Since World War II, development projects have invested more than two trillion dollars towards health services, poverty alleviation, education, food security, and environmental initiatives around the world. Despite these efforts, 20% of the world still lives on less than $1.50 a day and the environment within which all live declines dramatically. There are clear limits to what further investments at this rate can achieve. This book advances the thesis that a more effective and universal foundation for social change and environmental restoration is not money, but human energy.

Using this approach Tibet recovered from being nearly deforested to having over 40% of its land area protected under conservation management. Using principles outlined in this book mothers in northeast India implemented a package of life-changing actions that halved child mortality. They parallel the way New York City has created a citywide conservation program over three-and-a-half centuries. Each of these examples is particular to its time and place, yet a shared set of principles is at work in all of them.

Improving the quality of life for a community starts by strengthening successes already operating. It involves local knowledge and a relatively simple set of principles, tasks, and criteria designed to empower communities. This highly readable account demonstrates how a comprehensive process for social change harnesses the energy of a community and scales it up with a rising number of participants becoming invested in increasingly high-quality work. Richly illustrated with photographs and stories of innovative people and programs in communities ranging from Nepal to Afghanistan to the South Bronx, it provides practical, proven guidelines for creating profound and sustained social change that begins in individual communities and grows to scale.

How can public health workers, policy experts, and medical professionals work with members of developing nations to promote social change in rapid, cost-effective, and locally appropriate ways? In Just and Lasting Change, Daniel C. and Carl E. Taylor present readers with an innovative, proven, and site-specific guide to helping communities thrive through growing their own change in partnership with experts, donors, and government. The Taylors built their decades-long careers by partnering with key thinkers to combat inequity, environmental degradation, and globalization. The SEED-SCALE model they describe enables people (wherever they might live) to transform their communities by analyzing their local context in relation to the global, taking appropriate actions based on their priorities and resources, and assessing what succeeding actions may be needed to continue making progress. Just and Lasting Change describes, step by step, how the SEED-SCALE model can be effectively implemented. Drawing from a variety of engaging personal experiences and case studies, this wide-ranging book describes early attempts to promote social development a century ago, as well as current efforts in South America, Africa, and Asia. It also reveals how community-based social change unfolded in America, spurred at different points by Abraham Lincoln's leadership style and the Green Bay Packers's ownership model, and presents readers with thematic global examples from the anti-smoking campaign, Green Revolution, Child Survival Revolution, and urban agriculture. The second edition of this pathbreaking handbook offers a hopeful description of how people have improved the quality of life in diverse communities around the world and is fully revised and updated with* Five completely new chapters * Thirteen years of scholarship and global evidence* Contributions from leading international experts in community-based development and public health

This book explains the mystery of the Yeti or Abominable Snowman, the creature that has left mysterious footprints in Himalayan snows. The book also explores why people are so fascinated with the possibility that a wild hominoid might still reclusively live (the idea of a wild humanity alive in people's hopes). Here also is the extraordinary story of one man's conservation impact-a quest for mysterious animal caused him to lead in creating two massive national parks around Mount Everest, one in China/Tibet and one in Nepal. This book narrates how the author explores much of the 2,000-mile breadth of the Himalaya, from his childhood in India to his work years in Nepal, China/Tibet, and Bhutan. From 1956 until 2015 he visited almost all valley systems. The book recounts his ascents of Himalayan summits and even a first descent of a major river, Nepal's Sun Kosi. This book not only explains scientifically the Yeti and describes a range of Himalayan animals and plants, it also brings forward a wide scope of ecological understanding. Significant among these is the author's postulate about bioresilience as a parallel dynamic to biodiversity. Additionally, the author explores what it means (and how important it is) for people to be part of 'the wild' in today's increasingly domesticated world. Taylor's breadth of Himalayan knowledge is massive, the story captivating and full of surprises-and what he has accomplished includes 'discovering' the Yeti as well as creating two huge national parks.

It is possible to drive to the base of Mt Everest -- I have so driven over one hundred times while leading the international team that set aside this mountain and the six million acres around as a national park. But what might happen on the way? This book tells you how to deal with those surprises. Broken crank case? Bandits? Avalanche overwhelming your car? What to do if you hit a yak? And, once you leave the Everest area, what is it like to drive through the rest of the Himalaya ... from India to Afghanistan? This book has stories about that also. And, if the stories are hard to believe, the photographs in the book add stark proof that you will be having a splendid adventure. The book is dedicated to Dan Terry -- one of the truly great Himalayan drivers -- who was brutally and tragically assassinated by terrorists while leading a medical team up out of a ford in a river just south of the magnificent Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan.