July 18, 2016, Bill Gates suggested teachers may be able to use mobile phones both to teach students basic skills and to receive instant feedback that enables them to catch problems and tailor the pace of instruction. Samaschool, a non-profit founded by Leila Janah, already provides digital training online and in Kenya. When Gates noted Africa's need to invest in high-quality public universities essential for the education of scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, and government leaders, I was reminded of John Zogby's idea of forming a Technology Corps. The tech-savvy educators in this corps would be ideal professors at such universities (See the earlier post, "Work Around the World.").
Africans now work in computer fields. According to an item on trendwatching.com, a Dutch organization, Butterfly Works Foundation, has launched Tunga, a platform in Kenya that brings African programmers together with tech companies looking for coders. Leila Janah's Samasource employs marginalized women and youth in Uganda, Kenya, India, and Haiti to turn data, images, content, and voice surveys into algorithm-ready, clean, searchable data for projects at Google, eBay, and Walmart. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg discovered Angela, campuses in Lagos, Nigeria, and Nairobi, Kenya, that provide six months of intensive training for male and female engineering programmers who go on to work as software developers with technology firms, such as Google, Microsoft, and startups like 6Sense and the Muse. The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, founded by Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Dr. Priscilla Chan, has given Angela $24 million. Other investors in Angela include 2U, Spark Capital, Omidyar Network, Learn Capital, GV, and CRE Ventures.
Zuckerberg observed, "We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not....Priscilla and I believe in supporting innovative models of learning wherever they are around the world--and what Angela is doing is pretty amazing." Jeremy Johnson, head of the 2U startup and co-founder of Angela, said the goal was "to cultivate a next generation of founders and executives of great companies across Africa." Two African entrepreneurs have tourism startups. David Ssemambo in Uganda, provides transportation, hotel bookings, and tours for visiting foreign dignitaries, investors and tourists. (See his website at sendeetravels.com.) Ssemambo is even studying how to use China's social media to attract Chinese tourists to Africa. If you wish to climb Mount Kilimanjaro or bask on a beach in Zanzibar, you can contact Licious Adventure (liciousadventure,com), which is run by another local entrepreneur in Tanzania.
(Also see the later post, "Africans Learn to Play the Game," and, for additional information about business opportunities in Africa, see the earlier posts, "Invest in Africa's Agricultural Future" and "Want An Exciting Career?")
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Corruption Has Consequences
Countries with a reputation for being free of corruption from abuse of power, bribes and kickbacks, and secret deals are attractive tourist destinations and prospects for business investment. Unfortunately, based on a study of 168 countries by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), no country is totally free of corruption.
In 2015, using a scale of 0-100, the OECD's corruption index showed 68% of the ranked countries scored below 50, indicating a serious corruption problem that took protesters to the streets in some countries. Even Denmark, which scored 91, has room for a bit of improvement. The United States and Austria, with scores of 76, did not make the top ten list of least corrupt countries, which included: Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada, and Germany. Corruption caused Kim Jong-un's North Korea and Somalia to tie for last place in both 2014 and 2015.
Brazil, now embroiled in a corruption scandal (See the earlier post, "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat."), dropped 5 points since 2014, and was in 76th place in 2015. Not a good prospect for countries sending teams to this summer's Olympics in Rio.
The OEDC cautions that its corruption index is based on surveys of conditions institutions make within a country's borders. Countries might have a higher or lower score, if their corruption activities in foreign countries were measured. Indeed, half of OECD countries have been found to violate agreements to stop companies from paying bribes when they do business in countries outside their borders.
The earlier post, "Cheating is Easy, but...," provides some anti-corruption strategies for doing business around the world.
In 2015, using a scale of 0-100, the OECD's corruption index showed 68% of the ranked countries scored below 50, indicating a serious corruption problem that took protesters to the streets in some countries. Even Denmark, which scored 91, has room for a bit of improvement. The United States and Austria, with scores of 76, did not make the top ten list of least corrupt countries, which included: Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada, and Germany. Corruption caused Kim Jong-un's North Korea and Somalia to tie for last place in both 2014 and 2015.
