Jeffrey Sachs, one of Time’s “Most Influential People,” is the world’s most important economist. He works for the UN and countries around the world to promote sustainability, and he is on a life-long mission to wipe out poverty. Dr. Sachs is the originator of the Happiness Index — the concept that we should be quantifying a nation’s success on the measure of their happiness rather than their GNP. I was fortunate to meet Jeffrey Sachs when I was at Harvard this summer for the Future of Learning program, and was so inspired that I am going to be taking on online course with him beginning in a few weeks called the Age of Sustainable Development. Columbia University is offering the course free of charge, and it is open to anyone who desires a deep holistic understanding of how to move into the future sustainably. To resister for the course, go to https://www.coursera.org/course/susdev. If you are a teacher, Dr. Sachs and Columbia’s Earth Institute are allowing teachers to use the course materials to incorporate into their own instruction without copyright infringement. They are on a mission to spread the message. ~Renee Owen, Rainbow Community School
