Resources
These organizations promote social and emotional well-being through research, practice, or both.
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Peace & Reconciliation
- Future Leaders for Peace
Future Leaders for Peace works with young people at schools and youth organizations to develop leadership and interpersonal skills. Its programs and presentations address the subjects of honesty, good communication and listening skills, objective and empathic decision making, and goal setting.
- ImpactGames
ImpactGames is the company that is producing the PeaceMaker video game, a simulation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is intended to be used as a tool in promoting peace among Israelis, Palestinians, and young adults worldwide.
- Just Alternatives
Just Alternatives aims to reduce violence and victimization by affirming crime victims’ needs and encouraging personal accountability among violent offenders. Its work includes trainings, research, and educational outreach that focuses on the conditions underlying violence and victimization, and explores promising approaches to issues of incarceration, accountability, rehabilitation, re-entry, and recidivism.
- Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights
Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights is an international organization of family members of victims of criminal murders, terrorist killings, state executions, extrajudicial assassinations, and “disappearances” working to oppose the death penalty from a human rights perspective.
- Peace First
Peace First works with elementary schools, families, and young adult volunteers to help create safe classrooms and communities for students.
- 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.
- PeaceJam
PeaceJam is an international education program built around Nobel Peace Laureates who work personally with youth to pass on the spirit, skills, and wisdom they embody. The goal of PeaceJam is to inspire a new generation of peacemakers who will transform their local communities, themselves, and the world.
- Play for Peace
Play for Peace is a global organization that works locally through community leaders and youth facilitators to teach children, teens, and adults to trust and respect others, and to break down cultural
barriers. - Prison Fellowship International
Prison Fellowship International is an association of faith-based organizations active in 112 countries. It has developed internationally recognized expertise in restorative justice, which emphasizes repairing the harm caused or revealed by criminal behavior.
- RSVP: Resolve to Stop the Violence Project
RSVP: Resolve to Stop the Violence Project is a violence prevention program run by the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department that incorporates victim restitution, offender accountability, and community involvement to reduce recidivism, responsibly return ex-offenders to their communities, and prevent further violence.
- 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 Restorative Justice & Peacemaking
The Center for Restorative Justice & Peacemaking at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work provides technical assistance, training, and research in support of restorative justice practice and principles. Services include the International Restorative Justice Dialogue Training Institute, which provides training for professionals and community volunteers in corrections and victim services.
- The Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies
The Centre for Peace and Reconciliation Studies promotes the understanding and practice of reconciliation and forgiveness by nonviolent means at all levels throughout the world.
- 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 Crisis Prevention Institute
The Crisis Prevention Institute helps organizations create and maintain safe and respectful environments through trainings, educational resources, and consulting services. Its Nonviolent Crisis Intervention training program has taught more than five million professionals how to resolve conflict at the earliest possible stage for staff and those in their care.
- The Fellowship of Reconciliation
The Fellowship of Reconciliation is an interfaith organization that since 1915 has carried on programs and educational projects concerned with domestic and international peace and justice, nonviolent alternatives to conflict, and the rights of conscience. It educates, trains, builds coalitions, and engages in nonviolent and compassionate actions locally, nationally, and globally.
- The Killology Research Group
The Killology Research Group, directed by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, examines how healthy people (such as police and members of the military) react to killing another human being, and explores the factors that enable and restrain killing in these situations. It disseminates its work on the psychological and social impact of killing through books, videos, and public presentations.
- The Paxis Institute
The Paxis Institute identifies, develops, tests, and distributes best practices for helping
individuals, organizations, and communities achieve greater peace and emotional well-being. - The Peacemaker Institute
The Peacemaker Institute sponsors an annual “street retreat” in Denver, Colorado, and runs other street retreats around the country. The retreats are four days and three nights, during
which participants live on the streets without money, bedding, change of clothing, books, or watches. - The Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation
The Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation is an interdisciplinary center at Stanford University that focuses on identifying and analyzing the strategic, psychological, and institutional barriers to conflict resolution, as well as bridges to overcome those barriers.
- The United States Institute of Peace
The United States Institute of Peace, established and funded by Congress, helps prevent and resolve violent international conflicts, promotes post-conflict stability and development, and increases conflict management capacity, tools, and intellectual capital worldwide.
