Our Beginning

Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé founded the Small Planet Institute in 2001 to further a historic transition: a worldwide shift from the dominant, failing notion of democracy — as something done to us or for us — toward democracy as a rewarding way of life: a culture in which citizens infuse the values of inclusion, fairness and mutual accountability into all dimensions of public life. We call this Living Democracy.

From the Institute’s first book, Hope’s Edge, and all that have followed, the Small Planet Institute reveals how people on every continent are creating living democracies as they discover their power to remake societal rules and norms to serve their widely shared values. We support this historic awakening through collaborative public education efforts with colleagues worldwide and through our own books, articles, websites, speeches, and other media.

Accomplishments

We create media to express and share our core philosophy and the positive, solutions stories that we’re uncovering in our research from rural Virginia to rural Kenya, from Bengali villages to Brazilian favelas.

Books

Since 2001, we have released seven books:

• Hope’s Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (Tarcher/Penguin 2002)
• You Have the Power: Choosing Courage in a Culture of Fear (Tarcher/Penguin 2003)
• Democracy’s Edge: Choosing to Save our Country by Bringing Democracy to Life (Jossey-Bass 2006)
• Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (Tarcher/Penguin 2006)
• Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do about It (Bloomsbury USA 2010)
• Getting a Grip 2: Clarity, Creativity and Courage for the World We Really Want (Small Planet Media 2010)
• EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think to Create the World We Want (Nation Books 2011)

We have also contributed chapters to many other books:

• Foreword to How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas (Penguin 2001)
• Foreword to Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies About the Safety of the Genetically Modified Foods You’re Eating (Yes Books 2003)
• Warrior Mothers: Stories to Awaken the Flames of the Heart (Rising Star Press 2004)
• Feeding the Future: From Fat to Famine (House of Anansi, 2005)
• Foreword to Greenopia: The Urban Dweller's Guide To Green Living Los Angeles (Green Media Group 2006)
• WorldChanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century (Abrams 2006)
• We Got Issues!: A Young Women’s Guide to a Bold, Courageous, and Empowered Life (Inner OceanPublishing, 2006)
• Surviving the Century: Facing Climate Chaos and Other Global Challenges (Routledge 2008)
• The Green Festival Reader: Fresh Ideas from Agents of Change (Paradigm Publishers 2008)
• The Best Buddhist Writing 2008 (Shambhala 2008)
• Women of Wisdom: Empowering the Dreams and Spirits of Women (Wise Women Publishing 2008)
• A Renewable World: Energy, Equality, Ecology (Green Books 2009)
• A Sociology of Food and Nutrition (Oxford University Press USA 2009)
• Foreword to One Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming (New York Review of Books Classics 2009)
• Foreword to Dreaming Cows: The Paintings, Murals and Drawings of Betty Laduke Celebrating Heifer International (Heifer International 2009)
• Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (New Press 2010)
• Moonrise: The Power of Women Leading from the Heart (Park Street Press 2010)
• Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World (North Atlantic Books 2010)

Public Conversation

In addition, we have delivered nearly 1,000 public presentations, keynote talks, seminars, and workshops, as well as offered hundreds of radio and television interviews, and published magazine and newspaper articles and op-eds.

See a partial list of past speeches here and a list of upcoming speeches here.

To expand our reach, in 2007 we established Small Planet Media. Frances’ Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad was its inaugural release. Printed on recycled paper with soy ink in a union shop, Getting a Grip received the 2008 “Best in Small Press” Nautilus Award and was updated as Getting a Grip 2 in 2010. Concurrently, we have produced video book trailers and short-format documentaries, including two clean elections called Getting a Grip on Money & Politics, Parts I and II, directed by Anthony Lappé’s Invisible Hand Media.

Television & Documentary Films

We’ve served as experts and commentators for numerous television and film projects, including:

• Co-host of The Endless Feast on PBS
• Expert on Big Ideas for a Small Planet
• Host of a 20-part series of videos of inspiration for physical, spiritual, and emotional health for MSN and Kashi.
• A featured guru for Howdini.com
• One of three featured experts for the one-hour documentary, Nourish, for public television.
• A featured character in the up-coming independent documentary, Really Delicious by Ripple Effect Films.

Advocacy

The Small Planet Institute has also joined with ally organizations on numerous public campaigns ranging from the demands for GMO labeling to the Corporate Accountability International’s efforts to make fast food giant McDonalds accountable for marketing unhealthy food to children to Oxfam’s GROW campaign to end hunger worldwide.

Our Philosophy of Democratic Social Change

We believe that ideas have enormous power and that humans are capable of changing failing ideas in order to turn our planet toward life. At the Small Planet Institute, we seek to identify the core, often unspoken, assumptions and forces — economic, political, and psychological — now taking our planet in a direction that as individuals none of us would choose. We disseminate this deeper understanding of root causes. With a grasp of root causes, citizens no longer disparage their actions as “mere drops in the bucket.” Once we’re able to see the “bucket,” we realize our drops are quite spectacular; the bucket is actually filling up.

We help citizens choose rewarding ways to focus their energies by finding entry points that interrupt and reverse the negative pattern of powerlessness and despair; and then generate a new, more life-serving spiral of hope in action. Appreciating that we humans are social mimics, the Small Planet Institute spreads stories of these effective entry points.

Our Support

Much of the work of the Small Planet Institute is made possible by the generous contributions of the time and talent of dedicated volunteers and interns. We are extremely grateful to every one of them. In addition we thank supporters of specific projects, including Anna’s Eat Grub Tour in the Spring and Fall of 2006, her Take a Bite out of Climate Change campaign, and her FoodMyths and Real Food Media Project, which is a project of Corporate Accountability International.