The Social Good Summit
On Monday, September 20, the Social Good Summit (brought to you by Mashable, 92Y and the UN Foundation) will be one of the only major public UN Week events. Every speaker will bring to the stage a new way that big, innovative ideas and new media are finding ways to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the UN’s framework for making the world a safer and healthier world for us all.
The Meatless Monday Movement
Brainstorming creative ways to influence attitude change on policy issues is a huge component of advocacy work. Consider this unique approach to attitude and behavior change: there’s a movement afoot aimed at changing the way people eat one day a week by having them consume three meatless meals on Mondays. Sid Lerner, a former ad man, started his own nonprofit and spends his days blending social media and Madison Avenue technique to spread the word.
Death of Foreign Aid?
At the last G8 summit in June, the world’s leading nations agreed to work hard on the usual litany of good causes—peace, global warming, etc.—with one notable exception. The issue that had dominated the summit just five years ago, foreign aid, got little mention. Perhaps that’s not surprising, given how many rich nations are busy bailing themselves out of the debt crisis, but it is emblematic of a wider malaise: the death of generosity itself.
