How to Make a Difference by Nicholas Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
What you'll learn
- Have a thorough understanding of the many human rights issues that are affecting people in countries all over the globe.
- Comprehend the effects of violence, poverty, and human trafficking on women and girls throughout the world, including in the US.
- Recognize the need for investing in education and opportunities for young people who struggle under oppression and poverty.
- Be inspired by the research and results-driven aid work that’s currently being done to help those in need.
- Know what can be done through advocacy, volunteer work, and donations to help bring about positive change for people around the globe.
Requirements
- No prior knowledge or experience is necessary to take this course.
Description
This one-of-a-kind course by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is designed for anyone who wants to leave a mark on the world, make a difference and learn a few secrets about how to live a happier, healthier and more meaningful life. Along the way, you will learn about issues that afflict the world: Why some of us do not reach our potential, why some end up in poverty, how others are left out or brutalized because of their gender. You’ll learn about some of the people who have discovered ways to have strong impact around the world--and about how you can do so yourself.
You’ll also be inspired by social entrepreneurs who are making progress to help those struggling in life, whether because of poverty, disease, lack of education, or simply bad luck.
Beyond understanding the issues, though, you’ll discover how to make a difference in your own world and how you can reach out to lend a hand in your own community or halfway around the world. Helping people is harder than it looks, but with the tools gained from this course, you’ll be able to join the movement toward change. There is an emerging science of how to make a difference, and that’s the focus of this course.
Understand the Challenges Facing People at Home and Abroad
- Uncover the forces holding people back, including early childhood factors.
- Recognize the role women play in lifting their communities out of poverty
- Learn which investments of time and money help change the world--and which don’t.
Make a Positive Impact and Help Improve the Lives of Others
This course is ideal for those who wish to become informed global citizens, and who yearn to find greater fulfilment but aren’t quite sure how to accomplish that or where to begin.
Through lectures filled with incredible stories, you’ll gain valuable insights that Kristof and WuDunn collected in their reporting at home and abroad, as they saw people devise creative solutions to solve social problems around the world.
There are many issues, from sex trafficking to a lack of quality education, that impact people all over the world. There are no silver bullets, but Kristof and WuDunn talk about “silver buckshot” that collectively make a powerful difference.
This course will teach you about these problems, while also sharing actionable solutions and the names of organizations on the front line of social progress--organizations you can support as a donor, volunteer, or advocate.
Contents and Overview
You’ll begin this course with a self-reflection exercise that will guide you to the issues that you care about most.
To ensure you can make the biggest impact with your altruism, you’ll learn that not all charitable organizations are created equal, and you’ll also gain insight into how you can try to distinguish an effective charity from one that may only seem to be effective.
You’ll then learn how early childhood experiences and education impact an individual’s ability to overcome poverty or be successful. You’ll gain insights into the rich-poor achievement gap, the effects of teen pregnancy, and the evidence that nurturing character traits may help create success for those who face the greatest struggles.
After being introduced to programs that seek to educate and support youth in poor communities, you’ll discover the importance of education, particularly for girls around the world, and what you can do to help.
Sex trafficking--at its extreme, a modern form of slavery--is more common than most people realize both at home and abroad. In addition to learning how this issue affects women around the world, you’ll gain an understanding of what steps work best to curb such exploitation and what communities can do to uproot it.
Other issues that you’ll cover include maternal mortality and reproductive health around the world. As with all of the other sections in this course, you’ll learn about the many things that you can do to help join the movement to advocate against these injustices.
Finally, you’ll learn about the growing science about the difference that hope can make, what you can do to spread hope, and the physiology of altruism and why helping others can make you feel good.
By the end of this course, you’ll have a deeper knowledge of issues that affect people globally, and you’ll know what needs to be done to uplift others next door or in distant countries. There are no magic wands to be waved, but we do have growing evidence of what works to empower people and make a difference.
Rather than feeling helpless about these problems, you’ll learn how you can get involved, and what you can do to make a difference to expand opportunity and equality.
Students who enroll now will be able to participate in an upcoming live, private Q&A with Nicholas and Sheryl!
Who this course is for:
- Anyone who wishes to become an informed and engaged global citizen
- Anyone who’s interested in helping to create positive change in the world
- Anyone who’s concerned with human rights and equality
- Anyone who wants to learn how to build a meaningful life
Instructors
![Nicholas Kristof](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.3 Instructor Rating
- 303 Reviews
- 2,263 Students
- 1 Course
Nicholas D. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since 2001, is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who writes op-ed columns that appear twice a week.
Mr. Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. Mr. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to more than 150 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. During his travels, he has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, mobs and an African airplane crash.
After joining The New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. He also covered presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the reference book "The Presidents." He later was Associate Managing Editor of the Times for Sunday editions.
In 1990 Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Mr. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006, for commentary for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world." He has also won other prizes including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club award, the Michael Kelly award, the Online News Association award and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award. Mr. Kristof was the first blogger on The New York Times Web site and the first to contribute a video to The Times site. He has more Twitter followers than any other print reporter worldwide, and he also has large followings on Facebook and Google+ as well as a channel on YouTube. A documentary about him, "Reporter," executive produced by Ben Affleck, aired on HBO in 2010.
In his column, Mr. Kristof was an early opponent of the Iraq war, and among the first to warn that we were losing ground to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. He was among the first to raise doubts about WMD in Iraq. His columns have often focused on global health and poverty and he has also written often about human trafficking.
Mr. Kristof and Ms. WuDunn are authors of the best-selling books “A Path Appears,” “Half the Sky,” “Thunder from the East,” and "China Wakes.” Mr. Kristof is a member of the boards of Harvard University and The American Association of Rhodes Scholars. He and Ms. WuDunn are the parents of Gregory, Geoffrey and Caroline. Mr. Kristof enjoys running, backpacking, and having his Chinese and Japanese corrected by his children.
- 4.3 Instructor Rating
- 303 Reviews
- 2,263 Students
- 1 Course
Sheryl WuDunn, the first Asian-American reporter to win a Pulitzer Prize, is currently a senior managing director at Mid-Market Securities, a small banking boutique helping growth companies. She is also co-founder of FullSky Capital, where she advises socially driven for-profit ventures, along with ventures in education, healthcare, new media technology, among other fields.
Previously, WuDunn has been vice president in the investment management division at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and has worked at The New York Times both as a journalist and an executive. She was a project director in The Times’s Strategic Planning Department, and she ran a department in circulation for readers under 30. She was a foreign correspondent based in China for The Times and is co-author with her husband, Nicholas D. Kristof, of A Path Appears: Transforming Lives, Creating Opportunity (Knopf, September 2014), Half the Sky, China Wakes and Thunder from the East.
Ms. WuDunn also helped develop a multi-platform digital project for Half the Sky and helped raise $8 million for the multi-platform endeavor, which included a PBS Documentary (Fall 2012) that reached millions of viewers, a Facebook game (Spring 2013) that reached #9 in its first two weeks, mobile games and educational videos. In 2012, WuDunn was selected as one of 60 notable members of the League of Extraordinary Women by Fast Company magazine. In 2013, she was included as one of the “leading women who make America” in the PBS documentary, “The Makers.” She was also featured in a 2013 Harvard Business School film about prominent women who graduated from HBS.
Ms. WuDunn has an M.B.A. from Harvard, an M.P.A. from Princeton University and a B.A. from Cornell University. She is currently on the Board of Trustees at Princeton, and is a former Board Trustee at Cornell.