Liberty Hyde Bailey Quotes

In India, we now see many highly qualified professionals ready to work in the rural hinterland and in their own towns and cities to tackle development issues directly without depending much on the government.

The Barefoot College is supposed to be a sparking off process. People are adopting it and owning it, which is really the story behind the college.

I have had the good fortune to see how my articles have directly benefited some farmers and helped build markets for their products in a way that preserves land from development. That makes me a hopeless optimist.

When I first started, it was really an innocent response to the needs of women in rural areas. When we started planting trees to meet their needs, there was nothing beyond that. I did not see all the issues that I have to come to deal with.

I can represent my culture while helping not only the Chinese-American community, but also the community at large.

In general, I avoided giving lectures or attaching myself while abroad to a university. To learn what I wanted to know, I went instead to rural communities and onto actual farms. Talk with university people, government officials and U.S. personnel stationed in the country was much less rewarding for me.

If people grow things themselves, their children understand, then schools in the area know that this community's generating something with its own energy, to consume.

The government should now launch an initiative to encourage people to join the social work profession.

My professional background consisted of evaluating specific programs the government was sponsoring in education or social services or, when I was in Thailand, rural development.

Svatantra's journey began with a vision to make women in rural areas self-sustainable.

These often unsung heroes understand...that poverty, disease and famine are just as deadly and destructive as earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis. Individuals ...are taking on these challenges in their communities, volunteering to make a difference. They remain the true champions of our work towards the Millennium Development Goals.

We should learn ... to do our best for the sake of our communities and for the sake of those for whom we pave the way.

If your goal is to make the world a better place, one thing you can do is pick a specific challenge that you really care about. Then, learn as much as you can about it and try to volunteer your time to help an organization that is working in this area. While you're doing that, look for creative new ways to use technology to tackle parts of the problem that you come in contact with.

Be involved; be informed. Make meaningful contributions to society through service and involvement.

When you've got Jews and Christians, Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus removing graffiti from buildings, or getting drug dealers off the street, that's side by side. When you do that, you take it from the very elevated level of interfaith dialogue to the street level of neighbors. You get them working side by side, and they become friends. Friendship sometimes counts for more than interfaith agreement or understanding. Friendship is deeply human.

Business need to go beyond the interest of their companies to the communities they serve.

Everyone must find a capacity in which they can serve, because we all benefit from society.

I spent the first years working in Jordan trying to learn as much as I could about what was taking place in the country, about where there were gaps in the development process that needed attention.

It is one of the great goals of my administration to invigorate the spirit of involvement and citizenship. We will encourage faith-based and community programs without changing their mission.

Rural poverty happens because people aren't being paid to take adequate care of their places. There's lots of work to do here. And you can't afford to pay anybody to do it! If you depress the price of the products of the place below a certain level, people can't afford to maintain it. And that's the rural dilemma.

What I would ask the leaders to do is to better understand the American people. I would insist that the leaders have town meetings and meet the people and listen to them and find out what is on their minds.

Major changes become possible if you work in a participatory manner, listen to local people, diagnose what the problems are, provide training and identify where there are opportunities for mobilizing local resources to take action.

SixDegrees.org is about using the idea that we are all connected to accomplish something good. It is my hope that Six Degrees will soon be something more than a game or a gimmick. It will also be a force for good, by bringing a social conscience to social networking.

Khaddar was conceived with a much more ambitious object, that is, to make our villages starvation-proof.

I have people who want to pull me into specific projects in the community based on my music and on the mixtapes. It's like, it's the truth but I'm not trying to preach to you. Because who am I to say what's really right or wrong, or whether what I say is going to change anything? I don't take it too seriously; it's really whimsical.