Greater Good

Education

• Center for Nonviolent Communication
  

  The Center for Nonviolent Communication promotes education on nonviolent communication techniques in order to encourage more compassionate means of conflict resolution for dealing with personal, political, and organizational issues.

• Changing Worlds
  

  Changing Worlds is an educational organization focused on the arts that uses writing, art, and oral history programs to promote cross-cultural understanding among students.

• Character Education Partnership
  

  A nonpartisan coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to developing moral character and civic virtue in our nation’s youth as one means of creating a more compassionate and responsible society.

• Child Development Project
  

  Child Development Project is a multi-year school improvement program designed to encourage caring, respectful connection among students, educators, and parents.

• Child Trends
  

  Dedicated to improving the lives of children by conducting research and providing science-based information to improve the decisions, programs, and policies that affect children. The organization collects and analyzes data; conducts, synthesizes, and disseminates research; designs and evaluates programs; and develops and tests promising approaches to research in the field.

• Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning
  

  A partnership between researchers, program developers, and educators working to establish social and emotional learning as an essential part of education from preschool through high school.

• Committee for Children
  

  Committee for Children is a nonprofit organization seeking to improve children’s lives by providing research-based violence prevention, anti-bullying, child abuse prevention, and emergent literacy programs for schools, families, and communities.

• Community of Caring
  

  A comprehensive education program focusing on whole school improvement, Community of Caring addresses destructive attitudes that lead to early sexual involvement, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, delinquent behavior, and dropping out of school. It consists of training for teachers, values discussions, student forums, parent involvement, and service learning.

• Cultivating Emotional Balance Project
  

  This eight-week program arose from a dialogue between biobehavioral scientists studying emotion and the Dalai Lama. It combines training in Buddhist practices of meditation and compassion with education about human emotion, drawn from Western psychology, intended to help participants better understand their emotions and the emotions of others. Studies of the program, involving school teachers as participants, suggest it is effective in reducing stress and negative emotion and boosting positive emotion. It is currently offered around the world, including an annual summer training led by Drs. Paul Ekman and Alan Wallace in Phuket, Thailand.

• Developmental Studies Center
  

  A nonprofit education organization working with elementary schools to help their students become skilled, motivated readers and caring, principled people. Recognizing that children’s academic, ethical, social, and emotional development are inter-related and interdependent, DSC has designed in-school and after-school programs that address those dimensions of children’s learning in seamlessly coordinated, systemic ways.

• Educators for Social Responsibility
  

  A national nonprofit organization that helps educators create safe, caring, respectful, and productive learning environments. Its work spans the fields of social and emotional learning, character education, conflict resolution, diversity education, civic engagement, prevention programming, youth development, and secondary school improvement.

• Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital
  

  Massachusetts General Hospital trains healthcare providers in empathy in order to promote stronger interpersonal relationships in healthcare, communication, and a better experience for patients.

• Everyday Democracy
  

  Everyday Democracy (formerly the Study Circles Resource Center) offers “dialogue to change” programs that can help students examine racism in their schools and communities, develop solutions, and implement them.

• Facing History and Ourselves
  

  Facing History and Ourselves is a national educational and professional development organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development and lessons of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives.

• First Amendment Schools
  

  First Amendment Schools is a national initiative designed to transform how schools model and teach the rights and responsibilities of citizenship that frame civic life in our democracy.

• George Lucas Educational Foundation
  

  A nonprofit organization that documents and disseminates models of the most innovative practices in K-12 schools.

• KaBOOM!
  

  KaBOOM! rallies communities to achieve better public policy, funding, and public awareness for increased play opportunities nationwide; provides resources, including training, challenge grants,
  and publications for communities that wish to plan a new play ggkkspace on their own; and brings together children, business, and community interests to build a select number of community play spaces each year.

• Mindful Schools
  

  Mindful Schools aim to utilize mindfulness-based techniques to teach children how to focus, manage their emotions, handle their stress, and resolve conflicts in an effort to improve school performance and well-being.

• Mindfulness Without Borders
  

  Mindfulness Without Borders is a nonprofit organization working to transform the traditional academic setting through social-emotional literacy and core mindfulness practices that help teens improve their self-awareness, social awareness, and critical thinking. Through teacher trainings and workshops for youth, MWB provides results‐driven instruction on the Mindfulness Ambassador Council, a 12-week program to help high school youth thrive—not just survive—in an increasingly complex world.

• No Bully
  

  No Bully seeks to end bullying, harassment, and violence in schools by helping K-12 educators find innovative ways to teach their students compassion and empathy.

• Northeast Foundation for Children
  

  Northeast Foundation for Children is a non-profit educational organization that offers educators the Responsive Classroom approach to teaching, which emphasizes both social and academic learning for students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

• Open Circle
  

  Open Circle is a comprehensive social and emotional learning program for children, teachers, administrators, other school staff, parents, and other caregivers.

• Operation Respect
  

  Operation Respect disseminates educational materials designed to reduce the emotional and physical cruelty some children inflict upon others through ridicule, bullying, and violence.

• PATHS
  

  The PATHS (Providing Alternative THinking Strategies) curriculum is a program for educators and counselors designed to facilitate the development of self-control, emotional awareness, and interpersonal problem-solving skills.

• Peace First
  

  Peace First works with elementary schools, families, and young adult volunteers to help create safe classrooms and communities for students by teaching young people the skills of peacemaking.

• PeaceBuilders International
  

  PeaceBuilders International is a program for communities and schools to promote positive, healthy behaviors while reducing violence, injuries, bullying, and other negative behaviors. It was named a Best Practice of the International Safe Schools Program of the World Health Organization.