Compassion & Empathy
- Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin runs a state of the art neuroscience research projects using brain imaging, with a particular focus on identifying the neural bases of emotion.
- Community of Caring
Through training for teachers, values discussions, student forums, parent involvement and service learning, Community of Caring addresses destructive attitudes that lead to early sexual involvement, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, delinquent behavior, and dropping out of school.
- Humane Society First Strike Campaign
Humane Society First Strike Campaign raises public and professional awareness about the connection between animal cruelty and other violent crime violence, and helps communities identify some of the origins of violence, predict its patterns, and prevent its escalation.
- Modest Needs
Modest Needs is a nonprofit organization reaching out to hard-working individuals and families who suddenly find themselves faced with small, emergency expenses that they have no way to afford on their own. Its grants are funded exclusively by donations from private citizens who want to help individuals and families before they have been forced into the unforgiving cycle of poverty.
- 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.
- Shanti
Shanti at the forefront of a growing national movement to enhance the quality of life for persons living with life-threatening or chronic illnesses by providing volunteer-based emotional and practical support.
- The Caring Institute
The Caring Institute believes that the solution to most problems is the caring of one human being for another. The Caring Institute celebrates those special individuals who, in transcending self, devote their lives in service to the disadvantaged, the poor, the disabled, and the dying.
- 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 Cultivating Emotional Balance Project
The Cultivating Emotional Balance Project is a study being conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. It is testing the effects of an eight-session training program designed to promote positive changes in the health and emotional responses of participants. For the clinical trial of the program, which will begin in January 2005, the researchers are recruiting female school teachers between the ages of 25 and 60 who live in the San Francisco Bay Area and are in a relationship with an intimate partner.
- The Human/Animal Violence Education Network
The Human/Animal Violence Education Network is a Massachusetts-based coalition of citizens and professionals who come together to identify the connections between animal cruelty and human violence
- The Living Links Center
The Living Links Center, directed by Frans B. M. de Waal at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University, conducts primate studies that shed light on human behavioral evolution. Its goals are to reconstruct human evolution, pinpoint differences and similarities between humans and non-human primates, educate the public about primates, and promote primates’ well-being and conservation.
- The Peacemaker Institute
The Peacemaker Institute sponsors an annual “street retreat” in Denver, Colorado, and runs other street retreats around the country. The retreats are four days and three nights, during
which participants live on the streets without money, bedding, change of clothing, books, or watches. - The Robotic Life Group
The Robotic Life Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab works on developing socially intelligent robots that communicate and cooperate with humans, and learn from them as well. Directed by MIT professor Cynthia Breazeal, the group has created the sociable robots Kismet and Leonardo.
- The Society & Animals Institute
The Society & Animals Institute works with social scientists, mental health providers and other animal protection organizations to reduce the suffering and exploitation of both human and nonhuman animals.
Social-Emotional Learning/Anti-Bullying
- Bully Police USA
A national, all-volunteer watchdog organization that evaluates the quality of state-wide anti-bullying laws across the U.S. It also serves as a clearinghouse for anti-bullying resources, providing links to speakers, teachers, consultants, and various recommended anti-bullying programs.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- George Lucas Educational Foundation
A nonprofit organization that documents and disseminates models of the most innovative practices in K-12 schools.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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 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 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.
Altruism & Heroism
- Fetzer Institute
A private foundation that supports research, education, and service programs, including scientific research on altruistic and compassionate love.
- Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide
Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide is an international organization dedicated to honoring those individuals who have tried to rescue the persecuted, and preserve their own dignity, during times of war and genocide. Svetlana Broz is the founder and director of its Sarajevo office, which runs public events and educational seminars, and has also planted a memorial garden to commemorate people who acted righteously during the Bosnian civil war.
- 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.
- 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.
- Jewish Foundation for the Righteous
The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous provides financial support to more than 900 non-Jews who rescued Jews during the Holocaust and preserves their legacy through a national education program. The goal of the program is to educate middle and high school teachers about the history of the Holocaust and to provide them with the resources to integrate this knowledge into their classrooms.
- Modest Needs
Modest Needs is a nonprofit organization reaching out to hard-working individuals and families who suddenly find themselves faced with small, emergency expenses that they have no way to afford on their own. Its grants are funded exclusively by donations from private citizens who want to help individuals and families before they have been forced into the unforgiving cycle of poverty.
