Worldstock is the fair trade initiative from Overstock.com's founder Patrick Byrne. The idea came to him in 2001 when a motorcycle tour in Cambodia came to what can literally be described as a screeching halt. Having crashed his motorcycle, Patrick found himself "tolerably banged up" and laying on the roadside. A group of local children helped him back to their village where he hatched a plan to give back.
Patrick created Worldstock to connect skilled artisans to a global market for quality goods. His ambition was and still is nothing short of transforming the lives of millions of people across the globe. He was asked in a recent interview whether or not people would accept the idea that the owner of a large corporation actually wants to give back to which he responded, "It just felt like the right thing to do."
The Feel Good Product of the Day is the Men's Ocean Tee from World Minded.
Ten percent of the proceeds are donated to Water For People. "Water For People works to build a world where all people have access to safe drinking water and sanitation, and where no one suffers or dies from a water or sanitation-related disease." ("Water for People, Everyone - Forever") You can also feel good knowing your Ocean Tee is 100% Organic Cotton grown in the USA.
Whether we are young or not so young, we all have dreams. This is the story of Caine and Nirvan and what one person can do to make another persons's dreams come true.
After the premiere of this short film, a scholarship fund was created to help Caine go to college. The $100,000 target has now been reached, giving Caine the opportunity to take his imagination to new heights. On their way home after the flashmob that day, Caine told his dad, "This was the best day of my whole life." Because one man was inspired by the imagination of a boy, we now know how easy it can be to help others realize their dreams.
Read on if you can empathize with this - I hate math!
I had everything going for me from an early age; I was read to, I was the youngest, I had great friends, I was loved and I was also half-Japanese. It was upon the latter that I staked my stereotypical claim upon mathematical ability, and when it finally came time to cowboy up and take one apple away from a group of three I was ready! Sometime during 6th grade I even found myself in an accelerated math group, where a small group of us setup desks in the hallway and told jokes the way 6th graders do when they're unsupervised. As the bell curve goes, I was down in front and having a good time.
As Junior High gave way to High School I found myself getting pulled backwards along the curve, and much like a riding a backwards roller coaster, I was brought to look down the steep slope of mathematical decline (which slope I could not compute because I struggled in Calculus). By the end of High School I had replaced my childhood dreams of becoming a scientist, or the kind of engineer who builds remote control cars with the idea that "business," was the only real opportunity I had left.
With this new and unspecific direction I enrolled in college. After graduating from Utah State University with a degree in economics (where I took calculus twice and struggled through my econometrics classes), I went on to work in merchandising for an online retailer. After having worked for a few years, it has become clear that I'll need a masters degree to obtain the kinds of career advancing opportunities I dream about. For aspiring businessmen there's one obvious choice for a masters program, and that is to get a Masters of Business Administration degree, or an MBA.
Getting an MBA means that you have to take either the GMAT or the GRE and you can't get into the better schools without first getting good score on those tests, both of which rely heavily on quantitative ability. Knowing this to be the case and feeling slightly daunted, I began studying for the GMAT. I must have skipped three quarters of the quantitative questions during my first practice test because I just didn't have a clue and my score reflected it. I was frustrated by my score, lack of ability and the restriction that you can't use a calculator on the test. After some internal dialogue about whether or not this was actually what I wanted to do I determined that I could either get with the program or remain stuck in the lower ranks of management. I chose to move forward and that's when I discovered the Khan Academy.
The Khan Academy is an online repository for free, world class educational videos. It was born out of
Salman, aka Sal, Khan's efforts to tutor his 7th grade cousin Nadia. It wasn't long before others in his family came asking for help, so Sal began creating YouTube videos for each of his lessons. To Sal's astonishment, these videos gained wide popularity and praise. Sal decided to leave the fast paced and highly prestigious world of finance to dedicate his efforts to the Khan Academy. Eventually Bill Gates and Google got involved, contributing nearly 15 million dollars to the cause. The Khan Academy has become much more than just videos, and now includes a brilliant training system designed to build mastery in practically any mathematical competency.
After two weeks on the Khan Academy I was able to improve my overall score on the GMAT practice test by over 30%, and the next few weeks saw continued improvement. Not only has my math ability improved but my entire outlook on the subject is brighter to the point where I can now say that I enjoy math.