• Playworks
  

  Playworks aims to improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.

• Resolving Conflict Creatively Program
  

  The Resolving Conflict Creatively Program is a well-evaluated, K-8 program in character education and social and emotional learning. It is the nation’s largest and longest running school program with a special focus on conflict resolution and intergroup relations.

• Rethinking Schools
  

  Rethinking Schools is a nonprofit publisher of educational materials. Run by current and former classroom teachers, it works to advance equitable reform throughout the U.S. public school system.

• Roots & Shoots
  

  Roots & Shoots engages and inspires youth through community service and service learning. Founded by Jane Goodall, this global program promotes care and concern for animals, the environment, and the human community.

• Roots of Empathy
  

  Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program that aims to reduce levels of aggression and violence among school children while raising their social and emotional competence and increasing empathy among them.

• Search Institute
  

  A nonprofit organization that conducts applied scientific research on positive child and adolescent development to strengthen and deepen the scientific foundations of the developmental assets framework. It also provides publications, consulting, and other practical tools to youth, parents, and their communities.

• StartEmpathy.org
  

  StartEmpathy.org is an organization dedicated to promoting empathy education for children through both parenting and teaching methods.

• Talaris Research Institute
  

  Talaris Research Institute sponsors and reviews research concerning social, emotional, cognitive, and other abilities in children from birth through five years of age. It focuses on scientific projects with promise of practical applications that will be meaningful for parents, educators, and others who nurture children.

• The Association for Play Therapy
  

  The Association for Play Therapy promotes play therapy, the means by which licensed mental health professionals use play to communicate with and address the mental health needs of children and other clients.

• The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement
  

  The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) promotes research on the civic and political engagement of Americans between the ages of 15 and 25, and is a clearinghouse for relevant information and scholarship. CIRCLE conducts and funds research, but the projects that it supports have practical implications for those who work to increase young people’s engagement in politics and civic life

• The Center for Peaceable Schools
  

  Provides training, resources, and information to educators and community workers interested in learning principles and practices that create positive change in schools and communities.

• The Center for Social and Emotional Education
  

  An educational and professional development organization devoted to developing leaders in social, emotional, and academic education. Its website includes a wealth of information for school personnel and parents.

• The Center for the Fourth and Fifth Rs
  

  The Center for the Fourth and Fifth Rs disseminates articles on character education, sponsors an annual summer institute in character education, publishes a newsletter, and is building a network of schools committed to teaching respect, responsibility, and other core ethical values as the basis of good character.

• The Civility Initiative
  

  The Civility Initiative at Johns Hopkins University, directed and co-founded by P.M. Forni, aims to assess the significance of civility, manners, and politeness in contemporary society.

• The Collaboration for Ethical Education
  

  The Collaboration for Ethical Education at the University of Notre Dame fosters scholarship and develops resources to promote ethical growth in education, sports, and media.

• The Compassionate Listening Project
  

  The Compassionate Listening Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching skills to heal polarization, cultivate healthy relationships, and build bridges between people, communities, and nations in conflict through international peace delegations, national workshops and educational materials.

• The Cooperative Learning Center
  

  The Cooperative Learning Center at the University of Minnesota is a research and training center focusing on how students perceive and interact with each other in educational settings. Its training involves instructors from pre-school through college in all subject areas.

• The Heartwood Institute
  

  The Heartwood Institute is a non-profit educational organization founded to promote the understanding and practice of seven universal ethical attributes. It offers literature-based ethics education resources for children, schools, and families.

• The Incredible Years
  

  The Incredible Years are research-based programs for reducing children’s aggression and behavior problems, and for increasing their social competence at home and at school.

• The International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education
  

  An international nonprofit organization for educators who research and practice cooperative learning, in which students work in teams on problems and projects under conditions that assure both positive interdependence and individual accountability.

• The Jigsaw Classroom
  

  The Jigsaw Classroom website is an effort to share some of the results from Professor Elliot Aronson’s research on cooperative learning techniques that aim to reduce racial conflict among children, improve student motivation, and increase their enjoyment of the learning experience. The site gives an overview of the jigsaw classroom technique, summarizes research on it, and offers strategies for implementation.

• The Kirlin Foundation
  

  The Kirlin Foundation identifies, develops, and supports new ideas, existing programs, and research that will have broad impact and which will address the needs of children and education in creative and innovative ways.

• The National Center for Learning and Citizenship
  

  The National Center for Learning and Citizenship is an organization of school district superintendents, service-learning professionals, and others who support service learning. Members are committed to linking school-based service and service learning to K-12 curriculum, and to organizing schools to maximize community volunteer efforts.

• The National Institute for Play
  

  The National Institute for Play is committed to bringing the knowledge, practices, and benefits of play into public life. It gathers research from diverse play scientists and practitioners, initiates projects to expand the clinical scientific knowledge of human play, and translates this emerging body of knowledge into programs and resources which deliver the transformative power of play to all segments of society.

• The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program
  

  The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program is a comprehensive, school-wide program designed for use in elementary, middle, or junior high schools. Its goals are to reduce and prevent bullying problems among school children and to improve peer relations at school.

• The Safe and Responsive Schools Project
  

  The Safe and Responsive Schools Project at the Indiana Education Policy Center is dedicated to enabling schools and school districts to develop a broader perspective on school safety, stressing comprehensive planning, prevention, and parent/community involvement.

• The Stanford Center on Adolescence
  

  The Stanford Center on Adolescence aims to promote the character and competence of all young people growing up in today’s world. Its research focuses on the general question of how to prepare young people for active and productive citizenship in a democratic society. The center’s work provides guidance for parenting, for improved educational practice, and for youth development in a wide variety of community settings.

