Established after World War II, the United Nations strives to save successive generations from the scourge of war. This vital world body has undoubtedly succeeded in resolving many conflicts through its political and peacekeeping missions, and nurtured peace through its development support, though not always with the efficiency and effectiveness expected of it. The world is vastly different today from the days when the United Nations was set up. The challenges that the United Nations faces in the 21st century are much more complex and deadly than they were 60 years ago. Reforming and reinventing the United Nations should therefore be a matter of great interest to the international community. To tackle the challenges ahead, the United Nations needs to re-engineer its organizational arrangements, reorient its processes, revamp its decision-making systems, and reform its human resource and financial management to get the best results from them. This book suggests measures for restructuring the Security Council, rationalizing the constituent systems of the General Assembly, the ECOSOC and the Secretariat, and strengthening the peacekeeping, corruption control and accountability mechanisms. The book is a collaborative endeavour, involving contributions from international authority figures in areas such as peace and security, development assistance, resource management, leadership and ethics. The vision projected by them on the major issues inscribed on the United Nations agenda is meant to encourage fresh thinking on the part of opinion leaders, diplomats, academics, experts in foreign affairs and UN staff, so that this intergovernmental institution could be effectively geared to respond to the emerging challenges of the 21st century. Reinventing the United Nations would be of interest to the public and particularly the postgraduate students of political science, international law, and international relations, as well as diplomats, public affairs professionals and social science scholars at various levels.

In the US, there is a wide-ranging network of at least 370 food banks, and more than 60,000 hunger-relief organizations such as food pantries and meal programs. These groups provide billions of meals a year to people in need. And yet hunger still affects one in nine Americans. What are we doing wrong? In Reinventing Food Banks and Pantries, Katie Martin argues that if handing out more and more food was the answer, we would have solved the problem of hunger decades ago. Martin instead presents a new model for charitable food, one where success is measured not by pounds of food distributed but by lives changed. The key is to focus on the root causes of hunger. When we shift our attention to strategies that build empathy, equity, and political will, we can implement real solutions. Martin shares those solutions in a warm, engaging style, with simple steps that anyone working or volunteering at a food bank or pantry can take today. Some are short-term strategies to create a more dignified experience for food pantry clients: providing client choice, where individuals select their own food, or redesigning a waiting room with better seating and a designated greeter. Some are longer-term: increasing the supply of healthy food, offering job training programs, or connecting clients to other social services. And some are big picture: joining the fight for living wages and a stronger social safety net. These strategies are illustrated through inspiring success stories and backed up by scientific research. Throughout, readers will find a wealth of proven ideas to make their charitable food organizations more empathetic and more effective. As Martin writes, it takes more than food to end hunger. Picking up this insightful, lively book is a great first step.

If "change" is the mantra of our moment in history, Social Change 2.0 may be poised to become its bible. Drawing on his three decades in the trenches of large-scale societal transformation, David Gershon--founder and president of Empowerment Institute, and described by the United Nations as a "graceful revolutionary"--offers an original and comprehensive roadmap to bring about fundamental change in our world. His goal is to empower change agents to tackle pressing social problems or unmet social needs by providing them with strategies and tools to effect transformative change at any level of scale.From his initiation as architect of the United Nations-sponsored First Earth Run--a mythic passing of fire around the world symbolizing humanity's quest for peace on earth that drew tens of millions of participants, the planet's political leaders and, through the media, over a billion people at the height of the cold war--to his recent climate-change work helping citizens, cities, and entire states measurably reduce their carbon footprint (using his book Low Carbon Diet), Gershon offers readers strategies to evolve an effective new model for social change. These include: The first comprehensive social-change model with proven, practical strategies and tools to either launch a social change initiative or improve the efficacy of any existing change program. A "Practitioner's Guide" accompanying each chapter, to help readers apply this social change framework to their initiative. The result is a riveting, enlightening, and inspiring book that will quickly find its way onto the desks--and into the hearts--of the tens of thousands of change agents engaged in the work of building a better world. Social Change 2.0 speaks to a wide range of practitioners across the spectrum of social change including social and environmental activists, social entrepreneurs, community organizers, and civic, government, and business leaders, as well as the vast number of baby boomers looking for a way to give back and the millennials just raring to go.