- My Hero
My Hero is a nonprofit educational Web project that celebrates the best of humanity. Its mission is to enlighten and inspire people of all ages with an ever-growing Internet archive of hero stories from around the world.
- The Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute at Humboldt State University
Founded with the dual purpose of studying specific examples of heroic and conventional altruism and seeking out ways to enhance altruism and prosocial behavior in society.
- 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 Institute for Research on Unlimited Love
A research and educational institute that funds high-level scientific research on altruistic and unlimited love.
- The Mystery of Love Project
The Mystery of Love Project is a national initiative devoted to generating community-based dialogues that expand upon popular notions of love. The centerpiece of the project is a documentary called The Mystery of Love, which first aired on PBS in December of 2006 (check local listings). Major funding for The Mystery of Love is provided by the Fetzer Institute as part of its Campaign for Love and Forgiveness: Change Everything.
- The SETI Institute Interstellar Message Composition Project
The SETI Institute seeks to explore, understand, and explain the origin, nature, and prevalence of life in the universe. Its Interstellar Message Composition Project seeks to create messages that would be understood on other worlds.
- The Stanford Prison Experiment
The Stanford Prison Experiment website features an extensive slide show and description of this classic psychology experiment, including parallels with the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
Education & Schools
- 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
Through training for teachers, values discussions, student forums, parent involvement and service learning, Community of Caring addresses destructive attitudes that lead to early sexual involvement, teen pregnancy, substance abuse, delinquent behavior, and dropping out of school.
- 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.
- George Lucas Educational Foundation
A nonprofit organization that documents and disseminates models of the most innovative practices in K-12 schools.
- 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.
- Mix It Up Lunch Day sponsored by Teaching Tolerance
Teaching Tolerance sponsors Mix It Up at Lunch Day each November, during which students choose a different seat in the cafeteria and get to know someone new. Research shows the program helps students become more comfortable interacting with different kinds of people, bolsters school unity, and fosters new friendships.
- 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.
- Peace First
Peace First works with elementary schools, families, and young adult volunteers to help create safe classrooms and communities for students.
- 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.
- Responsive Classroom
The Responsive Classroom approach to teaching and learning fosters safe, challenging, and joyful classrooms and schools, kindergarten through eighth grade. Developed by classroom teachers, this approach consists of practical strategies for bringing together social and academic learning throughout the school day.
- 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.
- Seattle Social Development Project
SSDP began in 1981 to test strategies for reducing childhood risk factors for school failure, drug abuse, and delinquency. First graders in five Seattle schools were assigned to intervention or control classrooms. Each year through the elementary grades parents and teachers in intervention classrooms learned how to actively engage children in learning, strengthen bonding to family and school, and encourage children’s positive behaviors.
- 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 Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence
The Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence is a federally funded research and development program, based at the University of California, Berkeley. It works to improve education for students whose ability to reach their potential is challenged by language or cultural barriers, race, geographic location, or poverty.
- The Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University
Studies how changes in the social organization of schools can make them more effective for all students in promoting academic achievement, development of potential, and eventual career success.
- 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 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 International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education
The International Association for the Study of Cooperation in Education is 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 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 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 School for Ethical Education
The School for Ethical Education (SEE) is a not-for-profit teaching organization that provides classes, creates programs and offers consultation services to promote strategies for comprehensive ethics and character education with specific programs to support academic integrity, writing projects, service learning, and conflict resolution.
- 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.
Religion & Spirituality
- Metanexus Institute
Advances research, education and outreach on the constructive engagement of science and religion.
- 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.
- Templeton Foundation
A foundation dedicated to focusing the methods and resources of scientific inquiry on the moral and spiritual dimensions of life.
- The Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology
The Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology is the research arm of the Albert and Jessie Danielsen Institute at Boston University. It aims to relieve human suffering and promote human growth through research in religion and psychology. This year it plans to launch a series of studies on the psychological effects of religious practices designed to increase feelings of compassion and loving-kindness to others.
- The National Study of Youth and Religion
The National Study of Youth and Religion is an ongoing research project that is designed to enhance our understanding of the religious lives of American youth from adolescence into young adulthood. Its goals include encouraging sustained reflection about and rethinking of our cultural and institutional practices with regard to youth and religion. As this project develops, it will be producing a variety of scholarly and popular books and edited volumes, topical research reports, and conferences.
