Donella (Dana) Meadows inspired countless individuals with her pioneering work in systems thinking, her strong voice in support of a just and sustainable world, and her undefeatable optimism. Her ideas and writing remain as influential today as ever. The Global Citizens blog is an ever-growing collection of reports, reflections, commentaries, thoughts, and stories by people striving to fulfill Dana's vision of a world that aligns environmental, social, and economic systems. Read on to learn more about this vision and what it means at all scales.

Bringing Systems Thinking in Schools

Posted by Marta Ceroni, Published: July 1st, 2016

By Katie Williamson – Students at Lebanon High School, NH Recently, I have been thinking about where visioning and systems thinking fit into school classrooms. What strategies and tools could help students and young people connect with systems? Would they even find systems thinking useful for their own work and goals? So when Marta and I got invited to present in a [...]

Real leadership in Corporate Social Responsibility: A systems view

Posted by Marta Ceroni, Published: March 11th, 2016

Researchers at the Stockholm Resilience Center call it the “Great Acceleration.” It’s a surge that has been observed since the ’50s in the data of population, exploitation of resources, use of fertilizers, carbon pollution, fishery depletion, biodiversity loss and more. Until the 1950s, the effects of human activities were, by comparison, a small thing — almost undetectable. “In a single lifetime humanity [...]

A Search for Authenticity & “The Good Life”

Posted by Kindle Loomis, Published: February 19th, 2016

The ‘American Dream’ and economy shift like tectonic plates, imperceptible until a collapse like 2008 creates both devastation and opportunity. As economic uncertainty and debt mounted, fewer college students saw the corporate ladder as promising. Since then, ‘dream jobs’ have become entrepreneurial, coming to life through the ‘poetry of science and the precision of art’, often times only fueled by [...]

In Paris we felt it is possible…

Posted by Marta Ceroni, Published: December 28th, 2015

Together with other thousands of people I joined civil society in Paris during COP21. The most palpable feeling was a shared sense of gravity and urgency for action. There was also optimism because we all had high hopes for an agreement that has taken decades to develop. And of course Paris is just the beginning, albeit a strong beginning (see for example John Sterman’s analysis of the significance of the Paris [...]

Running with Ghosts – The Legacy of the Sacred in the Common

Posted by Kindle Loomis, Published: December 7th, 2015

I find renewal running through forest trails; feeling the memory of a landscape with every step, and changing course to accommodate past events. Tatlock loop, a short trail run on a ridge near my house, is shaped by its history. I find myself skirting around a little ditch that was dug out by spring flooding years ago, only to then [...]

About The Donella Meadows Project

The mission of the Donella Meadows Project is to preserve Donella (Dana) H. Meadows’s legacy as an inspiring leader, scholar, writer, and teacher; to manage the intellectual property rights related to Dana’s published work; to provide and maintain a comprehensive and easily accessible archive of her work online, including articles, columns, and letters; to develop new resources and programs that apply her ideas to current issues and make them available to an ever-larger network of students, practitioners, and leaders in social change.  Read More

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