Jason Roberts: Guerilla Urbanism

This is one of the most joyful, funny and uplifting presentations. Here is someone who will revitalize your spirit as much as he revitalized his town. Arts activist Jason Roberts will have everybody rethinking what is possible in their communities after watching this video. He lives in Oak Cliff, near Dallas, Texas. He's responsible for some of the most outrageous initiatives, going out of his way to break every ordinance in a neighborhood in order to show people, just for one weekend, what kind of transformation is possible.

On a desolate, depressing Texas street that for the last 70 years has only had cars and traffic in mind, he painted on his own bike lanes. He created outdoor seating areas. He set up trees and plantings just for the weekend. Instant cafes and arts centers were created.

The message in his enthusiastic talk is not just about what a great time they had with these radical techniques to get people to rethink a city space, and turn it back into being about and for people. What surprised even him was the unbelievable level of support and response he got -- and how many joined his bandwagon and remain committed to a new vision that is possible.

It's a ground swell. This is how you get things going folks!

Website: The Better Block

Food Is Free

The Food is Free Project is creating a repeatable model of growing food and community. It is our vision and wish to empower you with the knowledge and know-how to transform your block and neighborhood step-by-step. Using salvaged materials we are building front yard community gardens for all to share. Imagine walking down a block lined with fresh produce ready for the picking. Neighbors not only growing food together, but becoming friends and supporting one another.

Website: Food Is Free

The Many Uses Of Hemp

This video takes you on a quick tour of the many uses of hemp and offers a little bit of history. The first drafts of the American Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper. It was eventually banned in the US not because of any potential that it could be abused as a drug, because commercially grown hemp does not have THC as marijuana does but because it's a major threat to corporations.

We are familiar with hemp used in textiles, but did you know it is also being used to manufacture bricks and building materials like chipboard? And fuel...and plastic? And it makes a great nutritional supplement? Did you know hemp makes up to 4 times as much pulp as trees for paper production? There are thousands of uses for hemp and the time has come for the U.S. government to legalize the growing of hemp so that we may benefit economically from this truly amazing plant.

See also:

- Hemp can save the world

- If we grow...this is what we can do

- Understanding the hemp plant and its 50.000 uses and benefits

Thomas Weller: Highway Helper

Thomas Weller sows seeds of kindness on the freeways of San Diego, California. A mechanic by training, Weller stops to help stranded motorists with flat tires, overheated engines and other roadside crises. Ask him why he does this, and he will hand you a card that reads: "Assisting you has been my pleasure. I ask for no payment other than for you to pass on the favor by helping someone else in distress that you may encounter."

Sugata Mitra: School In The Cloud

Professor Sugata Mitra, whose research inspired the film ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, has been named the 2013 TED Prize winner. The professor of educational technology, who has used the slums of India to show that children, irrespective of who or where they are, can learn freely using computers has become the first $1m prize winner in TED prize's eight-year history. The TED Prize grants its winner $1m for ‘A wish that can inspire the world’. Professor Mitra’s ‘wish’ is:

'My wish is to help design the future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their innate sense of wonder and work together. Help me build the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online. I also invite the global community to create their own miniature child-driven learning environments and share their discoveries.'

Short version with Dutch subtitles: Self Learning Children

The Hole In The Wall: self organising systems in education.

Bill Mollison: Global Gardener

Bill Mollison is a practical visionary. For three decades he has traveled the globe spreading the word about permaculture, the method of sustainable agriculture that he devised. Permaculture weaves together microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, water management and human needs into intricately connected productive communities. Mollison has proved that even in the most difficult conditions permaculture empowers people to turn wastelands into food forests.

Global Gardener is a series of four half-hour programs. Each episode looks at examples in different bioregions.

In The Tropics - Mollison introduces the basic principles, and shows results in Australia, India, and Zimbabwe.

Dry Land - Reversing desertification in Arizona, Botswana and Australia.



Cool Climates - Europe, Tasmania, and the San Juan Islands in Washington State.