Parents & Families
- 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.
- 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.
- Council on Contemporary Families
A nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the national conversation about what contemporary families need and how these needs can best be met.
- Dads & Daughters
Dads & Daughters improves the lives of fathers, daughters, and their families with outstanding educational resources supporting fathers’ involvement in girls’ lives and advocacy for girls’ well-being.
- Equally Shared Parenting
Equally Shared Parenting is the cyber-home for fathers and mothers who have made (or wish to make) a conscious decision to share equally in the raising of their children, household chores, breadwinning, and time for recreation.
- 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.
- Oregon Social Learning Center
The Oregon Social Learning Center is dedicated to increasing the scientific understanding of social and psychological processes related to healthy development and family functioning. OSLC applies that understanding to the design and evaluation of interventions that strengthen children, adolescents, families, and communities.
- Postpartum Support International
Postpartum Support International increases awareness among public and professional communities about the emotional changes that women experience during and after pregnancy.
- Relationship Research Institute
The Relationship Research Institute fosters research on couple relationships, parenting, and families. The goal of the institute is to study relationships including but not limited to: love relationships between adults, parent-child relationships, sibling relationships, friendships, and family-community relationships.
- 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 fi rst 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 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.
Business & Management
- Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship at the University of Michigan Business School
Based at the University of Michigan Business School, this is a networking community for researchers and practitioners interested in Positive Organizational Scholarship.
- Commercial Alert
Commercial Alert works to keep commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity, and democracy.
- Corporate Accountability International
Corporate Accountability International engages in advocacy, grassroots organizing, research, and education to put an end to irresponsible corporate behavior around the world.
- CorpWatch
CorpWatch investigates and exposes corporate violations of human rights, environmental crimes, fraud, and corruption around the world.
- Kiva
Kiva helps individuals loan money to private, small businesses in developing countries. Sponsors pick who to loan to, get updates on the businesses they invest in, and get their money back at the end of the loan period.
- The Consumer Federation of America
The Consumer Federation of America advances the interest of consumers through research, education, and advocacy.
- 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. - The ImagineNations Group
The ImagineNations Group is a global alliance of social entrepreneurs, investors, financial institutions, corporations, and media working together with young people to inspire positive change in society. Its programs include helping to create investment strategies, television programs, and dialogue for and by young people around the world.
- United for a Fair Economy
United for a Fair Economy raises awareness that concentrated wealth and power undermine the economy, corrupt democracy, deepen the racial divide, and tear communities apart.
Art & Creativity
- Gina Gibney Dance
Gina Gibney Dance is a performing and community action dance company. In addition to creating and performing contemporary choreography, it links dance with social service through community initiatives that use the transformative power of movement to assist members of disenfranchised communities and survivors of violence.
- Kid Serve
Kid Serve is an arts education program guiding students through the design and creation of permanent outdoor murals in their communities. The program integrates social justice, creativity, and community
service into public art projects, empowering young people to take a leadership role in beautifying and transforming their neighborhoods. - OnFiction
OnFiction is an online magazine, edited by Keith Oatley and colleagues, that aims to develop the psychology of fiction. Using theoretical and empirical perspectives, it explores how fiction is created, and how readers and audience members engage in it.
- Project Zero
An educational research group whose mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels.
- The Dana Foundation
The Dana Foundation is a private philanthropic foundation with principal interests in brain science, immunology, and arts education. The mission of its arts education program is to support innovative professional development programs leading to improved teaching of the performing arts in public schools.
- The Herb Alpert Foundation
The Herb Alpert Foundation helps young people discover, harness, and fully develop their unique creative energies and special talents. The Foundation supports programs, in and out of schools, that provide arts education to young people of all ages. The Foundation also offers its annual
Alpert Award in the Arts to five engaged, independent artists who are challenging and transforming art, their respective disciplines, and society. - The National Art Education Association
The National Art Education Association is a nonprofit organization promoting arts education through professional development, service, advancement of knowledge, and leadership. It assists arts educators through mentoring, networking, and developing and disseminating exemplary resources on arts education.
- The National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is a federal public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts, bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. It is the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts.
