You Can Change The World

Zainab Salbi
Cofounder and president of Women for Women International
Women are disproportionately harmed by most world crises. Two thirds of the world's poor are women. Up to 80 percent of refugees worldwide are women and children. Ninety-eight percent of HIV/AIDS-positive women live in developing countries. So, investing in women is a failproof way of creating solid, tangible change and building sustainable peace. Sponsoring one woman at a time, investing in her capacity to earn a steady, sustainable income, to know her rights and stand up for herself, allows her an opportunity to be the agent of change not only in her life but also for the future of her family, community and country.

Want to take action? Go to womenforwomen.org

David Simon
Co-creator of ' The Wire '
It is well past the time for an American president to acknowledge the strategic failure and moral rot that has resulted from the national drug prohibition.

Forty years of drug warfare has not rescued a single inner-city neighborhood, nor reduced the potency or availability of narcotics, nor stopped any user from getting his or her shot. It has, instead, turned inner-city neighborhoods into free-fire zones, created both a massive underground economy and an outlaw culture, and in the most vulnerable and alienated neighborhoods, made the dynamic of policing urban American akin to that of Israelis attempting to secure the streets of Gaza.

But here's the hidden cost of failure -- and it is one that even the most hardened, law-and-order politician should embrace: At the heart of the American city, the drug war has destroyed the very profession of law enforcement. Why? Because in places like West Baltimore and North Philadelphia, East St. Louis and South Chicago, a drug arrest is the simplest, easiest stat there is. No need to master probable cause, or complex criminal investigation, to use and not be used by a police informant, to learn how to write a proper search warrant or testify in court without perjuring yourself -- a drug warrior needs only to jump out on a corner, jack up a mope, pull a couple caps from his pocket and call it a day.

Yet as the numbers of drug arrests soar and as we jail a record number of non-violent offenders, arrest rates for murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault decline dramatically in most major cities. Our police deterrent expends itself on a stat game that leads nowhere and solves nothing while dangerous crimes go unpunished by officers who no longer have the training, the will, or the incentive to do the hard work of solving real crime.

Police used to serve communities, defend the real estate. They identified the violent players and made the cases that had to be made. Now, after forty years, generations of officers schooled in the flummery of the drug war merely get paid harvesting street-level stats while the communities slowly die. Is there a politician of either party with courage enough to acknowledge this? Unlikely. But that doesn't make it any less true.

Oprah Winfrey
Founder of the Angel Network
Participate in the education of a child. Whether you are a parent, a teacher or a mentor, by pouring your heart and wisdom into the life of a child, you will make a difference that can impact generations to come.