Global Citizenry

By Nancy and James Chuda founders of LuxEcoLiving and Healthy Child Healthy World   We had a terrible scare!!! Journey, our 18 month old adopted yellow...

By Jessica Borges, LuxEco Living Editorial Assistant Move over Great Wall of China, the Great Green Wall is coming and it’s much more colorful and eco-friendly. In an effort to subdue the advancing Sahara Desert and lessen drought in Africa, the Great Green Wall will consist of a band of trees over 4,000 miles long and nine miles wide.

In 2016 we will be electing a new President, which means for the next year, fellow liberals and I will be quoting NPR in a desperate attempt to prove that we’re politically active

Michael Bernard Beckwith, Founder of the Agape International Spiritual Center, has galvanized a community of thousands of followers in his trans-denominational movement. Beckwith's ability to...

Washington's Fiscal Policy This Year Takes Aim At the EPA By Slashing a Great Deal of Support By Derin Richardson, LuxEco Living Editorial Assistant President Obama signed, sealed and delivered the new 2011 fiscal budget last Friday--the result of a less than stellar and certainly bitter congressional compromise that hinders environmental efforts even more so than previous years.

Introduction by Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief  of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World Step back in time. Over twenty years ago when...

By Nancy and James Chuda founders of LuxEcoLiving and Healthy Child Healthy World Travels with Journey, The Hallmark Inn Davis, California "The capacity for hope is...

By Nancy Chuda, Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief LuxEco Living and Co-Founder of Healthy Child Healthy World Last night, CNN reported that engineers are at higher risk of extreme levels of radiation due to a potential meltdown. In Japan's tsunami-crippled Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) power plant, nuclear authorities have reported that spikes of radiation have escaped from the facility at levels that can be dangerous to human health. But what does this mean for Americans, especially those who live on the western coastline where the fallout may occur.

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World California leads the nation in having  preserved one of the...

Did you know that: We are losing Earth's greatest biological treasures just as we are beginning to appreciate their true value. Rainforests once covered 14%...

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Seeing Citizen Kane...

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World For most people the diagnosis of cancer is a daunting...

Actor, director, producer, and social activist George Clooney has been journeying throughout Southern Sudan this past week in an attempt to bring attention to the war-torn area. The region is three months away from an independence vote which could possibly see the largest country in Africa split into two sovereign nations.

By Nancy Chuda Founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World. “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful...

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World Two architectural visionaries, James Chuda and David Noble...

You might think that the greatest political, cultural, economic shock of our lifetimes, right here in the USA, would unleash a torrent of salient and incisive commentary. There's been some good, some confused, some angry. But mostly what I've seen is a kind of mouth-open shocked.

Kudos to Sean Penn because in some respects, this experience was the essence of what journalism should be. He wanted to write this story, and he went to great lengths to achieve it. The issue of the War on Drugs is ever-prevalent, Penn wanted to talk about it, and he did so with his own voice.

In Tom Shadyac's Film "I Am," he poses a solution to a battered world: Compassion- It will right whats wrong with the world. By Nancy Chuda c0-founder and Editor-in-Chief LuxEco Living and Healthy Child Healthy World As a society we are not immune to disasters-- not in the face of mother nature who rules. Man does not have dominion over nature. But what man instinctively has is the desire to help those in need. Having compassion is the only way we will survive through disaster and hardship.

Introduction by Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World In 2000, many children's health advocates applauded Congress's decision to...

By Alanna Brown, a LuxEco Living Advocate, creator of Brown House Online, and author of Moonpennies   We all love the feel of a new paperback...

Empathy and Compassion in the Wake of Japan's Tsunami Crisis By: Marc Ian Barasch, author of The Compassionate Life and Founder/Director, Green World Campaign The aerial shots...

Hands by Guido Daniele Hands by Guido Daniele By Florence "Flip" Ross, LuxEcoLiving Advocate and Contributor If I could bring the planet Earth, back to its natural beauty If I could sing its praise, and make the world assume its duty If I could make the industries clean up their foul pollution Our air, our water, would be clean, and would be the solution If I could force our corporations to help clean up our planet

Traveling is a look into culture, tradition and history.  Learning about Médici's Renaissance Florence might give you a more profound appreciation of art, religious...

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor in Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World "Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books,...

By Sahar Ghaffari, LuxEco Living Editorial Assistant Dog lover and “Life As We Know It” star Katherine Heigl has pledged to donate $1 million to help the over growing pet population through her Jason Debus Heigl Foundation. The foundation which is named after her brother, who died tragically in a car accident in 1986, just launched a new initiative called The Compassion Revolution.

