Grateful News August 2015

This month’s Grateful News focuses on effective alternative health care, empowering economically-challenged neighborhoods, generosity from garbage dumps, and new ecology ideas.

Alongside a Doctor’s Care, a Dose of Traditional Healing

Indigenous ancestral knowledge and practices, like services provided in public clinics, are free for patients registered in the municipal public health system in Chile. Mapuche medicine combines ancestral knowledge, rituals, nature and spirituality, and it aims to address the root of an ailment, not just the symptoms.  » Full Story

What Do the Poor Need? Try Asking Them

Community development isn’t a quick fix. It’s hard work and it takes time. To improve poor neighborhoods, the people who live there must have a hand in deciding their own fate. That is happening in Houston, Atlanta and elsewhere, and it shows that it’s worth doing.  » Full Story

Colombian Garbage Collector Rescues Books for Children

The discarded reading material slowly piled up, and now the ground floor of his small house is a makeshift community library stacked from floor to ceiling with some 20,000 books, ranging from chemistry textbooks to children’s classics. » Full Story

Take dams off rivers – but keep the electricity

Many hydroelectric dams produce modest amounts of power yet do enormous damage to river life. Why not build solar and wind farms in the drained reservoirs? » Full Story

Biomimicry Creates New Education Models For Learning From Nature

We can learn a lot from nature, but first we have to learn how to do that. A whole host of programs—from grade school to graduate school—are now teaching the art of biomimicry. » Full Story