Global Changemakers is a vibrant community of young activists, volunteers and social entrepreneurs. It aims to empower youth to catalyse positive social change through Learning, Doing and  Advocacy. With that in mind, they are organising a summit this summer focused on Africa and Africa-related issues. Where? Brussels, Belgium When? June 2012 (exact dates to be announced) Who? 60 young social entrepreneurs from [...]

Courses Dates: October 11th – November 11th 2011 Apply now: http://kwiksurveys.com?u=YAC_EarthCharter_Environment Course Description: The problems of today’s world are more complex than ever. They are highly interconnected and interdependent. We face climate change, vast exploitation of natural resources, population growth, growing gap between rich and poor, and social inequity, among many others. To be able to respond to these challenges [...]

We are determined the journey leading to Telecom World ‘11 , and the event itself, will lead to real and significant change. To achieve this aim, there are some important and exciting changes. These competitions are part of this change. They are designed to catalyze ideas, seed partnerships, and develop working prototypes to address real world challenges. If [...]

We’ll never return to previous levels of growth, argues Richard Heinberg in his new book, “The End of Growth”. Transition Voice has a good write-up of the book:

For a while, popular peak oil observers … have linked energy to the economy, citing peak oil as the precursor to a major economic crisis. Now, Heinberg joins their [...]

5th Annual Staples Youth Social Entrepreneur Competition Technology is constantly revolutionizing our world. Bold new ideas speed instantaneously online as portable devices such as smart phones and tablets connect us to people and resources across the globe in real-time. The way we communicate, work, and play in our daily lives has been transformed. But how do [...]

The One Young World 2011 summit is currently taking place in Zurich, Switzerland until Sunday, 4 September. You can follow the livestreaming of the event either on the official website at http://www.oneyoungworld.com or their Facebook Page at http://www.facebook.com/OneYoungWorld. You can also follow the event live on Twitter: follow @oneyoungworld or search for the #oyw hashtag.

MIT’s Climate CoLab “seeks to harness the collective intelligence of contributors from all over the world to address global climate change”. We’ve come across one proposal in particular that we’d like to share: ” Fix the system not just the symptom “.

Reshaping the whole economy is the kind of action needed to fix the whole system. Don’t rely too [...]

http://vimeo.com/16610701 You can read more about the inspiring story of Heidemarie Schwermer in the article ” Happy 69 Year Old Lady Has Not Used Money For 15 Years ” at Wake Up World.

So in 1996, she took the biggest decision of her life: to live without money. Her children had moved out so she sold the apartment in [...]

By Paul Hawken at GreenBiz.com

Seventeen years ago he had a realization. At that time, Ray came home. He rediscovered a sacred earth with all its complexity, beauty and mystery, free from the constraints of this or that ideology, free from narrow-minded thinking, and he was freed to reimagine the relationship between humanity and nature with [...]

By Ben Rooney, Tech Europe ( Wall Street Journal ), 1 June 2011

The biggest obstacle to European success in the digital economy is a lack of entrepreneurial culture, according to a panel of European investors and entrepreneurs. Speaking at an event in Berlin yesterday, the panel decried Europe’s lack of hunger, its antisuccess culture and called for changes in [...]

This column by Anand Giridharadas appeared in the Saturday-Sunday, July 16-17, 2011 edition of the International Herald Tribune under the title “Doing good by picking a few fights”.

Every now and then, a new career path seizes the imagination of the global elite. Today it is social enterprise, in which earnest, problem-solving elites devote themselves to social causes, [...]

Young people, if empowered, hold the key to effective community development and building a culture and attitude of lasting peace and non-violence within communities that have been torn apart by war and violence

Forgotten Diaries is a project which raises awareness of the dire situation facing over 100 million children and youth living in conflict ridden environments. [...]

“How on earth can we live together – How can we agree to agree?” The Tällberg Forum 2011 , 30 June to 3 July, starts in the realization that today’s established business models and governance frameworks are struggling to release the structural change that financial/ budgetary, social and environmental pressures are likely to require. Out of this analysis, [...]

The School of Commoning is organising a workshop called “Democratic Mobilisations, the Commons and Communities” this upcoming Friday, 24 June in London. The aim of this workshop is to “develop awareness and initial capabilities (individual & collective) for forming and managing commons and commoning relationships”. Find out more about the event and RSVP on Facebook or Meetup. What is the [...]

With the goal of creating transformative change that lasts, The Weave tries to answer the question: what would the ideal engagement look like? It provides guidance for sustainability practitioners wishing to more deeply engage people in creating their sustainable future. The Weave integrates the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development (FSSD), also known as The Natural Step Framework, with [...]

I.T. in Education? When it comes to entrepreneurship, we often talk about the need to reform education. We’re really proud of this video that we’ve produced, which raises an important question the role of ICT in education. We have the opportunity to show it next week in front of lots of important people at the Digital Agenda [...]

Youth Business International (YBI) has published a report of its activities around the world in support of youth entrepreneurship in 2010.

Entrepreneurs build communities, create jobs and are a vital part of sustainable economic development. Young people are increasing in number in the world, and are the most vulnerable to losing their jobs in challenging economic times. [...]

Brussels, 30th May 2011 // Today young entrepreneurs and youth representatives in the field of youth employment met with MEPs to discuss how to make entrepreneurship a real option for young Europeans, especially within the European Commission’s Europe 2020 Strategy… For the European Youth Forum, the promotion of Youth Entrepreneurship offers another option for bridging the [...]

World Challenge 2011 is a competition organised by BBC World News and Newsweek, aimed at finding projects or small businesses from around the world that have shown enterprise and innovation at a grassroots level. We want to hear from our viewers about the social entrepreneurs who are making a difference without costing the earth. It could be [...]

By Umair Haque, Harvard Business Review (Blog), 20 May 2011

Here’s what I mean by opulence bubble: our conception of the good life, as I’ve discussed with you, has been centered on what I call hedonic opulence — having more, bigger, faster, cheaper, now. But we might be finding out, the hard way, that the pursuit of lowest-common-denominator [...]