Just last month marks the fifth year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the catastrophic natural disaster that claimed more than 1,800 lives in the Gulf coast region with damages totaling $80 billion. After the devastation of the hurricane and consequent flooding, it seemed to its residents and many around the world that New Orleans, specifically, was making a painstakingly slow recovery. Frustrated by the sluggish progress, actor Brad Pitt founded the Make It Right Foundation in 2007 to help rebuild the hardest hit region of New Orleans, the Lower 9th ward.

By Galen Crawley's, author of A Path To Survival Against All Odds and LuxEco Advocate In 1979, the British colonization of Zimbabwe came to an end under Ian Smith. After sustained social unrest, the ZANU party, led by Robert Mugabe, came to power. Initially, there was a pervading sense of optimism as this charismatic, highly intelligent individual began to educate the country. In the 1980’s, the economy was growing and Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of Africa. Unfortunately, what began as a democracy became a dictatorship. During the 90’s the Zimbabwe spiraled into decline. At the beginning of the millennium, the Land Reform Programme was initiated. The white farmers, who fueled the economy with their tobacco and food production, were brutally kicked out. It was the beginning of mass starvation, hyper-inflation, and when the diamond fields were found, murder and torture.

LOHAS Second Annual Los Angeles Networking Event & Reception - Provides Forum for Green Business Leaders. LOHAS, the producers of the annual LOHAS Forum is...

By Nancy and James Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founders of Healthy Child Healthy World. Contributing editorial from Bethany Colson, Assitant Managing...

Forrest Gump may have been on to something when he compared life to chocolates. You really never know what you’re gonna get in a box of chocolates, do you? The truth behind chocolate is more bitter than sweet. The Ivory Coast produces 40% of the world's chocolate, and it just so happens to also be notorious for this little thing called child slavery. Children, both local and from other third world countries, are sold to farms in this area where they are physically abused while working in risky and inhumane conditions. Some children are sold into the trade by parents who are tricked into believing their children will have better lives at the farm. Others are trafficked, stolen from their families, lured by the promise of…chocolate. In these farms they are forced to work 60 hour weeks with little or no food (depending on their performance on the field). These children lose their fundamental human rights when they enter these farms and “modern” society turns a blind eye to the atrocities. Every time we buy a box of chocolate that is not fair trade stamped, we (often unknowingly) endorse child slavery.

By Nancy Chuda founder and Editor-in-Chief of LuxEcoLiving and co-founder of Healthy Child Healthy World An Essay           Like you, I am stupefied. It is unconscionable to...

By Karen Barnes, VP Insight, @barneshead courtesy of The Shelton Group I’m a Tom Friedman groupie. So when I saw his new book, That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World it Invented and How We Can Come Back, I grabbed it in the airport bookstore yesterday. I had a short flight, so I’ve only read 65 pages – but my brain’s already churning and connecting dots about economic sustainability.

By Florence “Flip” Ross, LuxEco Advocate We are all familiar with the saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” but when I travel through Israel I can’t help but think “When in Israel, do as the Israelis do.” How remarkable they are at accomplishing the impossible. When they tried to build a harbor in Ashdod, they called in all the experts they could think of to help them do it. The experts from Holland (whom for sure they thought could accomplish this, since their country too was below sea level) told them it was impossible. Imagine their disappointment, but not to be deterred they said: “Okay, we’ll do it ourselves,” and do it themselves they did.

By Alanna Brown, LuxEco Editorial Assistant You are terrified and frantic. You cram yourself, with six other women, into a three-foot by four-foot bathroom in...

By Merry Elkins, LuxEco Editorial Assistant Best known for being a star-maker, Ken Kragen, who is also an author, teacher, and film and television producer, has charted the career course of some our most celebrated entertainers including Kenny Rogers, Lionel Richie, Tricia Yearwood, Olivia Newton John, The Bee Gees, The Smothers Brothers, Harry Chapin and more; but nothing he has accomplished in his illustrious career has ever achieved the significance or the scope of his philanthropic work. For breathing life into Hands Across America in the 1980s where young and old alike joined hands across the country to call attention to hunger and homelessness here in the US; for setting in motion and organizing the recording We Are the World, that brought together 45 prominent recording artists including Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Bruce Springsteen to raise $64 million to feed people in Africa and for founding USA for Africa to distribute the money, he received the United Nations Peace Medal, something few civilians receive and an honor for which he is most proud.