• The Success for All Foundation
  

  The Success for All Foundation uses research to design programs and services that help schools better meet the needs of all their students, especially disadvantaged and at-risk students in pre-K through grade eight.

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Family & Couples

• Anti-Racist Parent
  

  Anti-Racist Parent is a moderated blog by and for parents who are committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook.

• Child Trends
  

  Dedicated to improving the lives of children by conducting research and providing science-based information to improve the decisions, programs, and policies that affect children. The organization collects and analyzes data; conducts, synthesizes, and disseminates research; designs and evaluates programs; and develops and tests promising approaches to research in the field.

• Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere
  

  Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere engages, connects, and empowers people to make the world a better place for children of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender parents and families.

• Mindful-Based Childbirth and Parenting Program
  

  An eight-week program designed to help expectant parents handle the stresses and challenges of becoming a parent. It adapts Jon Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR model to childbirth and parenting, exploring how mindfulness can help not just in the birth process but in parenting and relating to one’s partner.

• MomsRising.org
  

  An online and on-the-ground multicultural organization of more than a million members and over a hundred aligned organizations working to increase family economic security, to end discrimination against women and mothers, and to build a nation where both businesses and families can thrive. Its website has more than 700 bloggers and a combined estimated blogging and social media readership reach of more than 3 million people.

• Postpartum Support International
  

  Postpartum Support International increases awareness among public and professional communities about the emotional changes that women experience during and after pregnancy.

• Search Institute
  

  A nonprofit organization that conducts applied scientific research on positive child and adolescent development to strengthen and deepen the scientific foundations of the developmental assets framework. It also provides publications, consulting, and other practical tools to youth, parents, and their communities.

• StartEmpathy.org
  

  StartEmpathy.org is an organization dedicated to promoting empathy education for children through both parenting and teaching methods.

• The Center for Family Studies
  

  The Center for Family Studies was founded in 1990 at the University of California, Riverside, to research and disseminate new advances in knowledge about the contemporary family.

• The Children of Divorce Intervention Program
  

  The Children of Divorce Intervention Program is a school-based support group using a curriculum designed to enhance adjustment to divorce for children from kindergarten to eighth grade.

• The Compassionate Friends
  

  The Compassionate Friends is a national nonprofit organization that aims to assist families toward the positive resolution of grief following the death of a child of any age and to provide information to help others be supportive.

• The Family Caregiver Alliance
  

  The Family Caregiver Alliance was the first community-based nonprofit organization in the country to address the needs of families and friends providing long-term care at home. It now offers programs at national, state, and local levels to support and sustain caregivers.

• The Family Institute at Northwestern University
  

  The Family Institute at Northwestern University is devoted to marital and family therapy, professional education, and research. Its focus is to strengthen and heal families.

• The Gottman Institute
  

  Reaches out to families in order to help create and maintain greater love and health in relationships. The Institute helps couples directly and provides training to mental health professionals and other health care providers.

• The Incredible Years
  

  The Incredible Years are research-based programs for reducing children’s aggression and behavior problems, and for increasing their social competence at home and at school.

• The Mothers Movement Online
  

  The Mothers Movement Online delivers high quality content on mothers’ issues and provides other online sources related to motherhood as a social issue, including research and news articles on care work, paid work, family life, and public policy.

• The National Alliance for Caregiving
  

  The National Alliance for Caregiving is a nonprofit coalition of national organizations focusing on issues of family caregiving, created to conduct research, do policy analysis, develop national programs, and increase public awareness of family caregiving issues.

• The Stanford Center on Adolescence
  

  The Stanford Center on Adolescence aims to promote the character and competence of all young people growing up in today’s world. Its research focuses on the general question of how to prepare young people for active and productive citizenship in a democratic society. The center’s work provides guidance for parenting, for improved educational practice, and for youth development in a wide variety of community settings.

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Work & Career

• Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship
  

  Based at the University of Michigan Business School, this is a networking community for researchers and practitioners interested in Positive Organizational Scholarship.

• Delivering Happiness
  

  Inspired by the book of the same name by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, this organization is fueling a movement to promote happiness in the workplace. Through a website and real-world events it is trying to inspire, educate, and connect people motivated to improve workplace quality of life.

• The GoodWork Project
  

  The GoodWork Project researches how leading professionals carry out work that is socially responsible and of high quality. Its “Toolkit for Workers in Progress” is a series of materials that aims to introduce concepts of “good work” to young students so that they begin to explore, discuss, and articulate core responsibilities,
  beliefs, values, and goals for work.

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Mind & Body

• Association for Mindfulness in Education
  

  An organizational collective of groups and individuals aimed towards supporting mindfulness training as a necessary component of K-12 education.

• Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
  

  Supports the use of contemplative and introspective practices in higher education to facilitate active learning and research environments to cultivate a meaningful experience and a greater social awareness of the self and others.

• Inner Kids
  

  A program targeting Pre-K children through adolescence that develops the child’s inner and outer awareness of experience in thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations in order to build a sense of mindful awareness.

• Inner Resilience Program
  

  Inner Resilience Program, now a project of the Tides Center, offers a variety of support services to New York City educators to help them deal with the emotional traumas of September 11 and future crises.

• Learning to Breathe
  

  A curriculum that teaches students to manage stress, strengthen emotion regulation and attention, and improve well-being through regulatory skills and techniques.

• Mental Health America
  

  Mental Health America promotes mental wellness through public education, encouraging reform, and promoting the use of effective local and regional prevention and recovery programs.

• Mind-Body Awareness Program
  

  Utilizes mindfulness meditation and emotional intelligence exercises to build self-regulation, empathy, and mindful attention, gain impulse control to build better regulatory and decision-making skills.