- The Shands Arts in Medicine
The Shands Arts in Medicine program, running in five hospitals and several outpatient clinics affiliated with the University of Florida, is focused on transforming healthcare environments through the arts, and providing leadership for hospital arts programs throughout the nation. Artists in residence work with 150 volunteers
annually to engage patients, families, and
staff in numerous creative disciplines. - YouthARTS
The YouthARTS website is designed to give arts agencies, juvenile justice agencies, social service organizations, and other community-based organizations detailed information about how to plan, run, and evaluate arts programs for at-risk youth. It is based on the results of the YouthARTS Development Project, which defined the critical elements, “best practices,” and the impact of arts programs designed for at-risk youth.
Forgiveness
- Just Alternatives
Just Alternatives aims to reduce violence and victimization by affirming crime victims’ needs and encouraging personal accountability among violent offenders. Its work includes trainings, research, and educational outreach that focuses on the conditions underlying violence and victimization, and explores promising approaches to issues of incarceration, accountability, rehabilitation, re-entry, and recidivism.
- The Amy Biehl Foundation
The Amy Biehl Foundationis a charity that supports youth education and anti-violence programs in South Africa.
- The Campaign for Forgiveness Research
The Campaign for Forgiveness Research sponsors research and disseminates scientific findings and other information about new studies of forgiveness.
- The Forgiveness Project
The Forgiveness Projectis a touring exhibition of artwork and stories that centers on the themes of forgiveness and reconciliation. The goal of the exhibition is to raise the profile of, and funds for, grassroots conflict resolution and reconciliation projects.
- The International Forgiveness Institute
The International Forgiveness Institute disseminates scientific findings on forgiveness to interested researchers and members of the general public. It is an outgrowth of the research conducted by Dr. Robert Enright at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Health Professionals
- 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.
- 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.
- Oregon Social Learning Center
The Oregon Social Learning Center is dedicated to increasing the scientific understanding of social and psychological processes related to healthy development and family functioning. OSLC applies that understanding to the design and evaluation of interventions that strengthen children, adolescents, families, and communities.
- Psychologists Acting with Conscience Together
Psychologists Acting with Conscience Together works to raise awareness, promote action for social justice and well-being, and hold the helping professions accountable to social ethics.
- Shanti
Shanti at the forefront of a growing national movement to enhance the quality of life for persons living with life-threatening or chronic illnesses by providing volunteer-based emotional and practical support.
- SharpBrains
SharpBrains offers science-based cognitive and emotional training products and programs, intended to help people improve their memory and overall “brain fitness.”
- 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 Mental Health and Media
The Center for Mental Health and Media at Harvard Medical School is an outreach, production, and research center devoted to mental health, behavioral health, neuroscience, and healthy child development.
- 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 Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma
The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma is a global network of journalists, journalism
educators, and health professionals committed to improving media coverage of trauma, conflict, and tragedy. It also addresses the consequences of such coverage for those working in journalism. - 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 Helping Others Research Project
The Helping Others Research Project at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine aims 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. As part of its research on helping behaviors among adolescents with substance use disorders, 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 individuals help others as a 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 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 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
Caregiving
- The Alzheimer’s Association
The Alzheimer’s Association is a national, voluntary health organization that is working to eliminate Alzheimer’s disease through the advancement of research; to provide and enhance care and support for all affected; and to reduce the risk of dementia through the promotion of brain health.
- The Family Caregiver Alliance
The Family Caregiver Alliance was the fi rst 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 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.
Civic Engagement & Service Learning
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- GroundSpark
GroundSpark produces and distributes films and educational resources on a variety of social issues. Among these films is Let’s Get Real, which takes an honest and unflinching look at bullying among middle school youth today, told entirely from their perspective.
- Landscape and Human Health Laboratory
The Landscape and Human Health Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign studies how to create environments in which individuals, families, and communities flourish and how to better involve people in the design, management, and stewardship of their local environments.
- Oregon Social Learning Center
The Oregon Social Learning Center is dedicated to increasing the scientific understanding of social and psychological processes related to healthy development and family functioning. OSLC applies that understanding to the design and evaluation of interventions that strengthen children, adolescents, families, and communities.
- 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.
- PeacePlayers International
PeacePlayers International uses the game of basketball to unite and educate children and their communities.
- The Center for Deliberative Democracy
The Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford University is devoted to research about democracy and public opinion obtained through Deliberative Polling, a technique that combines small group discussions with scientific random sampling to provide public input on public policy and electoral issues.
