The two new items that I describe here caught my eye recently at Kepler’s and on the plane; one is a book and the other an article I tore out of the Horizon Air Magazine.  One thing they have in common is that they tell about current efforts to help people in poor parts of the world help themselves.   

The book is by the Nobel Prize winner, Muhammad Yunus, who started the Grameen Bank that launched a major movement in microcredit.  Building Social Business: the new kind of capitalism that serves humanity’s most pressing needs (2010) tells how this new kind of banking and finance are advancing.  Here “Yunus shows how social business has gone from being a theory to an inspiring practice, adopted by leading corporations including BASF, Intel. . .and Adidas, as well as entrepreneurs and social activists across Asia, South America, Europe and the United States.”

The article is “Food for Thought; agriculture programs help nourish the world” by Jennifer Haupt.  Following one family’s grim survival story and some dire global statistics, Haupt explains, “To help feed children, families and communities, numerous non-profits, foundations and universities are working on innovative programs such as the ones described below, whose goals range from showing farmers how to increase their yields to developing effective nonchemical methods of pest control.”  She interviewed a director of agricultural development for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about programs in India and Uganda, a bean producer in Idaho who has been working with a state “bean commission” and the university in Boise to run a program in Mexico, and others about still more programs.  The article is fascinating and very readable.  Look for this article in a transparent clamp-folder labeled “Hunger Topics” on the New Additions shelf.

Please return books and DVD’s you are through with.  We do not have due dates; we just ask that you bring things back when you are finished with them.  If you do not remember where the placecard was left, just leave the returned item(s) on the magazine stand.

Rudy Dyck, Librarian