A family photo I dug up from 35 years ago reminded me of my parents' early friendships as immigrants to America and their efforts to bring diverse people together.

The US House of Representatives just defeated S. 987 (The International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act), despite passing unanimously in the Senate. By failing to pass the Child Marriage bill, our country turns a blind eye to practices enslaving children into marriage. Here's the update from the Washington Post's Post Partisan blog . Tell Congress: Girls need books, not husbands Ironically, the background published at GOP.gov for the Republicans in Congress makes a good case to PASS the bill: "The United Nations Children's Fund estimates that 60 million girls in developing...

With the convergence this week of International Education Week , the Summit for Citizen Diplomacy and the Eid holiday, I wanted to share the following review with readers of MomsRising. I paused when I saw the title of Roya Movafegh's first book, The People With No Camel . The grammar, the possible meaning, and her choice of imagery made me wonder - and want more. This is the reader's first clue that The People With No Camel is not just another Iranian woman's post-Revolution memoir. Upon opening the book she explains: "According to the laws of Sharia in Iran, if a Muslim man is murdered, his...

Imagine what it’s like when musicians from disparate countries, playing diverse instruments, dedicated to different genres come together on one stage, having never met each other before. Initially the collaboration produces dissonance, but among skilled practitioners dedicated to their craft, disharmony transforms into harmony and something altogether new forms. This is what took place in 2008 at the World Festival of Sacred Music, and became the inspiration to create a similar collaboration, but this time using the medium of film, with the whole world as its stage. The project One Day on...

With all the talk of “Restoring Honor” and taking back our country, I’ve been thinking a lot about the changes in America that feel so threatening to some. We are living through revolutions in just about every sphere of life. Some revolutions can be terrific. Like the American Revolution. Or the technological revolution that enabled us to throw out our bulky typewriters for increasingly thin, fast and powerful computers. A revolution in learning and human relations needs to accompany the technology shift – and this is where it can get tricky. At a time when national borders mean less and less...

Forty-seven percent of Black American males graduate from high school in the U.S. In other words, the majority of black boys are not graduating from high school in the United States of America. The 47% takes all states into account, from Maine, with a 98% graduation rate, to New York, with just 25% of black males graduating high school. New York, with so much power and privilege, alarmingly comes out with the highest rank on the Education Inequity Index in The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males . But its much maligned neighbor, Newark, NJ (and NJ in general) gets much...

I received an email today from the Tahirih Justice Center , an outstanding non-profit organization dedicated to protecting immigrant women and girls fleeing violence, about critical upcoming legislation that every mom will care about. The International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA), groundbreaking bipartisan legislation that will dedicate US resources and leadership to fight violence against women worldwide, is likely be taken up by the Senate in the next few weeks. (For detailed information about I-VAWA, click here .) Photograph by Sergio Pessolano for Tahirih Justice Center With the...

As the U.S. gears up for the 4th of July, today, July 1, is Canada Day. Many of us look with admiration to our northern neighbors for their progressive healthcare system which offers universal coverage at lower costs and won’t force a family to bankruptcy if someone gets really sick. In honor of Canada’s birthday, take this quiz created by my favorite PhD candidate from Harvard University, Canada native and Canucks fan in stilettos (I am not exaggerating – and she made this up in between thinking about global political economic crisis coordination). See how much you know – and celebrate the...

Parents reading this blog are likely to care about their kids' caring about the world. This can get tricky, though. We don't want to scare them, overburden them, or turn them off. I was so happy with the way writer Heidi Stevens conveyed some important points on this topic - I thought it was worth sharing them here. "Caring without scaring: How to teach kids to care about the world around them without frightening them off the planet" By Heidi Stevens, Tribune Newspapers Reality is a tricky teaching tool when it comes to parenting. On the one hand, you want to shield your children from images...