Sangha of Auspicious Companions

August 15, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

The Horse Whisperer

“Your horse is a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you may not like what you see,” says Buck Brannaman, a cowboy who travels around the U.S. helping horses with “people problems.” The documentary film, Buck, follows Brannaman from an abused childhood to an incredibly successful relationship with horses. In the film, the animal-human relationship becomes a metaphor for facing the daily challenges of life. { read more }

Be The Change

Reflect on the animals you’ve known in your life, and what they’ve taught you.

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August 14, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Raising Kids to be Less Stuff-Centered

“Too often, we turn to acquiring stuff to meet our emotional, social, recreational and other needs. This consumer-mania isn’t good for our resource-stressed planet, isn’t good for our family budgets and ultimately doesn’t work. We have more stuff than previous generations could have dreamed of, but we also have less leisure time, fewer friends and spend less time with our kids.” Annie Leonard, author of the book, “The Story of Stuff,” offers tips from her own experience in parenting, as well as from thousands of other parents. She offers suggestions on developing family traditions around creative time together; creating communities with similar, character-based values; nurturing kids’ non-product-based identities; sharing stuff with local communities; and helping kids cultivate a resistance to the constant barrage of commercial messages. { read more }

Be The Change

Donate or share stuff that you don’t really need.

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August 13, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Seeds for Self-Reliance

The practice of saving seeds has been a cornerstone of farming traditions and has allowed agriculture to become a way of life. But the introduction of high yielding seed varieties and pervasive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has eroded the diversity of indigenous seeds. The GREEN foundation in India recognized that women are crucial to seed conservation efforts there. By setting up community-managed seed banks, they have been working with small and marginalized women farmers to promote conservation of indigenous seeds, agro-biodiversity and ecological farming practices. And the seed, a symbol of fertility, perpetuity, and sustenance in India, is now also becoming a symbol of self reliance. { read more }

Be The Change

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is home to nearly half a million specimens from around the world and the most well-known example of a practice called “seed banking.” { more }

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Sister Cyril of Calcutta

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August 12, 2011

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The Pay-It-Forward Little Libraries

Bigger than a breadbox, homier than a newspaper box and more surprising than a bookmobile, the Little Library is popping up all over town. On bike paths. Outside coffee shops. In the front yards of private homes. Stocked with books ranging from academic texts to children’s classics, music instruction and gardening magazines, each two-by-two-foot Little Library bears the same simple message: “Take a book. Leave a book.” The brainchild of Rick Brooks of Madison and Todd Bol of Hudson, the Little Library has found a home in more than 20 spots in Wisconsin since last summer and is spreading to communities in states from Minnesota to New York. In an era of laptop screens and eBooks, happening upon a Little Library can have its own special magic. { read more }

Be The Change

Check out the “Build a Library” section of the Little Libraries website. { more }

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August 11, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

7 Ways to Have More by Owning Less

Stuff. We invariably accumulate it and often times develop a certain emotional attachment to it. To some extent, it’s the effect of increased marketing, but it is also our own conditioning. Fortunately, new digital platforms and cloud-based tools are making it increasingly easy to have many of the things we want without actually owning them. Because, as Wired founder and notable futurist Kevin Kelly once put it, “access is better than ownership.” Here are seven services that help shrink our carbon footprint, lighten our economic load and generally free us from the shackles of stuff — all through the power of sharing. { read more }

Be The Change

Start a virtuous sharing cycle among friends, offering some things or services you have access to.

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August 10, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Secrets to Longevity

They say that the key to a long life is eating well, exercising regularly and reducing stress. Now an eight-decade study indicates that this is only part of the equation. The Longevity Project tracked the lives of 1,500 boys and girls to explain how factors such as social connections, personality and marriage affect long-term health. The results flipped traditional logic on it’s head. “Take disposition, for example. Cheerful and optimistic children are actually less likely to live long lives, they found.” According to this NPR article, the findings clearly revealed that the best childhood personality predictor of longevity was conscientiousness. { read more }

Be The Change

Take the longevity self-assessment at the bottom of the article. { more }

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August 9, 2011

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The 3 Stages of Generosity

How do you think about generosity? In this recent TEDx Talk, Nipun Mehta shares his experiences with generosity, broken down into three stages: Give, Receive, and Dance! When you give, you find that the compassion felt around you is contagious and it, in turn, creates a community. When you receive, you discover abundance, you realize generosity exists in so many different ways. And finally, when you dance, you give and receive with a natural rhythm, helping to create communities where generosity becomes the organizing principle. Then, giving becomes contagious. { read more }

Be The Change

Give, Receive, Dance!

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August 8, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Going Beyond Profit

The simple for-profit model that has guided business practice in the past appears to be shifting towards a new paradigm. Profitability is important, but only when it serves the more fundamental goal of creating value for others through our gifts. And when a company’s strategy loses touch with this key principle, the potential for true value-creation is also lost. In this article, Decision Analyst Somik Raha also shifts the plane of inquiry to the personal level: “Are profits what motivate us to share our gifts?” The response he receives, “No! More and more, I find that those of us who wish to create value are already in the beyond-profit mindset, driven by a strong motivation of service through a channeling of our greatest creative gifts.” { read more }

Be The Change

Author Lynne Twist explores the soul of money in this short passage. { more }

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August 7, 2011

a project of CharityFocus

Sister Cyril’s Compassionate Vision

As principal of Loreto School in Calcutta, Irish Catholic nun Sister Cyril has worked some real-world miracles. Her school serves 1500 female students, of which 721 are so poor that they need food, medicines, and even money to meet the rent. By bringing children together like this, she is showing a way for middle class schools to integrate the poor living around them into their educational mainstream, to their mutual benefit. “The ripple effect” she’s demonstrating — founded on the belief that everyone receives to give — has helped to transform the school into a center for community development, one that is diverse academically, financially, culturally and even religiously. In 2007, Sister Cyril was awarded the Padmashri, one of India’s most prestigious awards, for having served over 450,000 street children. { read more }

Be The Change

Consider the ways in which you have received from others, and then reach out to help someone in need today.

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