http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA: Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech, 2005
"Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life"
http://www.svpi.org/: Social Venture Partners International
Improving Communities by Connecting People with Causes: Social Venture Partners (SVP) brings together worlds that typically do not overlap: grant making, volunteerism, nonprofit capacity building, and philanthropic education. Every SVP is a network of engaged philanthropists who believe that they can have a positive impact on their communities and who use innovative strategies to address complex social issues.
http://www.kiva.org/: Kiva lets you lend to a specific entrepreneur, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty.
Kiva's mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty. Kiva is the world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.
http://yearup.org/: Year Up is a one-year, intensive training program that provides urban young adults 18-24, with a unique combination of technical and professional skills, college credits, an educational stipend and corporate apprenticeship.
Year Up's mission is to close the Opportunity Divide by providing urban young adults with the skills, experience, and support that will empower them to reach their potential through professional careers and higher education.
We achieve this mission through a high support, high expectation model that combines marketable job skills, stipends, apprenticeships, college credit, a behavior management system and several levels of support to place these young adults on a viable path to economic self-sufficiency.
Year Up currently serves more than 1,500 students a year at sites in Atlanta, Boston, Providence, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
http://fredalanwolf.com/: Dr. Fred Alan Wolf AKA Dr. Quantum*
Fred Alan Wolf is a physicist, writer, and lecturer who earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at UCLA in 1963. He continues to write, lecture throughout the world, and conduct research on the relationship of quantum physics to consciousness. He is the National Book Award Winning author of Taking the Quantum Leap. He is a member of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Collegium of Scholars.