Urban - New York City and Harare, Zimbabwe.

Bhutan: The Land Of Happiness

Bhutan is the only nation in the world that measures Gross National Happiness (GNH) while all other nations focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GNH was launched formally in 1972 as an economic alternative to GDP.

Bhutan has a completely different approach to prosperity from the rest of the western world. The Prime Minister of Bhutan, Jigme Thinley said, "The dogma of limitless productivity and growth in a finite world is unsustainable and unfair for future generations". At the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements he made a commitment to sustainable agriculture saying, "...my government has pledged to become 100% organic in food production…"

Gross National Happiness in Bhutan

Bhutan, a small country enshrined in the Himalaya's leads the way in the pursuit of holistic, inclusive and truly environmentally sustainable development.

Meditation Helps

In the 2002-2003 school year, there were 41 murders in the neighborhood of Visitacion Valley Middle School. Young students were playing "cops and robbers" with real guns, and many suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2007, the principal instituted a program called "Quiet Time" to teach meditation to every student in the school, with dramatic results. Truancy rate fell by more than 7 percent (while the average for the State rose to 30 percent) and suspensions fell by more than 50 percent. Twelve minutes at the beginning and twelve minutes at the end of school day have given these children a coping mechanism to deal with the many stresses of poverty and violence in their lives.

Stephen Ritz: Green Bronx Machine

A whirlwind of energy and ideas, Stephen Ritz is a teacher in New York's tough South Bronx, where he and his kids grow lush gardens for food, greenery -- and jobs. Just try to keep up with this New York treasure as he spins through the many, many ways there are to grow hope in a neighborhood many have written off, or in your own.

Khan Academy

A free world-class education for anyone anywhere.

The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge.

With over 3,200 videos on everything from arithmetic to physics, finance and history and hundreds of skills to practice, we're on a mission to help you learn what you want, when you want, at your own pace.

Website: Khan Acadamy
Wiki Page: Khan Academy

Paradise Or Oblivion

This documentary details the root causes of the systemic value disorders and detrimental symptoms caused by our current established system. This video presentation advocates a new socio-economic system, which is updated to present-day knowledge, featuring the life-long work of Social Engineer, Futurist, Inventor and Industrial Designer Jacque Fresco, which he calls a Resource-Based Economy.
The film details the need to outgrow the dated and inefficient methods of politics, law, business, or any other 'establishment' notions of human affairs, and use the methods of science, combined with high technology, to provide for the needs of all the world's people. It is not based on the opinions of the political and financial elite or on illusionary so-called democracies, but on maintaining a dynamic equilibrium with the planet that could ultimately provide abundance for all people.

See also: Jacque Fresco: The Venus Project

3D Printing

3D printing revolution



Printing a bicycle with a 3D printer



Printing tools

Let's Make Everything FREE!

The Free World Charter is a set of principles that have the potential to optimise life on Earth for all species, eradicate human poverty and greed, and advance progress exponentially. Neither political nor religious, the ten short principles of the Charter could form the foundation of a new, advanced society that uses no money, is free, fair and sustainable. They are based solely on common sense, nature and survival.

This is our world, and we can solve many of our problems today and have a better society, by following just a few simple rules of Nature. The only part that needs managing is how we get there from here and that might be turbulent for some of us.

Website: Free World Charter

1. The highest concern of humanity is the combined common good of all living species and biosphere.

2. Life is precious in all its forms, and free to flourish in the combined common good.

3. Earth's natural resources are the birthright of all its inhabitants, and free to share in the combined common good.

4. Every human being is an equal part of a worldwide community of humans, and a free citizen of Earth.

5. Our community is founded on the spirit of cooperation and an understanding of nature, provided through basic education.

6. Our community provides for all its members the necessities of a healthy, fulfilling and sustainable life, freely and without obligation.

7. Our community respects the limits of nature and its resources, ensuring minimal consumption and waste.

8. Our community derives its solutions and advances progress primarily through the application of logic and best available knowledge.

