Solving Problems

A Better Cook Stove Scientific American reports that the dominant source of the smoke polluting the skies over Asia and accelerating glacier melt is from traditional cooking fires (Avprochenko Research Center). Efficient cooking stoves for biomass fuels become part of the solution. Read about it here.

Is homelessness an unsolvable problem? Common Ground doesnt think so.

A Vacation Becomes a Vocation Blake Mycoskie traveled to a remote indigenous village in Argentina. There, he noticed that most of the children had no shoes. So he created Toms, a Santa Monica, Californiabased company that gives away one pair of shoes for every pair purchased. The company recently celebrated donating 1 million pairs. Read more here.

Getting out and Staying Out The recidivism rate at Rikers Island is 60%. This is a problem for Rikers Island, the prisoners and their families, and for tax payers. Retired cosmetics executive Tom Goldsmith took on this problem. Men who complete his program have a 20% recidivism rate. More here.

Seeing the Unseen

Invisible Children works to end the use of child soldiers in Central Africa, applying practical solutions such as radio warning towers between villages, and grassroots campaigns in the U.S. The group was in the news recently when their video Kony 2012 went viral (87 million plus hits as of 4/10)

Corneal transplant centers restore sight to 30 people a day in 30 countries. Entrepreneur invents a hand-operated peanut sheller and founds The Full Belly Project.