• Mindful Schools
  

  Mindful Schools aim to utilize mindfulness-based techniques to teach children how to focus, manage their emotions, handle their stress, and resolve conflicts in an effort to improve school performance and well-being.

• Mindful-Based Childbirth and Parenting Program
  

  An eight-week program designed to help expectant parents handle the stresses and challenges of becoming a parent. It adapts Jon Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR model to childbirth and parenting, exploring how mindfulness can help not just in the birth process but in parenting and relating to one’s partner.

• Mindfulness in Education Network
  

  A network aimed to facilitate connections, networks, and communication between parents, educators, administrators, and others interested in bringing mindfulness-based practices into educational settings.

• MindUP
  

  Backed by extensive positive psychological research, MindUP aims to cultivate mindful, emotional, social techniques to improve behavior and learning by teaching children skills to manage emotions and behaviors, reduce stress, sharpen concentration, and increase empathy and optimism.

• Oxford Mindfulness Centre
  

  Uses mindfulness-based teachings in order to prevent depression and improve mental well-being.

• SharpBrains
  

  SharpBrains offers science-based cognitive and emotional training products and programs, intended to help people improve their memory and overall “brain fitness.”

• Smart-in-Education
  

  Smart-in-Education is an 8-week program that utilizes mindfulness, emotional, empathy, and compassion training to K-12 educators and administrators to cultivate emotional and attentional skills to improve general well-being in the classroom.

• Stressed Teens
  

  Aims to reduce adolescent stress and its physical and psychological consequences by teaching teens mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques, enabling them to build social skills, confidence, and more.

• The Arnold P. Gold Foundation
  

  The Arnold P. Gold Foundation creates and supports programs that emphasize a caring relationship between medical practitioners and patients. It aims to help physicians-in-training become doctors who combine the skills of cutting edge medical science and technology with the skills of communication, empathy, and compassion.

• The Association for Play Therapy
  

  The Association for Play Therapy promotes play therapy, the means by which licensed mental health professionals use play to communicate with and address the mental health needs of children and other clients.

• The Center for Mind-Body Medicine
  

  The Center for Mind-Body Medicine is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to reviving the spirit and transforming the practice of medicine. It is working to create a more effective, comprehensive, and compassionate model of healthcare and health education.

• The Gesundheit Institute
  

  The Gesundheit Institute is a nonprofit organization, founded and directed by Patch Adams, which advocates for more compassionate and holistic health care. In addition to its long-term goal of building a free hospital in West Virginia, it runs workshops, helps build health clinics, and leads
  “humanitarian clowning” trips around the world.

• The Institute for the Study of Health and Illness
  

  The Institute for the Study of Health and Illness is an education and training center for physicians who wish to renew their commitment to service and to live by the values that have motivated physicians through the ages. It initiated the outreach support program, Finding Meaning in Medicine, which has been replicated by independent groups of physicians nationwide. The groups meet once a month to discuss the meaning that lies beneath the daily routines of practicing medicine, and to find strength within a community of physicians who share their values.

• The International Forgiveness Institute
  

  Dr. Robert Enright at the University of Wisconsin, Madison researches forgiveness and this Institute comes from his research. It is dedicated to disseminating to researchers and to the public scientific findings on the ways in which forgiveness lays the groundwork for positive feelings, hope, and growth.

• The Wellness Community
  

  The Wellness Community is an international nonprofit organization that provides education and resources to people affected by cancer. It aims to help them regain a sense of control over their lives, reduce isolation, and restore hope regardless of the stage of their disease

• UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness
  

  Aims to proliferate and integrate mindfulness-based practices into clinical care, professional training, education, research and outreach by patients, healthcare providers, students, and teachers in the educational and healthcare field.

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Big Ideas

• Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania
  

  The founder of this center and arguably the positive psychology movement itself, Martin Seligman works with the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center to promote research, training, education, and the dissemination of positive psychology.

• The Charter for Compassion
  

  Founder Karen Armstrong made a wish in 2008 to restore compassionate thinking and compassionate action to the center of “religious, moral, and political life.” The result is the Charter for Compassion, a document that transcends differences (it has been translated into over 30 languages) and activates the Golden Rule.

• The Fetzer Institute
  

  Love and forgiveness are universal tenants and the Fetzer Institute, a private foundation, is the first to celebrate that. It supports research, education, and service programs promoting the value in altruistic and compassionate love.

• The Forgiveness Project
  

  Victims and perpetrators of crime and violence have stories to tell, and the Forgiveness Project, a UK-based charity, listens. It opens up a dialogue about forgiveness. Its aims are three: to raise awareness about forgiveness, to educate and empower people to explore alternatives to conflict, and to transform hearts and minds. Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks for these grassroot conflict resolution and reconciliation projects.

• The Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America
  

  The Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America is an ongoing initiative of Professor Robert D. Putnam at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The project focuses on expanding what we know about our levels of trust and community engagement and on developing strategies and efforts to increase this engagement.

• World Happiness Report
  

  The report, published by the Earth Institute and co-edited by the institute’s director, Jeffrey Sachs, reflects a new worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and absence of misery as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the new science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

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Forgiveness

• A Campaign for Forgiveness Research
  

  Forgiveness is a necessary part of justice and this is true in societies all over the world. The Campaign for Forgiveness Research sponsors research for, and disseminates its findings on, the mental and physical health benefits of forgiving.

• JUST Alternatives
  

  A non-profit that listens, empathizes, and compassionately supports both victims and survivors of violence. It helps victims of crime by affirming their needs and it encourages personal accountability among violent offenders. On the one hand, JUST offers up research, training, and education on the conditions surrounding violence and victimization. On the other, it realizes positive approaches to issues like incarceration, accountability, rehabilitation, re-entry, and recidivism.

