Making the world
a better place
Each of us can make the world a better place
and be part of the collective work of organizations
brought together around specific causes.
We honor these organizations for their compassionate, world-changing work.
100% of the proceeds from the new book The Double Bottom Line will be shared with the following compassionate organizations
The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Workplace Dignity Program
The program recognizes that human rights don’t end at the workplace door. Workers are entitled, in the words of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, to a workplace that is “just and favorable.” But all too often there is a gap between what employees report they are experiencing and what employers think their workplace and its culture are delivering. Organizations can close that gap by refining the day-to-day actions and behaviors of their leaders, and more structurally, through organization-wide processes and policies (impacting recruiting, on-boarding, communication, benefits, and more). The program provides tools for change in each of these areas. It also celebrates dignity champions and practices in a range of workplaces, strategically supports dignity-advancing legislation, and incorporates workplace dignity as a content anchor in other RFKHR programs.
To learn more, visit: www.rfkhumanrights.org
RFK Community Alliance
For more than fifty years, the RFK Community Alliance has served as a beacon of hope for at-risk youth and families in Massachusetts. With a focus on child welfare and juvenile justice, the RFK Community Alliance has created community-based initiatives and residential treatment and juvenile justice programs. The organization works with national organizations and state agencies to ensure that proven and developed methods are used to help at-risk children. With tools that help them heal and grow, families can overcome the most difficult of challenges.
In collaboration with the Doctor Franklin Perkins School, the Children’s Action Corps serves approximately 2,000 children, youths, and adults annually who are faced with emotional, psychological, health, environmental, and social issues. With the use of community-based services, educational services, foster care and adoption, and residential treatment, a brighter future for all children is possible.
To learn more, visit: www.rfkchildren.org
St. Joseph’s College Institute for Integrative Aging
The Saint Joseph’s College Institute for Integrative Aging was created after the Maine college adopted a plan to think about the future in an entrepreneurial manner. The plan included a commitment to using the institution’s assets to help promise its financial stability and to serve its students, community, and region. The Institute for Integrative Aging provides a creative, age-friendly learning environment for older rural adults. These adults work alongside younger students, who are becoming well-equipped to support a rapidly growing aging population through the development of new courses and certificate programs.
Social isolation and loneliness are pressing issues for older rural adults. However, the Institute for Integrative Aging combats those issues with programs structured around intergenerational connectivity, health and wellness activities, education, and support in nourishing their emotional, intellectual, creative, physical, and spiritual selves. The college is changing the culture of education through these programs and creating a new generation of integrative aging professionals who exhibit respect and compassion. Through the Institute for Integrative Aging, the community at Saint Joseph’s College will have a better understanding of the aging process and what is necessary to live the healthiest life possible.
To learn more, visit: www.sjcme.edu/centers/institute-for-integrative-aging
Scholarship Funds in Memory of Maeve and Gideon McKean
After the loss of Maeve McKean and her son Gideon in 2020, several fellowships were created in their name to honor their leadership and compassion.
McKean was the executive director of the Georgetown Global Health Initiative, where she promoted the intersection of health, data, law, policy, and diplomacy to create breakthroughs in global health issues. Her passion for social justice was seen by the Global Health Fellows she mentored and her students at Georgetown Law and School of Foreign Service. To sustain McKean’s legacy in the promotion of global health, Georgetown University and the McKean family created the Maeve McKean Excellence in Global Health Award. Students who aim to improve health outcomes for vulnerable and marginalized communities, both within the United States and internationally, are supported through this award. Awarded annually, the fellowship includes providing a student or group with resources to travel to the World Health Assembly or other experiential learning activities that fit their curriculum.
McKean served as the first-ever senior advisor for human rights in the State Department’s Global AIDS Program, having been appointed to the post during the Obama Administration. Inspired by her devotion to improving the health rights of people around the world, the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s School of Medicine, and the Institute of Human Virology created the Maeve Kennedy McKean Global Public Health Fellowship. Students awarded with this fellowship will work with the university’s Center for International Health, Education, and Biosecurity team to help mitigate and end the HIV epidemic in Africa.