- 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 International Media Action
The Center for International Media Action produces research, events, strategic plans, and publications that can advance the interests and role of people of color, women, low-income, and other marginalized constituencies in media policy and activism
- The Center for Law and Social Policy
The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) is a national nonprofit that works to improve the economic security, educational and workforce prospects, and family stability of low-income parents, children, and youth, and to secure equal justice for all. CLASP conducts cutting-edge research, provides insightful policy analysis, advocates at the federal and state levels, and offers information and technical assistance on a range of family policy and equal justice issues for federal, state, and local policymakers, advocates, researchers, and the media.
- 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 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 Pew Internet & American Life Project
The Pew Internet & American Life Project produces reports that explore the impact of the Internet on families, communities, work and home, daily life, education, health care, and civic and political life.
- 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.
- 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.
Happiness/Positive Psychology
- AuthenticHappiness.org
AuthenticHappiness.org is a website run by Martin Seligman, director of the University of
Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center and founder of positive psychology. The 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. - Happiness and Its Causes
The Happiness and Its Causes conference will be held in San Francisco in November 2008. Following similar annual conferences in Europe and Australia, this gathering will promote dialogue on the tools and techniques that help people achieve happiness, drawing from science, philosophy, economics, and religion.
- Positive Psychology Network
A research network devoted to understanding and building the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive.
- The World Database of Happiness
The World Database of Happiness 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.
Mindfulness
- Association for Mindfulness in Education
The Association for Mindfulness in Education is a collaborative association of organizations and individuals working together to provide support for mindfulness training as a component of K-12 education.
- Center for Investigating Healthy Minds
The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin runs a state of the art neuroscience research projects using brain imaging, with a particular focus on identifying the neural bases of emotion.
- Gatless Gate Zen Center
Gatless Gate Zen Center is a retreat and residency program that uses Buddhism, meditation, and other mindfulness studies or practices to reduce the likelihood incarcerated individuals will return to prison by helping them develop values and practical skills, such as self-discipline and impulse control, that are useful for a purposeful life. Abbot K.C. Walpole of the GGZC helped establish the Mind-Body Stress Reduction program at the Lowell Correctional Institute for Women.
- Horizon Communities in Prison
Horizon Communities in Prison uses a consensual, multi-faith based approach to encourage prison inmates to discuss their life experiences in a trustworthy and supportive environment, transforming the prison into a place of growth rather than on of punishment. It serves as a co-sponsor of the Mind-Body Stress Reduction program at the Lowell Correctional Institute for Women.
- InnerKids
Inner Kids is a non-profit foundation that uses mindful awareness programs to help under-served school children improve their conflict resolution and attention skills.
- Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy
The Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy is a non-profit organization dedicated to the education and training of mental health professionals interested in the integration of mindfulness meditation and psychotherapy, for the purpose of enhancing the therapy relationship, the quality of clinical interventions, and the well-being of the therapist.
- Mindfulness Research Guide
The Mindfulness Research Guide is a comprehensive resource that provides information to researchers and practitioners on: 1) the scientific study of mindfulness, including: research publications, measurement tools, and mindfulness research centers. 2) and hosts the Mindfulness Research Monthly bulletin for the purpose of keeping researchers and practitioners informed of current advances in mindfulness research.
- 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.
- The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society
The Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn, 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.
- The Cultivating Emotional Balance Project
The Cultivating Emotional Balance Project is a study being conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. It is testing the effects of an eight-session training program designed to promote positive changes in the health and emotional responses of participants. For the clinical trial of the program, which will begin in January 2005, the researchers are recruiting female school teachers between the ages of 25 and 60 who live in the San Francisco Bay Area and are in a relationship with an intimate partner.
- The Garrison Institute
The Garrison Institute explores the intersection of contemplation and engaged action in the world. Its programs include training for teachers that help them encourage mindfulness in their students and research partnerships aimed at studying the ude of mindfulness in American public schools.
- The Hawn Foundation
The Hawn Foundation, in collaboration with educators and researchers, has developed MindUP, a complete program for students in grades K-7 focusing on mindfulness, positive human qualities, optimism, and well-being.
- The Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA
The Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA 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.
- The Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting Program
The Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting Program offers classes and training for parents-to-be on using mindfulnessto help in childbirth and early parenting.
- The Still Quiet Place
The Still Quiet Place promotes practicing mindfulness in a variety of settings, especially in education, in order to facilitate more peaceful ways of living.
