Category Archives: Change makers

Earth from an orbital time lapse perspective

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One of the prominent guest at the Global Social Business Summit in Vienna in November was astronaut and social entrepreneurship spokes person Ron Garan. On a huge screen, with massive sound he showed several movie clips from his recent journey into space. The most fascinating movie clip was the one you can watch above.

Ron and his astronaut friends have started the social entrepreneurial initiative the Fragile Oasis.

“It is very difficult to look at our beautiful Earth from space without being moved in some way. One of the main goals of Fragile Oasis is to share this orbital perspective and inspire people to go out and make a difference; to go out and somehow make life better for those with whom they share this fragile oasis. The Fragile Oasis community was established to unite in the common goal of sharing our humanity and improving our world. Let us inspire, recognize, and help each other in our collective quest to make life better on our planet.”

Try to say no to that after having seen the movie clip. Fragile indeed!

xo,
Evelina

The true size of Africa

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Last week, I saw this very interesting image posted on Facebook. It shows the true size of Africa! I thought I had a clue… obviously I don’t. Africa is as big as big parts of Europe, China, the US, India, Japan and the UK combined! The map shows countries by their area in square kilometers, and then fitted into Africa’s borders.

The map is created by Kai Krause as means of combating immapancy, or insufficient geographical literacy. Something, I’m sure, most of us suffer from.

Our perception that Africa is much smaller remains from a seemingly outdated mapping project, The Mercator Projection from - 1569! Read more under Uses, (more myths!) regarding the Marcator Projection. Google Maps and other similar services are based on a variant of the Mercator Projection. This is how we view the world - and it’s WRONG!

Read more here and here. Some critique here.

Ahhrgg! All these myths that we surround ourselves with, and base our world view on, REALLY bug me…

xo,

Evelina

One of my first workshops in German

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It’s always a bit nervous for me to speak German in public, when a lot of people are listening. No exception on Monday, when The Good Tribe had its workshop premiere in Vienna. German is after all my third language, and getting all the verbs right is a horror. But it was so much fun to be back in the facilitator role (after a year of only reading and writing,  and very little workshop facilitation) that I soon forgot being nervous and focused on the task.

Our task in Vienna was to provide Social Impact Award’s idea generation workshop with our two methods: Sparks (intense and fun getting to know each other) and Vision board (find your professional path in life). We got great feedback on both methods from the participant. Sparks is like always a hit (it really always works perfectly!), and it was absolutely great to see how hard everyone worked on their vision boards, first silent and smiling and then in vivid discussions.

A big thank you to the participants and the Social Impact Award team for having us! Again to all of you who participated: if you have ideas or questions, please contact us :)

Later this spring, on the 12th and 19th of March to be exact, The Good Tribe will support Social Impact Award with pitch trainings. More information to come!

xo,

Evelina

Photo: Michael Koschutnig

The Good Tribe co-organizing idea generation workshop on Monday

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On Monday, 16th of January The Good Tribe co-organize an idea generation workshop with the Social Impact Award team. Our aim is to guide you through the experience of generating ideas to solve social problems. The workshop is open for everyone, and extra super perfect if you want to participate in the Social Impact Award competition later this spring. It doesn’t matter if you already have an idea or not, the workshop will take your idea (and your thinking about your future!) to a whole new level!

When: Mon, 16.1. 2011, 5pm
Where: The HUB Vienna
Register: Sign up via Facebook or send an email to chaska.armbruster [at] googlemail [dot] com.

If you want to prepare yourself for the workshop, think about the following question: What annoys the hell out of you? The answer to this question might be your most important clue to your future entrepreneurial activities evahhhh.

I’m really looking forward to see you on Monday! This is the first workshop we’re organizing in Vienna :)

xo,

Evelina

The world changed the last 30 years. Time to get an update!?

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The other day rock star statistician Hans Rosling published a column in Dagens Nyheter (one of the biggest Swedish daily newspapers). Hans Rosling establishes, based on a recent poll, that the Swedes’ world view is based on what the world looked like 20-30 years ago. That’s very bad indeed. (Ping Swedish schools and media!)

Hans Rosling points out that nor is there a division between industrial countries on the one hand side, and developing countries on the other, neither is there an ongoing population explosion. The division isn’t valid anymore (it was valid in the 1960′s) since more than half of the world’s population live on middle-income countries. And the population explosion happened 20 years ago, nowadays population growth, globally seen is rather stable.

Hans Rosling also advocates that foreign aid should be redirected to reach the 2 billion  poorest in the world to secure a “healthy, knowledgable, and stable” population.


Hans Rosling’s initiative Gapminder is great for learning more about child nativity, population growth, literacy, life expectancy etc. 

Hans Rosling’s washing machine story is epic! Thank you washing machine for my, and many other women’s freedom! 

xo,

Evelina