The Wall Street Journal has a great story, “Writing Checks to Charities? Be Smart About It” (10/30/10). The author gives lots of tips on selecting the best programs in which to invest philanthropic dollars.

The article states, “If your money is tight this holiday season, that doesn't mean you have to back away from the charities you support. You can learn to give smarter this year, and stretch your charitable contributions.”

They give 6 tips:

The proposed building of the mosque near Ground Zero in New York seems to be pushing people back into their own corners – it’s developing into an Us against Them. This problem would disappear if people had developed the skill of empathy.

There's a fascinating account in Fortune magazine of how Warren Buffett and Bill Gates plan to provoke unprecedented donations of wealth to solve the big problems of our time. It's mind-boggling, and we salute their bold idea!

A new study based on Gallup polling, published in The New York Times, finds that people start to get happier around age 50. Enjoyment and happiness rises steadily for 25 years after that point. The survey measured something called "global well-being."

We already know from major advances in the neuroscience of learning, that teaching kids social and emotional skills helps them find success and happiness. So why not start in the early years?

It's National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day! One of the goals - to nurture the social and emotional well-being of all children from birth. Day in and day out, all year long, since 1996, WINGS has been working to advance social and emotional education, and teaching kids these skills so crucial to success and happiness. 

Learn more about teaching social skills to children, Mental Health Awareness Day

Take a peek at this digital portrait of the collective emotional landscape created by two whiz kids Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar who sift through blog posts for feeling words – more than 12 million feelings since 2005. Their book about the experiment is newly published, called We Feel Fine: An Almanac of Human Emotion. It contains the euphoria, the despair, the passion, the dreams, and the desires that make us human.

In this video clip, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio discuss the power of social and emotional learning at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill.

When Ryan asserts that "we've got to teach kids how to regulate their emotions," the education secretary agrees vehemently.

More and more leadership training in the workplace focuses on developing the social and emotional skills that WINGS teaches kids in the early elementary school years. Here's a video of Yvette Vignando of Emotional Intelligence Development Australia explaining why emotional intelligence ought to be an essential part of the curriculum in every school - transforming kids into "better learners, more connected, better behaved."

General Colin Powell knows how to fight and win, so when he announces a new campaign to mobilize Americans to end the high school dropout crisis, it's great news for those of us in the field. 

It's easy to see why Boulder, Colo., and its scenic vistas made the list, and a frigid winter makes balmy Honolulu a safe bet, but why on earth is Holland, Mich., high on the list of the happiest towns in America?