Gratitude
- 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.
Child Development
- 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.
- Oregon Social Learning Center
The Oregon Social Learning Center is dedicated to increasing the scientific understanding of social and psychological processes related to healthy development and family functioning. OSLC applies that understanding to the design and evaluation of interventions that strengthen children, adolescents, families, and communities.
- PeaceAbilities
PeaceAbilities is a program designed to teach children specific skills to increase their capacity for peaceful relationships with others. Its curriculum focuses on instilling caring, empathy, and compassion within children, rather than only trying to control negative behavior. It is a program of the Women’s Research Institute at Brigham Young University.
- 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.
- The Center for Mental Health and Media
The Center for Mental Health and Media at Harvard Medical School is an outreach, production, and research center devoted to mental health, behavioral health, neuroscience, and healthy child development.
- The Child Trauma Academy
The Child Trauma Academy is a collaborative of individuals and organizations working to
improve the lives of high-risk children through direct service, research, and education. It engages partners from academia, the corporate world, private organizations, and public sector systems to help test, refine, and distribute innovations that can improve the lives of children. - The Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development
The Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development is an interdisciplinary department at Tufts University that integrates child development research and theory with effective practice. It specializes in collaborations between the university and the community that both benefit people’s real lives and further our understanding of human development.
- The Home for Little Wanderers
The Home for Little Wanderers is a nonprofit agency providing services to children and families through an integrated system of prevention, advocacy, research, and direct care services. Its vision is to ensure the healthy emotional, mental, and social development of children at risk, their families, and communities.
- 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 Milestones Project
The Milestones Project is an online collection of photographs of children from around the world, grouped into different theme-based galleries. The goal of the project is to illustrate universal similarities, replacing fear of those different from us with a sense of our shared humanity.
- The NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development
The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development is the most comprehensive child care study conducted to date to determine how variations in child care are related to children’s development. Its website provides a summary of the study, along with its data and applications of this data.
- 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.
Play
- Hooked on Play
Hooked on Play provides workshops to help adults inspire children to connect with the natural world, facilitates “Nature Circles” to give adults a place to explore their own personal relationship to nature, and collaborates with other organizations to create nature-accessible communities.
- 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. - PeacePlayers International
PeacePlayers International uses the game of basketball to unite and educate children and their communities.
- Playborhood.com
Playborhood.com is building a community of parents in the United States committed to doing whatever they can to bring free, unstructured play back for all children.
- PlayWorks
PlayWorks aims to improve the health and well-being of children by increasing opportunities for physical activity and safe, meaningful play.
- Social Impact Games
The Social Impact Games Web site catalogs the growing number of video and computer games whose primary purpose is something other than to entertain. These are also known as “serious games.”
- Streetplay.com
Streetplay.com documents and celebrates the history and experience of urban 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.
- The No Child Left Inside Coalition
The No Child Left Inside Coalition was created in 2006 to find new ways to encourage kids to experience nature. It supports the No Child Left Inside Act, which would provide new federal funding for outdoor learning activities and high-quality environmental education.
- Urban Recess
Urban Recess is a fitness company that runs classes for women based on old-school recess games like kickball and hopscotch.
- Wild Zones
Wild Zones provides consulting services internationally to people and institutions concerned with fostering children’s free play in nature and creating intergenerational projects that build community.
Anti-Racism & Tolerance
- A World of Difference Institute
A World of Difference Institute provides hands-on training to help children and adults challenge prejudice and discrimination and learn to get along with others in an increasingly diverse world.
- 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.
- Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide
Gardens of the Righteous Worldwide is an international organization dedicated to honoring those individuals who have tried to rescue the persecuted, and preserve their own dignity, during times of war and genocide. Svetlana Broz is the founder and director of its Sarajevo office, which runs public events and educational seminars, and has also planted a memorial garden to commemorate people who acted righteously during the Bosnian civil war.
- Project RACE
Project RACE (Reclassify All People Equally) advocates for a “Multiracial” classification
on all forms that ask a person’s race. Teen Project RACE gives multiracial youth a way to advocate for themselves. - Teaching for Change
Teaching for Change is a leading distributor of anti-bias and anti-racist resources. It provides parents and educators with tools meant to help students build a more just, multicultural society.