• Learning to Forgive
  

  This website is Fred Luskin’s, Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects, and it extols the power in the practice of forgiveness. Featuring popular media and research, and even the 9 particular steps of forgiveness, “Forgive for Good” offers up the opportunity to explore forgiveness with the goal of reducing hurt and helplessness.

• The Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking
  

  Community-based responses to crime and violence are what strengthen social harmony and individual healing. With this in mind, the International Center provides the research for and and training in restorative justice dialogues for professionals and community volunteers in corrections and victim services.

• The Fetzer Institute
  

  Love and forgiveness are universal tenants and the Fetzer Institute, a private foundation, is the first to celebrate that. It supports research, education, and service programs promoting the value in altruistic and compassionate love.

• The Forgiveness Project
  

  Victims and perpetrators of crime and violence have stories to tell, and the Forgiveness Project, a UK-based charity, listens. It opens up a dialogue about forgiveness. Its aims are three: to raise awareness about forgiveness, to educate and empower people to explore alternatives to conflict, and to transform hearts and minds. Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks for these grassroot conflict resolution and reconciliation projects.

• The International Forgiveness Institute
  

  Dr. Robert Enright at the University of Wisconsin, Madison researches forgiveness and this Institute comes from his research. It is dedicated to disseminating to researchers and to the public scientific findings on the ways in which forgiveness lays the groundwork for positive feelings, hope, and growth.

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Gratitude

Learn more about the science of gratitude through our Expanding Gratitude project.

• 365 Grateful
  

  A personal quest to be happier became a gratitude movement and is now a documentary in the works—see the astounding evolution of one woman’s simple practice of being grateful.

• A Network for Grateful Living
  

  A worldwide community dedicated to gratefulness as the core inspiration for personal change, international cooperation, and sustainable activism in areas of universal concern.

• Expanding the Science and Practice of Gratitude
  

  The GGSC’s new project which aims to expand the scientific database of gratitude and promote practices of gratitude in society by launching a range of research and education initiatives.

• Jeffrey J. Froh’s Laboratory for Gratitude in Youth
  

  Learn more about one of the leading researchers of gratitude.

• Templeton Foundation
  

  A foundation dedicated to focusing the methods and resources of scientific inquiry on the moral and spiritual dimensions of life.

• The Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness
  

  The Research Project on Gratitude and Thankfulness, co-directed by Robert A. Emmons and Michael E. McCullough, is a long-term research project designed to create and disseminate a large body of novel scientific data on the nature of gratitude, its causes, and its potential consequences for human health and well-being. It has also tried to identify methods to cultivate gratitude in everyday life.

• thnx4
  

  A GGSC created website which allows you to experience the scientifically proven benefits of gratitude first-hand by keeping a sharable gratitude journal which will also help contribute to research on gratitude!

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Altruism

• The Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute at Humboldt State University
  

  The Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute was founded three decades ago by Dr. Samuel P. Oliner and Dr. Pearl Oliner, whose books you can find featured here, with the purpose of studying examples of heroic and conventional altruism. The institute has since continued to seek out ways to enhance altruism and prosocial behavior in society.

• The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education
  

  Based at Stanford University, CCARE supports scientific research into the psychological and biological roots of compassion and altruism. It also develops tools to foster compassion and altruistic behavior, including its eight-week Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) course.

• The Center on Philanthropy
  

  The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University is dedicated to voluntary action for the public good. It speaks to innovators and leaders, it offers academic programs and professional training in the service of improving philanthropy, and it empowers students and practitioners alike to create positive and permanent change in the world we all of us inhabit.

• The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values
  

  The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT is a think tank that is as dedicated to inquiry as it is to education. It is collaborative and nonpartisan in its development of interdisciplinary research and programs, which range from “science and technology” to “education and international relations.” Its emphasis on the meaningful relationships between individuals and society seems to honor the spirit in which the Center was founded: for the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and his call for a holistic education.

• The Giraffe Heroes Program
  

  The Giraffe Heroes Program is a K-12 curriculum that tries to inspire active citizenship and compassion in youth by teaching them about the work of local and international activists.

• The Helping Others Research Project
  

  The mission of the Helping Others Research Project at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is to improve the quality of life for youth, families, and communities by providing a continuum of scientific information, education, and personal experiences on the role of service in addiction recovery. Its Helping Others Live Sober website allows individuals to share their stories of recovery and offer support to others struggling with the disease of addiction—part of an effort to explore how people help others as part of their program of recovery. It also offers mental health professionals a wealth of resources on addiction treatment and scientific information about how helping helps the helper.

• The Heroic Imagination Project
  

  “Transforming compassion into heroic action” is the tagline for a locally-headquartered non-profit that calls itself The Heroic Imagination Project. The Project has at its heart the research findings of Dr. Philip Zimbardo (speaking about the organization here) which are then translated into tools, strategies, and exercises to help us take action—mindful, heroic action—at critical moments. Its project, more precisely, is to incite us to initiate positive change in our own lives as much as in the life of our community.

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Compassion

• Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
  

  The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy hopes to build a worldwide movement for empathy and compassion through community organizing and sharing information on empathy with the public.

• Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
  

  The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, runs a state-of-the-art neuroscience research laboratory using brain imaging, with a particular focus on studying mindfulness meditation practice and the neural bases of compassion.

• Center for Nonviolent Communication
  

  The Center for Nonviolent Communication promotes education on nonviolent communication techniques in order to encourage more compassionate means of conflict resolution for dealing with personal, political, and organizational issues.

