Manypeople are concerned about issues such as poverty, human rights, social justiceand environmental sustainability. Although many of them might not know what steps to take to move fromconcern to effective action, others have already embarked on journeys in thisdirection. They come up with their own solutions to some of the world's mostpressing problems.
WilfordWelch's career as a diplomat, a professor of international business, and anauthor, helped him understand the challenges faced by people around the world.As a global citizen, he says, he is deeply concerned about 2 issues inparticular.
"I feel that we are using up our resources around the worldat a much faster rate than is possible to be sustained in the future," hesays. "The second is I'm concerned about those 900 million people livingin extreme poverty around the world, living under conditions of no education,no health care, no access to clean water, etc."
In 2004, Welch transformed his concern into action. He co-foundedQuest for Global Healing Initiative, a non-profit that supports thousands ofpeople who tackle local and global problems themselves. In a new book titled, , Welch and co-authorDavid Hopkins share inspiring stories of more than two dozen of those peopleand their innovative solutions that can be easily replicated all over theworld.
"Letme give an example," he says, "two men in South Africa recognizedthat the average woman in rural Africa has to walk three miles to get cleanwater. And they created something called 'play pumps,' which is a hydraulicsystem, in which they put a well in rural villages. On top of the well, theyput a merry-go-round for the children to turn and play on. Then on top of thatthey put a holding tank for the water, and they put advertisements that helpsupport the funding to keep the pump going."
Othersocial entrepreneurs are providing learning opportunities for people who aredeprived of education.
"leftMicrosoft and started an organization called Room to Read," he says."Now he has created more than 4,000 libraries in Asia and Africa."
Welch says, Ann Cotton, an English woman whowent to Zimbabwe in 1992, is another example."[She] recognized that impoverished girls had no opportunity foreducation. She created an organization called CAMFED that now provides fulleducation, through primary school at least, to 400,000 young girls in fourAfrican countries."
RugMark provides asolution to another issue: child labor and fair trade.
"RugMarkwas actually founded in India by Indians. This is not a western-imposedstandard or organization," says Nina Smith, Rugmark's spokesperson in theUnited States.
Shepoints out that many of the expensive carpets purchased by Americans andEuropeans in the mid-1990s were handmade by children. An estimated one millionyoungsters in India and Pakistan were forced to work long hours in unhealthy ordangerous conditions. Over the past 10 years, she says, Rugmark has been ableto reduce that number to about a quarter of a million by raising publicawareness about the problem.
"Wehave a certification label that consumers can look for on the back of the rug,that means that rug is certified child-labor free, " she says. "Everyrug that carries that certification label was produced in a factory thatreceives random, surprise inspections for child labor and other workingconditions." Smith says Rugmark has, on occasion found children working infactories."They are rescued andoffered rehabilitation and long term education."
A lack of access to medical care inspired Andrea Coleman,her husband Barry and world-renowned motorcycle racer Randy Mamola to createRiders for Health.
"Wevisited Africa ? Barry, Randy and I ? and found that women were being taken tohospital in remote communities in wheelbarrows when they were in difficultlabor," she says. "We found children were dying from easilypreventable and curable diseases simply because nobody had the transportation tobring immunization, to bring education about clean water and sanitation, totalk to people about mother to child transmission of HIV, to make sure thatpeople knew that it was the mosquito that causes malaria and how to protectyourself from the mosquito."
Whenthey realized that it was a transportation issue, she says, they decided todonate motorcycles, and train local health workers to use and maintain them.Riders for Health is now on the road in Lesotho, and Gambia. The program,Coleman says, is improving health care services and making life easier forthose who deliver it.