- 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 LemonAid Foundation
The LemonAid Fund aids individuals in their efforts to achieve positive and lasting change in the lives of their children, families, and communities, with a focus on Sierra Leone, where the LemonAid Fund supports a network of 10 schools and two orphanages.
- 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 Milestones Project
The Milestones Project is an online collection of photographs of children from around the world, grouped into different theme-based galleries. The goal of the project is to illustrate universal similarities, replacing fear of those different from us with a sense of our shared humanity.
- The Mixed Heritage Center
The Mixed Heritage Center is a clearinghouse of information relevant to the lives of people who are multiracial, multiethnic, transracially adopted, or otherwise affected by the intersection of race and culture.
- 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.
- 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.
Environmental Sustainability
- Slow Food
Slow Food is an international organization whose aim is to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and life. Through a variety of initiatives, it promotes gastronomic culture, develops taste education, conserves agricultural biodiversity, and protects traditional foods at risk of extinction.
- The Alliance for Climate Protection
The Alliance for Climate Protection is a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort founded by Nobel laureate and former Vice President Al Gore that seeks to educate people in the United States and around the world that the climate crisis is both urgent and solvable.
- The Climate Action Network
The Climate Action Network is a worldwide network of more than 430 NGOs working to promote government and individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable levels.
- The FoodRoutes Network
The FoodRoutes Network is a national nonprofit organization that provides communications tools, technical support, networking opportunities, and information resources to organizations nationwide that are working to rebuild local, community-based food systems.
- The Global Roundtable on Climate Change
The Global Roundtable on Climate Change brings together high-level, critical stakeholders from all regions of the world to discuss and explore areas of potential consensus regarding core scientific, technological, and economic issues critical to shaping sound public policies on climate change.
- The Green World Campagin
The Green World Campaign is “an open source charity”—a global network of individuals who identify sustainable, effective grassroots projects that can help people and the planet, then develop simple, direct ways to contribute to their success.
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific intergovernmental body, set up by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, dedicated to providing decision-makers and others interested in climate change with an objective source of information about climate change.
- The Worldwatch Institute
The Worldwatch Institute is an independent research organization that works for an environmentally sustainable and socially just society, in which the needs of all people are met without threatening the health of the natural environment or the well-being of future generations
- TransFair USA
TransFair USA is a nonprofit organization that is the only third-party certifier of Fair Trade products in the United States. It audits transactions between U.S. companies offering Fair Trade Certified™ products and the producers of those goods, in order to guarantee that the farmers and farm workers behind Fair Trade Certified™ goods were paid a fair, above-market price.
Trust & Accountability
- Common Cause
Common Cause is a nonpartisan citizens’ lobbying organization promoting open, honest, and accountable government
- Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting works to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority, and dissenting viewpoints
- Free Press
Free Press is a national nonpartisan organization working to increase informed public participation in crucial media policy debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more competitive and public interest-oriented media system with a strong nonprofit and noncommercial sector.
- Project Censored
Project Censored is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported, or self-censored by the country’s major national news media.
- The Annenberg Political Fact Check
The Annenberg Political Fact Check, based at the University of Pennsylvania, monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by major U.S. political players in the form of TV ads, debates, speeches, interviews, and news releases.
- The Center for Courage & Renewal
The Center for Courage & Renewal helps foster personal and professional renewal through retreats that offer the time and space to reflect on life and work. Their retreats are led by skilled facilitators and make use of poetry and stories, solitude, reflection, and deep listening.
- The Center for Responsive Politics
The Center for Responsive Politics is a nonpartisan research group that tracks money in politics and the effect of money on elections and public policy
- The Freedom Forum
The Freedom Forum is a nonpartisan, international foundation dedicated to free press, free speech, and free spirit for all people.
- The Freedom of Information Center
The Freedom of Information Center serves the general public and the media on questions about access to government documents and information.
- The Pew Research Center
The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan “fact tank” that provides information on the issues, attitudes, and trends shaping America and the world.
- The Project on Government Oversight
The Project on Government Oversight investigates and exposes corruption and other misconduct to achieve a more honest, open, and accountable federal government
- The Trust and Trustworthiness Project
The Trust and Trustworthiness Project, based at Harvard University, is exploring how young people think about issues of trust in a media-drenched world, and how that might compare to earlier times or earlier generations, where findings exist.