Imagine fuel without fear. No climate change. No oil spills, no dead coalminers, no dirty air, no devastated lands, no lost wildlife. No energy poverty. No oil-fed wars, tyrannies, or terrorists. No leaking nuclear wastes or spreading nuclear weapons. Nothing to run out. Nothing to cut off. Nothing to worry about. Just energy abundance, benign and affordable, for all, forever. That richer, fairer, cooler, safer world is possible, practical, even profitable-because saving and replacing fossil fuels now works better and costs no more than buying and burning them. Reinventing Fire shows how business-motivated by profit, supported by civil society, sped by smart policy-can get the US completely off oil and coal by 2050, and later beyond natural gas as well. Authored by a world leader on energy and innovation, the book maps a robust path for integrating real, here-and-now, comprehensive energy solutions in four industries-transportation, buildings, electricity, and manufacturing-melding radically efficient energy use with reliable, secure, renewable energy supplies.Popular in tone and rooted in applied hope, Reinventing Fire shows how smart businesses are creating a potent, global, market-driven, and explosively growing movement to defossilize fuels. It points readers to trillions in savings over the next 40 years, and trillions more in new business opportunities.Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, this major contribution by world leaders in energy innovation offers startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.Pragmatic citizens today are more interested in outcomes than motives. Reinventing Fire answers this trans-ideological call. Whether you care most about national security, or jobs and competitive advantage, or climate and environment, its startling innovations will support your values, inspire your support, and transform your sense of possibility.

Discusses how to improve the effectiveness of foreign aid, proposing practical solutions to specific problems rather than a utopian master plan. This work also includes writers who look at scientific evaluation of aid projects and describe projects found to be cost-effective, including vaccine delivery and HIV education.

At last-a proven system for developing the strategic innovations every company needs to compete and win As everyone knows, today's unprecedented rate of business change demands new levels of strategic insight and adaptability. Reinventing Strategy is the first practical, systematic guide to creating an adaptive enterprise, showing how companies around the world are using the Strategic Learning approach to consistently out think, out maneuver, and out perform their competition. As Willie Pietersen explains, companies that aspire to long-term success must develop and implement strategy as part of a continuous four-step cycle-Learn, Focus, Align, Execute-and he offers dozens of provocative anecdotes and case studies, illustrating how to implement it at every level of an organization. Written with unusual clarity, frankness, and wit, Reinventing Strategy will change the way managers everywhere approach their greatest and most important challenge: the need to make strategy into a tool for ongoing corporate renewal.

Discusses the potential significance for the reintroduction of ancient technologies relating to agriculture and architecture in creating a healthier, more sustainable and environmentally richer planet

A guide to the decline of the American empire for individuals, families and communities The United States is in steep decline. Plagued by runaway debt, a shrinking economy, and environmental catastrophes to rival Chernobyl, the United States has been retracing the trajectory of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s toward national bankruptcy and political dissolution. By comparing a collapse that has run its course to one that is now unfolding, Dmitry Orlov holds a unique lens up to America's present and future. As Orlov's predictions continue to come true, his writing continues to gain mainstream acceptance. This revised and updated edition of Reinventing Collapse examines the circumstances of the demise of the Soviet superpower and offers clear insights into how we might prepare for the events that are unfolding here. Orlov gives no quarter to prophets of doom and gloom, finding plenty of room for optimism, if only we focus our efforts on personal and cultural transformation instead of trying to perpetuate an impossible status quo. This challenging yet inspiring and surprisingly upbeat work is a must-read for anyone concerned about peak oil, the environment, geopolitics, international relations, and life in a resource-constrained world. Dmitry Orlov is an American engineer who was an eyewitness to the Soviet collapse and has written extensively on the subject of the impending collapse of the United States.

Kinshasa is sub-Saharan Africa‘s second largest city. The seven million Congolese who live there have a rich reputation for the courageous and innovative ways in which they survive in a harsh urban environment. They have created new social institutions, practices, networks and ways of living to deal with the collapse of public provision and a malfunctioning political system. This book describes how ordinary people, in the absence of formal sector jobs, hustle for a modest living; the famous ‘bargaining‘ system ordinary Kinois have developed; and how they access food, water supplies, health and education. The NGO-ization of service provision is analysed, as is the quite rare incidence of urban riots. The contributors also look at popular discourses, including street rumor, witchcraft, and attitudes to ‘big men‘ such as musicians and preachers. This is urban sociology at its best - richly empirical, unjargonized, descriptive of the lives of ordinary people, and weaving into its analysis how they see and experience life.

* Melds theoretical models with practical experience * Written by world-renowned experts on public administration * Guides future policy debates on helping to build effective and efficient states How does a government seeking to participate in and benefit from an integrated and interdependent world become more professional, technologically proficient, deregulated, and accountable? Reinventing Government for the Twenty-First Century tells you how. The authors identify the forces of globalization and the structural changes needed to increase state capacity and enhance global-scale participation. Professionals directly involved in assisting governments show public leaders and administrators how to improve the quality of their performance in government.