David’s blogging is on Dowser…

Hello, thanks for visiting! My blogging and reporting is now carried on Dowser, a site that focuses on solution journalism and stories of change. Please come by and take a look!

-David

Dowser has launched! A site for news and stories of change.

Our new website, Dowser, launched last week!

At Dowser, we report on social innovation and stories of change. We provide daily coverage that explores the question: Who’s solving what and how? Each day, we dig up compelling stories and useful insights to share with you.

We created Dowser to fill a gap in the media’s depiction of the world. While the news focuses largely on scandals, conflicts, and problems — many creative ideas and potential solutions remain hidden.

We believe that journalism needs to do a better job helping people imagine how tomorrow can be fixed, not just telling them how yesterday broke. The answer isn’t to provide feel good news at holiday time or celebrate a few heroes, but to redefine the daily news altogether. That’s what we’re trying to do.

Check out the site and send along your suggestions and critiques – and of course your story ideas!

I’ll be doing lots of blogging, conducting interviews and reporting stories.

Please let us know what you think.

-David Bornstein



A New and Accessible Overview of Social Entrepreneurship, Now Available

Social Entrepreneurship: What Everyone Needs to Know, co-authored by myself and Susan Davis, president & CEO of BRAC USA and former chair of the Grameen Foundation, was published by Oxford University Press last week. It can be ordered at Amazon now.

The World Changing Auction…

is now on. If you’re flush, there’s cool stuff to support a great site…

Michelle Obama and Social Entrepreneurship

Michelle Obama spoke about Donors Choose, Project Health, NOLA 180 and the administration’s new Social Innovation Fund at Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People Awards last night.

This is not Latin America…

We have the luxury of upholding the law without facing a military uprising. Journalist and human rights lawyer Susan Benesch makes the case for investigating U.S. officials for torture.

Ask What You Can Do For Your Country!

President Obama’s words at the signing of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act:

“We need your service right now, at this moment in history. I’m not going to tell you what your role should be. That’s for you to discover. But I’m asking you to stand up and play your part. I’m asking you to help change history’s course, put your shoulder up against the wheel. And if I – if you do, I promise you your life will be richer, our country will be stronger, and someday, years from now, you may remember it as the moment when your own story and the American story converged, when they came together, and we met the challenges of our new century.”

The folks at Be the Change, New Profit, Hands On Network and Civic Ventures deserve a resounding applause.

The Final Inch in Polio Eradication

Four million people are currently working to eradicate Polio in India today. Twenty million have served in the Polio-eradication army around the world. It’s been called the greatest peacetime mobilization in human history. In 1988, there were 350,000 cases in 125 countries. Today, there are 1,500 cases in 4 countries — and the vast majority are concentrated in the poorest parts of India and Nigeria. The Final Inch, a new HBO film, gets inside the houses and mosques, where the disease is being wiped out one child at a time. If you don’t have time to watch the film, check out this short slideshow created by photo journalist Richard Wainwright.

The Many Faces of BRAC

BRAC explained through the eyes of the people who experience it.

China’s Troubled Skies

Anything in China can be justified by calling it “development.” But as this slideshow makes clear, the environmental costs are mounting.