For the last eight years, researchers at the McGill University Institute of Health and Social Policy and the Harvard School of Public Health have been studying workplace conditions and protections around the world. They looked at 190 of the 192 United Nations countries, comparing the following workplace policies: Paid maternity leave The right of mothers…
Detroit is a sea of vacant blocks, abandoned factories, dilapidated houses, and boarded-up businesses. The Motor City’s population peaked at 2 million during its boom days in the 1950s. It’s now 900,000 and falling. The city has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. 47% of its residents are functionally illiterate. And its…
I was being a little tongue-in-cheek yesterday when I said I had considered giving up on gratitude. In honesty, I think it’s one of the most powerful human emotions we feel. And reflecting on the abundance in our lives almost certainly encourages simple living and thrift more often than materialism. Moreover, gratitude: makes us turn…
So you’ve heard of Slow Food and Slow Money. But have you heard of the Slow Homes Movement? Janelle Orsi, author of The Sharing Solution: How to Save Money, Simplify Your Life, and Build Community, shares her vision of what the Slow Homes Movement might look like this week at Shareable.net. She argues that the…
A country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the figure used to measure how big the economy is and whether it’s growing. It is the total value of all the final goods and services produced by private industry, the government, and trade, and it’s calculated as follows: GDP = C + G + I + NX…
(The fourth in a series highlighting U.S. Movements to celebrate, support, and spread the word about.) Carlo Petrini, an Italian journalist and political activist, founded Slow Food International in 1989, in response to a McDonalds opening in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna. Instead of focusing on his beefs with fast food – its highly-processed ingredients, the homogenizing effect…