• Child Development Project
  

  Child Development Project is a multi-year school improvement program designed to encourage caring, respectful connection among students, educators, and parents.

• Compassionate Action Network (CAN)
  

  A startup that began just recently in 2008, CAN’s project is as inspiring as its acronym. It brings together individuals and institutions, the coming together of which is facilitated by a shared principle to promote compassion in—and to be compassionate members of—the community.

• Compassionate Mind Foundation
  

  A registered charity since 2006, the Compassionate Mind Foundation promotes well-being by offering up and disseminating scientific research on compassion (read its mission statement in full). Its website acts like a forum that invites open discussion on the topic and it reads like a bulletin board for events that raise awareness on—and raise funds for—the application of compassion to a whole host of “human problems.”

• Compassionate Societies
  

  Compassionate societies are happier. This is backed up by research which can be found on the compassionate societies site—directly adjacent to its mission statement which promises to provide a “sense” of community for those who are, or who hope to become, more “personally” and “politically” compassionate. On the home page, “relieving human suffering in every society” is the tagline that headlines featured articles like “Why think about suffering?”

• Cultivating Emotional Balance Project
  

  This eight-week program arose from a dialogue between biobehavioral scientists studying emotion and the Dalai Lama. It combines training in Buddhist practices of meditation and compassion with education about human emotion, drawn from Western psychology, intended to help participants better understand their emotions and the emotions of others. Studies of the program, involving school teachers as participants, suggest it is effective in reducing stress and negative emotion and boosting positive emotion. It is currently offered around the world, including an annual summer training led by Drs. Paul Ekman and Alan Wallace in Phuket, Thailand.

• Institute for Humane Education
  

  An education that values human rights, environmental preservation, and animal protection is the key to living with compassion and to putting our values into action. The Institute advances its slogan to “learn, live, and teach for a better world” by providing accurate information, fostering curiosity, instilling responsibility, and finally offering the tools we as a society need to create a healthier and more peaceful world.

• Roots & Shoots
  

  Roots & Shoots engages and inspires youth through community service and service learning. Founded by Jane Goodall, this global program promotes care and concern for animals, the environment, and the human community.

• Roots of Empathy
  

  Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program that aims to reduce levels of aggression and violence among school children while raising their social and emotional competence and increasing empathy among them.

• Self-Compassion.org
  

  Founder Kristin Neff tells us that self-compassion is a healthier way of relating to ourselves. Her website is a resource for students, researchers, and the general public to access information—books, videos, articles, tests—on what self-compassion is and why we are better off if we can learn treat ourselves more compassionately.

• The Arnold P. Gold Foundation
  

  The Arnold P. Gold Foundation creates and supports programs that emphasize a caring relationship between medical practitioners and patients. It aims to help physicians-in-training become doctors who combine the skills of cutting edge medical science and technology with the skills of communication, empathy, and compassion.

• The Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education
  

  Based at Stanford University, CCARE supports scientific research into the psychological and biological roots of compassion and altruism. It also develops tools to foster compassion and altruistic behavior, including its eight-week Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) course.

• The Charter for Compassion
  

  Founder Karen Armstrong made a wish in 2008 to restore compassionate thinking and compassionate action to the center of “religious, moral, and political life.” The result is the Charter for Compassion, a document that transcends differences (it has been translated into over 30 languages) and activates the Golden Rule.

• The Compassionate Friends
  

  The Compassionate Friends is a national nonprofit organization that aims to assist families toward the positive resolution of grief following the death of a child of any age and to provide information to help others be supportive.

• The Compassionate Listening Project
  

  The Compassionate Listening Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching skills to heal polarization, cultivate healthy relationships, and build bridges between people, communities, and nations in conflict through international peace delegations, national workshops and educational materials.

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Empathy

• Center for Building a Culture of Empathy
  

  The Center for Building a Culture of Empathy hopes to build a worldwide movement for empathy and compassion through community organizing and sharing information on empathy with the public.

• Center for Nonviolent Communication
  

  The Center for Nonviolent Communication promotes education on nonviolent communication techniques in order to encourage more compassionate means of conflict resolution for dealing with personal, political, and organizational issues.

• Changing Worlds
  

  Changing Worlds is an educational organization focused on the arts that uses writing, art, and oral history programs to promote cross-cultural understanding among students.

• Cultivating Emotional Balance Project
  

  This eight-week program arose from a dialogue between biobehavioral scientists studying emotion and the Dalai Lama. It combines training in Buddhist practices of meditation and compassion with education about human emotion, drawn from Western psychology, intended to help participants better understand their emotions and the emotions of others. Studies of the program, involving school teachers as participants, suggest it is effective in reducing stress and negative emotion and boosting positive emotion. It is currently offered around the world, including an annual summer training led by Drs. Paul Ekman and Alan Wallace in Phuket, Thailand.

• Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital
  

  Massachusetts General Hospital trains healthcare providers in empathy in order to promote stronger interpersonal relationships in healthcare, communication, and a better experience for patients.

• Facing History and Ourselves
  

  Facing History and Ourselves is a national educational and professional development organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development and lessons of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives.

• No Bully
  

  No Bully seeks to end bullying, harassment, and violence in schools by helping K-12 educators find innovative ways to teach their students compassion and empathy.

• Paul Ekman’s F.A.C.E. Training
  

  Through his research on facial expressions, Ekman has discovered “microexpressions,” which are nearly undetectable facial movements exhibited when people deliberately try to hide their emotions. His F.A.C.E. training teaches people how to detect those expressions in order to better understand how others are feeling.

• Playworks
  

  Playworks aims to improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.

• Public Conservations Project
  

  The Public Conservations Project provides workshops and training to facilitate dialogues on a range of contentious issues including abortion, forest management, homosexuality and faith, the use of animals in research, and other hot button topics to promote mutual understanding and collaborative action.

