OneWorld.net's take: A few years ago, Joanna and Alex Livieratos traded in their city lifestyle for a greener alternative. Here, Joanna discusses the new eco-friendly online retail business they run from their family farm and the adjustments they've made to promote environmentally sustainable living.

Livieratos at her Michigan farm. © Co-op America

• Green businesses are springing up across the United States. The alternative fuel gas station, BioFuel Oasis, sells the highest quality biofuel in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it also has a small store that sells healthy snacks and sustainable living supplies. In an interview with Co-op America, Margaret Farrow, one of the worker-owners of BioFuel Oasis, explains how biodiesel helps preserve the environment and what

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ADDIS ABABA, Jul 29 (OneWorld) - Two Nobel Laureate women and actress and activist Mia Farrow are urging African leaders to increase political pressure on Sudan, saying the continent's leaders have not done enough to end the violence in the Darfur region.

Darfuri children forced to flee their homes due to the ongoing conflict. © International Rescue Committee / Gerald Martone

Jody Williams and Wangari Maathai, both Nobel Peace Laureates, and Farrow, the star of Rosemary's Baby and many other Hollywood blockbusters, met with African Union Chairman Jean Ping Monday in Addis Ababa, where the African Union is headquartered. The women represent the Nobel Women's Initiative, an organization established by six Nobel Laureate women to cooperate on global advocacy.

"The silence of the African

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NEW YORK, Jul 25 (OneWorld) - Teams of environmental activists are planning to take to the streets over the coming weeks to put the spotlight on policy makers who they say are prioritizing corporate interests in the coal and oil industries over the impending threat of global warming.

"Climate change is here and more and more people are refusing to sit by waiting for governments to act and watching them fail," said Alicia Ng, an activist associated with the international campaign called "Climate Convergence 2008."

Climate activists protested the building of a third runway at London's Heathrow airport during a "Climate Camp" in August 2007. © Andrew* (flickr)

The Climate Convergence is part of a global campaign that calls for acts of civil disobedience to draw policy makers' attention

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Women comprise 70 percent of those living in poverty worldwide and 75 percent of illiterate adults. Two thirds of the children who do not receive an education are girls, and 80 percent of refugees are women and children.

© MADRE

Women, who are the caregivers and primary influencers of the next generation, are facing the greatest hardships in most societies worldwide. But women are also uniting to empower each other, fight poverty, and end inequality. And every step to improve the lives and social standing of women has ripple effects on health care, education, and economic development throughout the world's poorer communities. While in Cameroon as a volunteer with the United States Peace Corps, a government program that sends Americans around the world to live and work in developing

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It all started on a Sunday in July 2000. I was at mass in the church I had attended all my life, Holy Family Catholic Church, when an announcement was made that a visiting priest from Uganda would be living in our parish for the summer. He would be offering African drum lessons to anyone who wanted to learn. Since I drummed on everything'including the dinner table, my desk, and the church pew'my mother gave me a knowing look. After Mass, I introduced myself to Father Joseph Birungi and became his first student.

Fr. Joseph spoke with an accent native to Uganda and didn't always understand my words. But we both understood a smile. We met several times over the summer and he taught me how to drum. But, Fr. Joseph taught me more than drumming. We talked about his home and his people and

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Text messages. Strangers approaching in rural gas stations. Betty Makoni is bombarded by requests for help 24 hours a day.

Today Betty Makoni is a well-known -- and tireless -- children's rights advocate in one of the worst places in the world to be a child: Zimbabwe. But 30 years ago she was a vulnerable child herself. At the age of six Makoni was raped -- one of ten young girls violated by a local shop owner. With little family or community support, she committed herself to working -- to earning money for school fees -- and to studying.

By the age of 24 she became a teacher and saw that things were still no better for the girls she worked with. So she started a club -- a place where girls could talk about their problems, support each other, and begin to take back their rights. It

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WASHINGTON, Jun 19 (OneWorld) - Over 37 million people were living as refugees from conflict or persecution at the end of 2007, marking the second straight year of increases after a five-year decline, said a concerned UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) this week.

"We are now faced with a complex mix of global challenges that could threaten even more forced displacement in the future," said the UN's High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres. "They range from multiple new conflict-related emergencies in world hotspots to bad governance, climate-induced environmental degradation that increases competition for scarce resources, and extreme price hikes that have hit the poor the hardest and are generating instability in many places."

The number of refugees and internally displaced people (IDPs)

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The young people of the developed world are increasingly turning to social networking sites to organize and get the word out in their efforts to help those in developing countries gain access to better education and lives. Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace are now transforming from simply a way to maintain friendships into a tool for social justice.

Katie Lusk, 22 is using Facebook to promote Hearts and Minds, a nonprofit organization based in New York that acts as an information clearinghouse for young people to learn about and get involved with global issues. Lusk had used Facebook for two years and says she saw several aspects, such as the ability to form groups and the recently added "causes" application, as a good way to get in touch with Hearts and Minds' audience.

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WASHINGTON, Jun 13 (OneWorld) - As food prices and hunger continue to rise worldwide, small farmers in Brazil, Guatemala, and Mexico are suggesting solutions quite different than the free trade policies endorsed at a recent UN food summit in Rome.

Ensuring "food sovereignty" and locally sustainable forms of agriculture, they say, would strengthen local communities and help stem the global food crisis.

Both Guatemala's National Peasant and Indigenous Coordination and Brazil's Small Producers Movement have "put forth food sovereignty as a solution to the crisis: the right of communities to produce food for local markets and for consumers to have access to local healthy food," reported Grassroots International, an organization that supports community-led sustainable development projects.

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