August 2005 | Conscious Business
Healing for All
Back in November, WLT reported on the Community Healing Project (CHP), a monthly event during which alternative health practitioners provide services at a considerably reduced rate to underserved populations. Since then, the CHP has grown by leaps and bounds, and now offers nine clinics throughout Southern California and Boulder and Denver, Colorado (expanding to New Mexico soon). You can access schedule information on the CHP’s brand new website thechp.org or call Jasmine Dickens at 310.740.7866.
—Eliza Thomas
Press START for the Path to Progress
Since their mainstream debut in the ’80s, video games have suffered a somewhat shaky public reputation. The most cartoonishly violent and crime-glorifying games have received the bulk of the media attention, leading many non-gamers to dismiss the genre as at best a mindless distraction and at worst the desensitizer of the masses. But as a refreshingly positive counterpoint to the rash of titles that reward players for the severity of their misdeeds, a new crop of video games—backed by such unlikely sponsors as the United Nations—is utilizing the power of the medium to serve as a progressive educational tool.
Take the recently released title Food Force, the result of a partnership between game manufacturers, the UN and the World Food Programme. The game, available for free download at food-force.com, places gamers in the role of a WFP worker immersed in varying missions of hunger-fighting and economy building. Aimed at 8-13 year old gamers, the game follows such tasks as air-dropping food or restructuring the resources of an impoverished nation with video clips explaining how the real workers of the WFP would have resolved the situation.
Working with the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, game manufacturer BreakAway Games has created A Force More Powerful, a comprehensive multimedia campaign including books, films and a video game promoting nonviolent conflict resolution. The game confronts players with various violent situations and challenges them to solve the problem using nonviolence. Gamers are taught to set out a fundamental goal for the movement, which they’ll achieve by using classic nonviolent activist tools like strikes, protests and boycotts. Join the movement at: aforcemorepowerful.org. —JN
Earth Seeking Single White Environmentalist
Craigslist has already scored you that killer couch and led you to your Mr. Right—could the beloved online marketplace now help you save the world? Craigslist Foundation certainly hopes so. The California-based nonprofit, founded last year to extend the website’s role in creating community, just launched the Environmental Non-Profit Network, an online home base for eco-organizations that thrive on connectivity. The network will debut in San Francisco, where craigstlist.org was born in 1995, and has big plans for the environmental movement—already its members have requested a blog, a discussion forum, a file library and a donation processing tool. Chances are, the orgs will get everything on their list, and better yet—they’ll get a great deal on it. —AM
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