Laurie Thompson

If you ever find your­self search­ing for inspi­ra­tion about the fea­si­bil­i­ty of attempt­ing to change the world, then you must read Moun­tains Beyond Moun­tains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World, by Tra­cy Kid­der. It is about the efforts of Dr. Farmer to bring health care to the poor­est of the poor, most­ly in Haiti, through his orga­ni­za­tion Part­ners in Health. While he focus­es on the needs of his indi­vid­ual patients, Dr. Farmer has achieved and con­tin­ues to work for true glob­al change. Tra­cy Kid­der shows that Dr. Farmer is an extra­or­di­nary human being, but is nonethe­less extra­or­di­nar­i­ly human.

I first learned about the Rid­ers for Health orga­ni­za­tion on PBS’ Rx for Sur­vival tele­vi­sion series. The con­cept is sim­ple: give motor­cy­cles to Africa’s health work­ers and train them to ride and repair them them­selves. With this trans­porta­tion, they can effec­tive­ly dis­trib­ute aid and admin­is­ter basic health care to remote vil­lages. The impact is noth­ing short of revolutionary. 

Time mag­a­zine’s Chris­tine Gor­man blogs about the lat­est inter­na­tion­al health news on the TIME.com Glob­al Health Blog (and yes, it has an RSS feed).

What does one of the world’s most famous rock stars know about pover­ty? Plen­ty. Bono not only makes great music, he is mak­ing big changes in the world as well. In 2002, Bono found­ed DATA, Debt AIDS Trade Africa. He now influ­ences pop­u­lar cul­ture AND the world’s most pow­er­ful lead­ers. In recog­ni­tion of his achieve­ments, TIME mag­a­zine named him one of 2005’s Per­sons of the Year.

Over the past few years, I’ve been doing an increas­ing amount of research about social entre­peneurs, non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, and local and glob­al chal­lenges. Because I believe it’s my respon­si­bil­i­ty and priv­i­lege to share the knowl­edge that I col­lect, I’m launch­ing a new blog for my find­ings and thoughts on how we can change the world for the bet­ter. You can find it at http://changemaking.blogspot.com.

There’s not much there yet, but please stay tuned for more.
[2008–10-29: Note–the Change Mak­ing blog now lives in this cat­e­go­ry here at lauriethompson.com.]

The book that start­ed all of this for me was How to Change the World: Social Entre­pre­neurs and the Pow­er of New Ideas by David Born­stein. He pro­files peo­ple who have made a change in their world, focus­ing on nine indi­vid­u­als who were select­ed for fel­low­ships by an orga­ni­za­tion called Ashoka. Ashoka’s mis­sion is “to shape a cit­i­zen sec­tor that is entre­pre­neur­ial, pro­duc­tive and glob­al­ly inte­grat­ed, and to devel­op the pro­fes­sion of social entre­pre­neur­ship around the world.”

I found each of the indi­vid­u­al’s sto­ries to be an inspi­ra­tion. The things that they accom­plished were indeed extra­or­di­nary, yet the peo­ple them­selves did not seem to be that much dif­fer­ent from any­one else that I know. What made them stand out was their con­vic­tion, deter­mi­na­tion, and per­se­ver­ance. Maybe we don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to be smarter, rich­er, or bet­ter con­nect­ed to make a dif­fer­ence. Maybe we just need to try.