For Educators

Books by Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé are featured annually in classrooms across the country. Hope’s Edge, Diet for a Hot Planet, Getting a Grip 2, EcoMind, and more, combine personal, political, and environmental themes to foster academic discussions. Small Planet resources will aid students in their understanding of complex topics such as contemporary agriculture and food politics, or government and political theory. Professors that cover these subjects can look to Lappé works to examine the root causes of today’s most pressing issues, and be assured that once students begin to discuss the ideas presented in these books, the authors are ready to continue the conversation.

Small Planet Resources - For Educators

Our resources both inform and inspire action. From agriculture and food politics to power and democracy as a living system, look to the Lappés for influential works that cover today's most pressing issues.

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People are Talking

Can't bring Frances and Anna to your school? Try this virtual connection! The Lappés offer Skype sessions to classes that read their books. These video classes are a great opportunity for students to interact with the authors and engage in lively discussions.

Learn more

Resources for Teaching EcoMind

EcoMind is being taught in many colleges and universities, including Middle Tennessee State University and Mount Holyoke College. Here you will find downloadable tools to help teach EcoMind, a mind-shifting resource that Jane Goodall has called “powerful and inspiring”.

Download EcoMind resources

Resources for Living Democracy, Including Downloadable Tools

Democracy is not merely a set system of government, something done to us or for us. It is the way we interact and experience democratic principles such as transparency, mutual accountability and the dispersion of power throughout our lives.

Learn more and find tools to aid in learning

Surprising Facts

Ninety percent of Americans make less in real dollars than they did in 1973 – on average $4,000 less. The wealthiest 400 Americans now control more wealth than half the world’s people.

Worldwide, more people are members of cooperatives than own shares in publicly traded companies. Cooperatives provide a fifth more jobs than do global corporations.

More than a third of both the world’s grain and fish catch now go to feed livestock, which return to us only a fraction of the nutrients.

If the whole world moved to sustainable agriculture, a U. of Michigan study found that enough food could be grown to feed the world’s current and projected population.

An MRI study of people competing vs. cooperating found that cooperating stimulates the same parts of our brain as does eating chocolate!

America emits twice the carbon per person that Europe does. But think what’s possible: California emits 20 percent less carbon per dollar GDP than Germany; and it gets almost a quarter of its electricity from renewables!

In Washington DC, more than two dozen lobbyists push mainly corporate interests for every one representative American citizens have elected to protect our interests.

In 2011, solar use grew all over the world, soaring 54% to 28 gigawatts.

Read all and find sources…