Other awards and philanthropic programs honoring Maeve McKean include a fellowship by the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship Program and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, which supports a student to work in Washington, DC, each year on public health issues; the Maeve McKean Cluster Cares Fund, which helps families in the Cluster community of DC receive support to pay bills, buy groceries, and take care of daily tasks during the COVID-19 pandemic; and the 2020 Distinguished Partners for Women Peace and Security Award, which provides awards and financial support for seven organizations in conflict-affected countries.
To learn more, visit: www.maeveandgideon.org
Boston University of Public Health
As a top-ranked graduate school, Boston University School of Public Health offers access to innovative research, scholarship, and public health practice. BUSPH offers a top-tier education with an on-the-ground mission to improve the health and well-being of populations worldwide, particularly the underserved. BUSPH is committed to igniting and sustaining positive change that leads to health and well-being around the world. Proceeds to BUSPH from the royalties of this book will create a Compassionate Leadership Student Scholarship in the promotion of social justice, human rights, and equity across local and global communities.
To learn more, visit: https://www.bu.edu/sph/
TramutoPorter Foundation
Donato Tramuto was scheduled to board United Flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles on September 11, 2001, with his good friends, Ron Gamboa and Dan Brandhorst, and their three-year-old son, David, who had been visiting with Donato and his partner, Jeff, in Ogunquit, Maine. When Tramuto experienced a sudden toothache on September 10, he decided to visit his dentist near the Boston Logan Airport and changed his flight back to Los Angeles to one departing later that evening, a routine flight that he made almost every Tuesday. Ron Gamboa, Dan Brandhorst, and David, however, boarded United Flight 175, as scheduled. Theirs was the plane that hit the second World Trade Center Tower in New York City.
When learning the news of his friends’ tragic passing, Tramuto was in anguish, describing the experience as the worst “bulldozer moment” he has had in his lifetime. Several weeks after the event, Tramuto decided that he needed to make a living tribute in honor of his friends. A few months later, the TramutoPorter Foundation was born. With the help of his good friend, Dr. Mary Jane England, then president of Regis College in Newton, Massachusetts, the foundation began focusing its efforts on awarding annual college scholarships to graduating seniors who have successfully overcome a difficult situation in their life, with the goal of helping these scholars turn adversity into success.
For the past twenty years, two students each year from Bangor, Ogunquit, and Wells, Maine, and other areas across the world who show their potential in overcoming adversity are chosen for the TramutoPorter Foundation Scholarship. In 2006, the foundation advanced its mission to award multiple grants annually to organizations whose mission it is to make the world a better place. Every five years, the foundation holds a gala to celebrate the achievements of grant scholars.
To learn more, visit: www.tramutofoundation.com
Health eVillages
Health eVillages was founded in 2011 by Donato Tramuto after he read in a magazine that one billion people will “go to their graves in our lifetime because they did not have access to a health care worker.” Health eVillages’s mission is to heal the villages by advancing health-care access and improving the quality of care in the most vulnerable populations around the world. It accomplishes this by using advanced mobile health technologies, including medical reference support tools and community-focused resources, and by partnering with health professionals.
Pilot programs started in Kenya, Uganda, and Haiti and initial reports from doctors and nurses cited the outstanding results they were having with the organization’s medical app and digital library. With the help of Health eVillages’s technology and medical apps, health-care professionals were able to make informed, life-saving decisions thanks to the organization’s collaborative partnerships, through which technology was delivered effectively.
With the support of numerous operating partners, Health eVillages has been able to deploy more than 585 content-enabled mobile devices worldwide and has contributed to saving many thousands—perhaps millions—of lives. As of 2021, the organization was supporting seven programs, including three international and four domestic enterprises.
To learn more, visit: www.healthevillages.org
Every day, we can all take small steps towards leading with compassion.
Throughout the course of my life, it has never been about doing something great; rather, it has been about doing little things that have the capacity to drive great change. It has been about serving as the conduit to bring people together from all walks of life, working collaboratively with the notion that it makes no difference how much you give. What makes the difference is that you gave. It makes no difference how much you do. What makes the difference is you did something.
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