9. Our community acknowledges its duty of care and compassion for members who are unable to contribute.

10. Our community acknowledges its responsibility to maintain a diverse and sustainable biosphere for all future life to enjoy.

Earth Council Embassy Trust

Earth Council Embassy Trust (ECET) is aligned with the Aboriginal Elders of Australia, the Pachamama Alliance (Ecuador), Earth Charter (Global), Occupy Movement (Global), The Arab Spring and Indigenous Elders of all countries who still live respectfully with the earth. We support all genuine democracy movements.

Help build momentum for the earth-wide unified, simultaneous and focused call for peace on december 21.

Direct Democracy is at the heart of EC2012 blueprint for peace. No longer will the people allow a select few, to make decisions for us that affect everyone (and the Earth). With Direct Democracy, council members no longer represent us, but are delegated to administer (en action), the will of the people, as reflected in the voting results. We will no longer allow a few to make war in our names. In Direct Democracy everyone gets the opportunity to vote on every issue, therefore, the people become the policy makers.

We have the technology to make a secure voting system (which a multinational IT team monitors to ensure its security), and at a fraction of the cost of the current military budget. Currently, huge money transactions are made via the Internet, and there is no reason why we cannot have a secure voting system with the technology we currently use.

Website: Earth Council 2012

Global Coherence Initiative

This new, five and half-minute video clearly explains the purpose of the Global Coherence Initiative (GCI), the research behind it, the Global Coherence Monitoring System, Global Care Rooms and how to become a member and participate in this global initiative. Find out ‘What are you feeding the field today?’ means and how you can affect the global field environment.

Website:  Global Coherence Initiative

Changing Education Paradigms

This animate was adapted from a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award.

Jacque Fresco: The Venus Project

The Venus Project advocates an alternative vision for a sustainable new world civilization unlike any socio-economic system that has gone before. It calls for a straightforward redesign of a culture, in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt, and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but totally unacceptable.

Website: The Venus Project

Introduction

Lilou Mace Interview



Future By Design



The Venus Project Tour (Trailer)

Creating Healthy Communities In The Twin Cities

The two main reactions we get from people when we show up on the street to give away free food are surprise and gratitude", says Clay Hansen, Foodshare Coordinator for Sisters' Camelot, a collective working to generate sustainability in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota. Each week, the colourful "Free Food" bus rides through low-income neighborhoods in the twin cities to gift organic food to all. Giving 6,000 to 8,000 pounds of produce to people each week -- with no strings attached -- has helped to meet everyone's basic needs and created a healthy, glowing community. Watch as children, families, and volunteers come together in this vibrant circle of giving and receiving.

Philip Zimbardo: How Can We Create More Heroes?

Can modern science help us to create heroes? That's the lofty question behind Philip Zimbardo's Heroic Imagination Project, started by a Stanford professor who has spent 50 years teaching and studying psychology. The goal of the project is simple: to put decades of experimental research to use in training the next generation of exemplary Americans, churning out good guys with the same efficiency that gangs and terrorist groups produce bad guys. In this video, he inaugurates the project.

Steve Keil: A Manifesto For Play, For Bulgaria And Beyond

At TEDxBG in Sofia, Steve Keil fights the "serious meme" that has infected his home of Bulgaria -- and calls for a return to play to revitalize the economy, education and society. A sparkling talk with a universal message for people everywhere who are reinventing their workplaces, schools, lives.

John Hunter: The World Peace Game

John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4'x 5' plywood board - and lets his 4th-graders solve them. At TED2011, he explains how his World Peace Game engages schoolkids, and why the complex lessons it teaches - spontaneous, and always surprising - go further than classroom lectures can.

Brené Brown: The Power Of Vulnerability

Dr. Brené Brown is a researcher professor at the University of Houston, Graduate College of Social Work, where she has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness, posing the questions: How do we engage in our lives from a place of authenticity and worthiness? How do we cultivate the courage, compassion, and connection that we need to embrace our imperfections and to recognize that we are enough -- that we are worthy of love, belonging and joy?