Browsing articles from "October, 2009"

Sunshine

Oct 13, 2009   //   by Eve   //   Blog, uncategorized  //  1 Comment

Beautiful and graceful, varied and enchanting, small but approachable, butterflies lead you to the sunny side of life.  And everyone deserves a little sunshine.  ~Jeffrey Glassberg


 

The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind

Oct 8, 2009   //   by Eve   //   Blog  //  1 Comment

When considering the limitations we allow to stop our daily achievement efforts, in a place where we have nearly everything at our fingertips, this is a person to truly admire and support. At age fourteen William Kamkwamba had to drop of school in Malawi due to food and resource limitations that made school tuition, ($80 per year) the least of his family’s worries. However, William’s love for learning didn’t stop there. He continued to visit his local library where he came upon a book about windmills. Knowing the abundance of natural wind resource all around him, William decided he would help his family and hopefully also find a way back to school by building a windmill from this book. His inability to read all of the text in this book did in no way inhibit his efforts; he followed pictures/diagrams and used scraps he collected to create this first windmill on his family farm. He even created his own light switches! All of this at fourteen years old, in spite of the “crazy” whispers of those around him. His windmills now power his farm’s irrigation systems and electricity to his family’s home.

Perseverance when the “wind” is against you gives me faith and hope of my fellow earth cohabitants and I wish there were more William Kamkwambas in the world. William is continuing his education, has written a book and is working on a documentary. Watch his interviews and fall for his sense of humor and smile for yourself. Then help support his continuing effort to help his family, village and education.

“I would like to say something to all the people out there like me, to the Africans, and the poor who are struggling with your dreams,  God bless, maybe one day you watch this on the internet, I say to you, trust yourself and believe, whatever happens don’t give up. ” ~William Kamkwamba’s closing statement of his TED Talk

http://williamkamkwamba.typepad.com/williamkamkwamba/

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart



Short film Moving Windmills which is being made into a feature-length documentary:


more about “Moving Windmills: The William Kamkwam…“, posted with vodpod

TED Talk




more about “William Kamkwamba: How I harnessed th…“, posted with vodpod

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Eve's book montage

Where the Sidewalk Ends
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Giving Tree
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Alchemist
What Is the What
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
How We Decide
The Outsiders
The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
Eats, Shoots  &  Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Great Expectations
I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World
Rumi
Pistols and Prayers: a collection of             prayers/poems/journal enties/rhymes and anecdotes
In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower


Eve Mitts's favorite books »