• Roots of Empathy
  

  Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program that aims to reduce levels of aggression and violence among school children while raising their social and emotional competence and increasing empathy among them.

• StartEmpathy.org
  

  StartEmpathy.org is an organization dedicated to promoting empathy education for children through both parenting and teaching methods.

• The Arnold P. Gold Foundation
  

  The Arnold P. Gold Foundation creates and supports programs that emphasize a caring relationship between medical practitioners and patients. It aims to help physicians-in-training become doctors who combine the skills of cutting edge medical science and technology with the skills of communication, empathy, and compassion.

• The Compassionate Listening Project
  

  The Compassionate Listening Project is a non-profit organization dedicated to teaching skills to heal polarization, cultivate healthy relationships, and build bridges between people, communities, and nations in conflict through international peace delegations, national workshops and educational materials.

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Happiness

• AuthenticHappiness.org
  

  Run by Martin Seligman, director of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center and founder of positive psychology, this site contains links to positive psychology research and other organizations associated with positive psychology as well as questionnaires that measure users’ levels of happiness, life satisfaction, and other attributes associated with well-being.

• Delivering Happiness
  

  Inspired by the book of the same name by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, this organization is fueling a movement to promote happiness in the workplace. Through a website and real-world events it is trying to inspire, educate, and connect people motivated to improve workplace quality of life.

• European Network for Positive Psychology
  

  The most comprehensive collective of European researchers and practitioners with shared interests in the science and practice of positive psychology. If you want to know more about the positive psychology movement in Europe then this is the site to use.

• Happiness and Its Causes
  

  Promotes dialogue on the tools and techniques that help people achieve happiness, drawing from science, philosophy, economics, and religion.

• International Positive Psychology Association
  

  This international association is working to further the science of positive psychology across the globe, to expand the study of positive psychology to more fields and environments, and foster education and training in the field. It is a great medium to look at the field positive psychology as it expands globally and to become a part of facilitating this growth!

• Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania
  

  The founder of this center and arguably the positive psychology movement itself, Martin Seligman works with the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center to promote research, training, education, and the dissemination of positive psychology.

• Positive Psychology Network
  

  A research network devoted to understanding and building the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.

• Positive Psychology Program at Claremont Graduate University
  

  The Positive Psychology Program at Claremont Graduate University is one of currently only two colleges in the country (the University of Pennsylvania being the other) to offer an M.A. and Ph.D. in positive psychology. Founded by one of the founding fathers of positive psychology, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, this program constantly strives to further the progress of the field of positive psychology on all levels.

• The Happiness Project
  

  Founded off the principles espoused by Gretchen Rubin in her international bestseller “The Happiness Project” this website is useful to all those looking to some examples of concrete practice in the often theory-based science (and philosophy) of human happiness.

• The World Database of Happiness
  

  This site tracks scientific research on the subjective enjoyment of life. Based at Erasmus University in the Netherlands, it collects findings from a wide variety of studies on happiness and presents an extensive bibliography of publications on happiness.

• Values in Action Institute
  

  This non-profit organization’s mission is to advance both the science and practice of character, aiming to fill the world with greater virtue. One of the ways they do this is through their free VIA survey which determines one’s character strengths and has currently been taken by over 1.3 million people.

• World Happiness Report
  

  The report, published by the Earth Institute and co-edited by the institute’s director, Jeffrey Sachs, reflects a new worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and absence of misery as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness in the world today and shows how the new science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness.

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Mindfulness

• Association for Mindfulness in Education
  

  An organizational collective of groups and individuals aimed towards supporting mindfulness training as a necessary component of K-12 education.

• Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
  

  Supports the use of contemplative and introspective practices in higher education to facilitate active learning and research environments to cultivate a meaningful experience and a greater social awareness of the self and others.

• Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
  

  The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, runs a state-of-the-art neuroscience research laboratory using brain imaging, with a particular focus on studying mindfulness meditation practice and the neural bases of compassion.

• Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society
  

  Founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn, CFM offers a number of pathways for people to cultivate a sense of well-being, confidence, and creativity, including the renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program.

• Cultivating Emotional Balance Project
  

  This eight-week program arose from a dialogue between biobehavioral scientists studying emotion and the Dalai Lama. It combines training in Buddhist practices of meditation and compassion with education about human emotion, drawn from Western psychology, intended to help participants better understand their emotions and the emotions of others. Studies of the program, involving school teachers as participants, suggest it is effective in reducing stress and negative emotion and boosting positive emotion. It is currently offered around the world, including an annual summer training led by Drs. Paul Ekman and Alan Wallace in Phuket, Thailand.

• Inner Kids
  

  A program targeting Pre-K children through adolescence that develops the child’s inner and outer awareness of experience in thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations in order to build a sense of mindful awareness.

• Learning to Breathe
  

  A curriculum that teaches students to manage stress, strengthen emotion regulation and attention, and improve well-being through regulatory skills and techniques.

• Mind & Life Institute
  

  A working collaboration and research partnership between modern science and Buddhism to promote the creation of a contemplative, compassionate, and rigorous experimental and experiential science of the mind which could guide and inform medicine, neuroscience, psychology, education and human development.

• Mind-Body Awareness Program
  

  Utilizes mindfulness meditation and emotional intelligence exercises to build self-regulation, empathy, and mindful attention, gain impulse control to build better regulatory and decision-making skills.

• Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA
  

  MARC fosters and publicizes research to support the scientific benefits of miindful awareness, offering tools and classes to professionals in mental health, medicine, and K-12 education.

