Volunteering: An Overlooked Alternative to College Internships

Originally posted on The Rising Professional Blog:

With coursework, jobs, school activities and social commitments, many students are finding it increasingly difficult to complete multiple internships during college. The good news is that many volunteer opportunities provide a great alternative way to acquire important skills, build your portfolio and strategically position yourself for professional growth.

Here are just some reasons why volunteering is a solid alternative to internships:

• Volunteering gives you an opportunity to contribute your unique skills to an actual organization while enhancing your portfolio. As a volunteer, your role may be diverse and can include anything from providing creative assistance to projects and designing marketing materials to organizing events and bookkeeping. Often times, you can tailor your volunteer experience to fit your specific background and skillset. Organizations are usually very accommodating and willing to let volunteers take on responsibilities that fit their individual interests.

• You will be exposed to new workplace environments and inevitably learn…

View original 341 more words

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1B1YiBG

Today’s stories

Originally posted on volunteering daily:

Volunteering turns out to be rewarding therapy

I have been helping out at Leuchie House for about four years, mainly in the physiotherapy department, which has added a new dimension to my voluntary efforts since I retired over nine years ago. After an office-based career, involving a lot of contact with politicians, I find it particularly rewarding working alongside carers and nursing staff who are making a big difference to people’s lives…

Make your time count: Volunteer this Starlight Day

2,000 volunteers needed nationally for 30 April – 3 May 2015. Starlight Children’s Foundation urgently needs volunteers to help give the gift of play to more than 30,000 seriously ill children and their families around Australia this Starlight Day. Starlight is calling for more than 2,000 volunteers to paint the streets purple and yellow this Starlight Day on Friday 1 May, selling merchandise and collecting donations nationally in central business…

View original 16 more words

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1B1YfpA

Here Comes The Rest Of The World

Originally posted on Education Stormfront:

There is a very strong push right now by tech companies to bring the developing world onto the Internet. This is driven by two factors. 1. In the developed world, growth of Internet users is slowing. Therefore companies are looking to get new customers. 2. The technology to bring remote areas online is getting cheaper and easier to do.

With this in mind here are two related stories.

H/T Mashable

Facebook told a few members of the press this week that its Internet.org initiative, which aims get more of the world’s population online, is on track for an aggressive expansion.

Chris Daniels, VP of Internet.org at Facebook, said the company plans to expand into 100 countries by the end of the year. The program is currently set up in six countries — Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Colombia and India — and has helped more than 7 million people access health…

View original 202 more words

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1KjNTY7

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Originally posted on The Daily Post:

Thomas Edison, inventor of the lightbulb (among other things) and natty dresser.

What can we, as writers, photographers, artists, and bloggers learn from American inventor Thomas Alva Edison? Plenty, as it turns out. Edison is famous for many inventions, including the phonograph, a commercially viable lightbulb, and the motion picture camera.

His success resulted from trial and error, and many, many failed experiments before creating a lightbulb that could last 1200 hours, just as an example. He could have stopped. He could have given up. He chose to frame his work in a positive light:

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

Edison’s philosophy is particularly compelling to anyone who does creative work:

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration.

How many rough drafts, spoiled drawings, and blurry photos have you created before that stroke of serendipity? Are you looking at a…

View original 66 more words

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1KjNSU2

Island of Hawaii From the International Space Station

From the International Space Station, European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti (@AstroSamantha) took this photograph of the island of Hawaii and posted it to social media on Feb. 28, 2015. Cristoforetti wrote, “And suddenly as we flew over the Pacific… the island of #Hawaii with its volcanoes! #HelloEarth”

Crewmembers on the space station photograph the Earth from their unique point of view located 200 miles above the surface as part of the Crew Earth Observations program. Photographs record how the planet is changing over time, from human-caused changes like urban growth and reservoir construction, to natural dynamic events such as hurricanes, floods and volcanic eruptions. Astronauts have used hand-held cameras to photograph the Earth for more than 40 years, beginning with the Mercury missions in the early 1960s. The ISS maintains an altitude between 220 – 286 miles (354 – 460 km) above the Earth, and an orbital inclination of 51.6˚, providing an excellent stage for observing most populated areas of the world.

Image Credit: NASA/ESA/Samantha Cristoforetti via NASA http://ift.tt/1zJxMrz

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1F9KLYi

White House Announces “Let Girls Learn” Initiative

Marilyn Gardner Milton’s Latest Blog Post

Education levels vary around the world and heavily depend on both the wealth of a country as well as its cultures and traditions. Some cultures place a higher emphasis on the education of their children while others feel as though children should stay and work and help the family. However, even in the cultures that value education, it is frequently seen that the education of women and girls takes a much lower precedence than the education of men and boys. While this isn’t true of all societies and all countries, there is no denying the fact that women and young girls have a much harder time finding education in many parts of the world.

Why is this important? Well aside from the obvious fact that everyone deserves education, multiple sources have claimed multiple times that the education of women should be seen as much more important than it currently is. Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agrees that the educating of women isn’t only good for them, but for their countries as well. Human intelligence is split 50/50; women are just as smart as men (regardless of what tradition might say) and by keeping women uneducated, you’re literally halving the intellectual resources of your country. It’s time for these misguided and antiquated ideas of the past to disappear once and for all!

It seems as though the White House is in strong agreement with these sentiments. The Obama administration has announced a new world-wide education initiative called “Let Girls Learn” that focuses on increasing educational access to women and young girls all across the world. With over 60 million girls, of which half are still adolescents, unable to access education, the initiative has its work cut out for it. Michelle Obama is visiting Japan and Cambodia to begin promoting the plan and that’s just the beginning. The First Lady’s office will work in coordination with the Peace Corps to focus on community-lead and supported plans that will increase the number of girls and women in school as well as helping to keep them in school. While the US does much to support female education programs abroad, this is the first time that all the efforts are going to be coordinated under a single strategy. This program is now going to be a linchpin of foreign policy and President Obama has said that if any country wants to partner with the US, they need to work on increasing the number of girls in school.

If you’d like to learn more, the link is here.

from Marilyn Gardner Milton and Education http://ift.tt/1AEedkS

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1FTh3a7

Astronauts Complete Series of Three Spacewalks

On Sunday, March 1, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry Virts and Commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore ventured outside the International Space Station for their third spacewalk in eight days. Virts and Wilmore completed installing 400 feet of cable and several antennas associated with the Common Communications for Visiting Vehicles system known as C2V2. Boeing’s Crew Transportation System (CST)-100 and the SpaceX Crew Dragon will use the system in the coming years to rendezvous with the orbital laboratory and deliver crews to the space station.

Virts (@AstroTerry) tweeted this photograph and wrote, “Out on the P3 truss. #AstroButch handing me his cable to install on the new antenna. #spacewalk”

Image Credit: NASA via NASA http://ift.tt/1APuyYt

from WordPress http://ift.tt/1AweW7q