Brazil, now embroiled in a corruption scandal (See the earlier post, "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat."), dropped 5 points since 2014, and was in 76th place in 2015. Not a good prospect for countries sending teams to this summer's Olympics in Rio.
The OEDC cautions that its corruption index is based on surveys of conditions institutions make within a country's borders. Countries might have a higher or lower score, if their corruption activities in foreign countries were measured. Indeed, half of OECD countries have been found to violate agreements to stop companies from paying bribes when they do business in countries outside their borders.
The earlier post, "Cheating is Easy, but...," provides some anti-corruption strategies for doing business around the world.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Movement Without Wheels
Help kids look around the world to find inspiration. The earlier post, "Robots for Good," showed how wheels could move artificial humans. Now, Jansen shows how wind pumping air into old lemonade bottles can propel spindly plastic legs while a creature's body remains steady. Sensing it could become stuck in dangerous water or on loose sand, his "Strandbeests" even can reverse direction.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
It Takes a World to Raise a Child
When I saw umbrollers in London over 40 years ago, I couldn't wait to get back to the U.S. to tell my sister who just had a baby how easy they were to maneuver and collapse compared to traditional strollers. Since then, many U.S. parents also have adopted the baby slings and wraps that working mothers have worn when they were taking care of babies in Mexico, Peru, Ethiopia, Korea, China, Japan, and elsewhere. And what mother with a new baby wouldn't want to visit one of Japan's cat cafes? There, she and her baby could be among the customers, many who can't have pets at home, who come to talk to, play with, and chill out among cats while they drink tea. Hillary Clinton once wrote that it takes a village to raise a child; perhaps it takes a world.As an international marketing student at American University in Washington, D.C., I had a professor who told us one of the benefits multinational corporations enjoy is access to new products and ideas in one country that they can adapt for use in other countries. In these days, even without world travel, mothers have online access to global innovations. To give just two examples, there is Internet information on international adoption and crowdfunding websites that finance or even find volunteers for their projects.
On trendwatching.com, I was reminded of how women have expanded the yard sale concept to become sellers on eBay, Amazon, and other platforms. Kids in Nigeria, like they could in other countries, now play local versions of Monopoly. According to trendwatching.com, the "City of Lagos" version has local locations and, to reflect Nigeria's challenges, chance cards that say things like, "Pay a fine for attempting to bribe a law enforcement agent."
In my earlier blog post, "Hope for the Future," you may have seen how the Grameen Bank and Kiva have helped women start businesses to support their families and finance their children's educations by providing micro-loans. When I read on trendwatching.com that the idea of selling meals through Thuisafgehaald in the Netherlands is spreading to the US, UK, Germany, and Sweden, I realized, with or without a micro loan, that mothers who are good cooks have an opportunity to specialize in selling nutritious home-cooked, peanut- and gluten-free, birthday party, and other types of meals.
Mothers who do volunteer work for child-centered, not-for-profit organizations, like the March of Dimes, might be able to adopt a version of what trendwatching.com reports "The Exchange" is doing in South Africa. Consumers only are allowed to shop for its clothes and accessories donated by designers if they first sign up with an Organ Donor Foundation.
T-shirts proclaim the slogan, "Changing More Than Diapers," on mothers who visit momsrising.org. Though mainly focused on the United States, the site promotes activities mothers around the world could adapt to work for fair wages, flexible workplace schedules, maternity and paternity leave, better childcare, and environmental health.
The site, vitalvoices.org, already identifies women's issues, works toward solutions, fosters connections across international boundaries, and awards progress. On vitalvoices.org, viewers can see how women in Africa increase the continent's economic potential, how Latin American women strive for gender equality, and how female leaders in Eurasia are combating human trafficking. Malala Yousafzai, the young Pakistani woman who recovered from being shot in the head because she wants girls to attend school, currently is featured on the site.
Making international connections that foster innovation in education is the aim of the WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) Educational Leadership Program in Qatar. The leaders in education from the more than 100 countries who attend WISE summits discuss ideas about funding, curricula, assessment, and improving the quality of education, ideas that could suggest new directions worth considering by parents, guardians, and teachers around the world.
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