• Mindful Schools
  

  Mindful Schools aim to utilize mindfulness-based techniques to teach children how to focus, manage their emotions, handle their stress, and resolve conflicts in an effort to improve school performance and well-being.

• Mindful-Based Childbirth and Parenting Program
  

  An eight-week program designed to help expectant parents handle the stresses and challenges of becoming a parent. It adapts Jon Kabat-Zinn’s MBSR model to childbirth and parenting, exploring how mindfulness can help not just in the birth process but in parenting and relating to one’s partner.

• Mindfulness in Education Network
  

  A network aimed to facilitate connections, networks, and communication between parents, educators, administrators, and others interested in bringing mindfulness-based practices into educational settings.

• Mindfulness Without Borders
  

  Mindfulness Without Borders is a nonprofit organization working to transform the traditional academic setting through social-emotional literacy and core mindfulness practices that help teens improve their self-awareness, social awareness, and critical thinking. Through teacher trainings and workshops for youth, MWB provides results‐driven instruction on the Mindfulness Ambassador Council, a 12-week program to help high school youth thrive—not just survive—in an increasingly complex world.

• MindUP
  

  Backed by extensive positive psychological research, MindUP aims to cultivate mindful, emotional, social techniques to improve behavior and learning by teaching children skills to manage emotions and behaviors, reduce stress, sharpen concentration, and increase empathy and optimism.

• Oxford Mindfulness Centre
  

  Uses mindfulness-based teachings in order to prevent depression and improve mental well-being.

• Smart-in-Education
  

  Smart-in-Education is an 8-week program that utilizes mindfulness, emotional, empathy, and compassion training to K-12 educators and administrators to cultivate emotional and attentional skills to improve general well-being in the classroom.

• Stressed Teens
  

  Aims to reduce adolescent stress and its physical and psychological consequences by teaching teens mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques, enabling them to build social skills, confidence, and more.

• UC San Diego Center for Mindfulness
  

  Aims to proliferate and integrate mindfulness-based practices into clinical care, professional training, education, research and outreach by patients, healthcare providers, students, and teachers in the educational and healthcare field.

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Play

• KaBOOM!
  

  KaBOOM! rallies communities to achieve better public policy, funding, and public awareness for increased play opportunities nationwide; provides resources, including training, challenge grants,
  and publications for communities that wish to plan a new play ggkkspace on their own; and brings together children, business, and community interests to build a select number of community play spaces each year.

• Playworks
  

  Playworks aims to improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.

• The Association for Play Therapy
  

  The Association for Play Therapy promotes play therapy, the means by which licensed mental health professionals use play to communicate with and address the mental health needs of children and other clients.

• The Gesundheit Institute
  

  The Gesundheit Institute is a nonprofit organization, founded and directed by Patch Adams, which advocates for more compassionate and holistic health care. In addition to its long-term goal of building a free hospital in West Virginia, it runs workshops, helps build health clinics, and leads
  “humanitarian clowning” trips around the world.

• The National Institute for Play
  

  The National Institute for Play is committed to bringing the knowledge, practices, and benefits of play into public life. It gathers research from diverse play scientists and practitioners, initiates projects to expand the clinical scientific knowledge of human play, and translates this emerging body of knowledge into programs and resources which deliver the transformative power of play to all segments of society.

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Anti-Racism & Tolerance

• Anti-Racist Parent
  

  Anti-Racist Parent is a moderated blog by and for parents who are committed to raising children with an anti-racist outlook.

• Everyday Democracy
  

  Everyday Democracy (formerly the Study Circles Resource Center) offers “dialogue to change” programs that can help students examine racism in their schools and communities, develop solutions, and implement them.

• Facing History and Ourselves
  

  Facing History and Ourselves is a national educational and professional development organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development and lessons of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives.

• Rethinking Schools
  

  Rethinking Schools is a nonprofit publisher of educational materials. Run by current and former classroom teachers, it works to advance equitable reform throughout the U.S. public school system.

• Teaching Tolerance
  

  Founded in 1991 by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance supports the efforts of K-12 teachers and other educators to promote respect for differences and appreciation of diversity. Teaching Tolerance serves as a clearinghouse of information about anti-bias programs and activities being implemented in schools across the country.

• The Carter Center
  

  The Carter Center, in partnership with Emory University, is guided by a fundamental commitment to human rights and the alleviation of human suffering; it seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, enhance freedom and democracy, and improve health.

• The Civil Rights Project
  

  The Civil Rights Project, based at the University of California, Los Angeles, aims to deepen understanding of the issues that must be resolved to achieve racial and ethnic equity in American society.

• The Intercultural Communication Institute
  

  The Intercultural Communication Institute promotes education and training to help people deal with cultural differences, with the goal of minimizing destructive conflict among national, ethnic, and other cultural groups.

• The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research Institute
  

  The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research Institute at Stanford University supports educational and research programs that enhance understanding of King’s dream of global peace with social justice.

• The Program on Intergroup Relations
  

  The Program on Intergroup Relations is a social justice education program, based at the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus, that works proactively to promote understanding of intergroup relations inside and outside of the classroom. The program places special emphasis on fostering constructive dialogue among people of diverse races and ethnicities.

• The Public Conversations Project
  

  The Public Conversations Project offers a variety of services—such as organizing conferences and facilitating dialogues—to help foster a more inclusive, empathic, and collaborative society. It brings together people and groups with differing values, worldviews, and positions to have constructive conversations about divisive public issues.

• UnderstandingPrejudice.org
  

  UnderstandingPrejudice.org offers educational resources and information on prejudice, discrimination, multiculturalism, and diversity, with the ultimate goal of reducing the level of intolerance and bias in contemporary society.

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