The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

TakePart Gang:

Chasing the DNC Flame by Fonda Berosini

TakePart at Slow Food Nation by Wendy Cohen

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Nicole Hughes:

State Fair Having Trouble Keeping It Green

TOMS Wrap Boot: Shoe Addicts Saving Lives

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Andy Kondrat:

Mexican Gov Spends $16M to Save Endangered Porpoise

Wilco Offers Section on Website for Carpooling to Shows

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Jon Popham:

Portland Gym Utilizes Human Energy

Angkor Wat Threatened by Tourism Boom

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Gina Telaroli:

10 Powerful Women Using Their Power for Good

10 A+ Worthy Movie and TV Teachers

Forbes just put out their list of the Top 10 World’s Most Powerful Women. And while I am 100 percent in support of promoting women in the workforce, especially in the corporate workforce (where most of the listed ladies are and often ladies are not recognized for), I am not 100 percent in support of what a lot of big corporations (like the ones listed) do.

And more than that, there are a ton of awesome powerful ladies using their power for good! In fact I’ve listed 10 of them below - in no particular order.

1) Michelle Bachelet - Hillary Clinton’s (a powerful woman in her own right) opening paragraph to the piece she wrote on Bachelet for Time Magazine’s 100 Influential People, says it all,

“When I heard that Michelle Bachelet a doctor who devoted her life to helping the people of Chile, a daughter who lost her father to the violent regime of Augusto Pinochet and a leader who experienced personally the brutality of dictatorship but never lost hope in the people of her nation or the promise of democracy was running for the presidency of Chile, I was enthralled.”

Bachelet went on to become the first woman president of Chile. Before that she was also the Health Minister and then Defense Minister - she was the first woman in Latin America to hold those posts. A breaker of barriers, Michelle Bachelet has used her internal power to gain actual power and inspire young girls everywhere.

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Oprah Winfrey, Her Royal Highness of Daytime Television, has announced on her blog that she’s going vegan! Well, for 21 days as part of a cleanse, but that’s still big news in the vegan world, and will certainly bring about some positive exposure of the vegan lifestyle to millions of viewers worldwide. On her blog, Oprah said that after rereading the book, A New Earth, she was inspired to eliminate meat and dairy from her diet for a short period of time.

How can you say you’re trying to spiritually evolve, without even a thought about what happens to the animals whose lives are sacrificed in the name of gluttony?’ she wrote. [accesshollywood.com]

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What do Brigitte Bardot, beach litter, and American rappers on skid row have in common? They’re all on the TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup!   The Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!

Katie:

Pras On Skid Row (Literally)

Top 10 Reasons to Go to the Havana Film Festival in New York

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Nicole:

6 Million Pounds of Trash Found On World’s Beaches In One Day

“Take A Bite” Out of Climate Change

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Giulia:

Once Upon A Time Mommy Wasn’t This Pretty

We Can Solve It

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Gina:

The Fresh Air of the Flight of the Red Balloon and Hou Hsiao Hsien

Brigitte Bardot on Trial for Her Contempt Towards Muslims

In his latest project, hip hop artist, actor, and filmmaker Pras Michel (The Fugees) goes undercover for 9 days and nights as a homeless person in downtown LA’s notorious Skid Row. I met up with Pras in a hotel lobby in Manhattan to discuss Skid Row, the documentary based on his time on the street living with 90,000 people in a 50 square block area. Pras talked to me about Muhammed Ali, why he likes Obama and doesn’t go for Bill Cosby, how Oprah and Snoop could help the “lost African-American generation” by meeting face to face, and why we’re in a “transitional moment.”

Check out www.skidrowthemovie.com to find where it’s showing near you.

Why did you make this movie?

To make people aware. The majority of Americans just want to be able to work and provide. People on Skid Row … they just want to be able to work, they don’t care what it is. A lot of people think if something’s going on over here and not where they are, then it doesn’t affect them. We have to get away from that mindset.

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The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out our most popular articles of the week on a variety of subjects, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

Dean Karmen Shows Steven Colbert How To Filter Water

St Patricks Day Goes Green with Green Beer: Top 10 Eco Beers

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Nicole:

East Meets West at Dubai Art Fair, But Shadow of Migrant Labor Remains

TakePart’s “I Am Voting For” Campaign Wants You To Vote the Issues

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Giulia:

Simon Cowell Gives Big

Scarlett Johansson Dates For Charity

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Gina:

Top 10 Easter Films

Top 10 Films That Have Helped to Frame the War in Iraq

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Kerry:

Aqua Colbert Massage In a Bottle

Dakota the Mummified Duckbilled Dinosaur Gets Its Rocks Off

Today’s Oprah show had me in tears (as usual). The program introduced us to Amy and Randy Stoen, parents to three-year old Madelaine who was recently diagnosed alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that had spread to the left side of her face. To try to save her life, doctors started chemotherapy right away but the time and money spent on their daughters treatment has left the couple in a financial struggle and fearful that they may loose their home.

Inspired by Oprah’s new show “Oprah’s Big Give” Simon Cowel from American Idol generously paid off the Stoen’s mortgage. Cowell wrote the family a $162,000 personal check and offered to continue his assistance to help relieve some of the couples stress. While Cowell’s donation can’t cure Madelaine’s disease, it will certainly help ease some of the burden this medical situation has created for the Stoen family.

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Actress Drew Barrymore announced on the Oprah Winfrey Show today that she’s donating $1 million to the World Food Programme’s “Fill the Cup” campaign, whose goal is to feed 59 million hungry school children in developing countries for a year, as Reuters reports:

“I have seen with my own eyes what a difference a simple cup of nutritious porridge can make in a child’s life”It helps them learn, stay healthy and sets them on track for a bright future. I urge everyone — everywhere — to help WFP ‘Fill the Cup’ for hungry children, and make hunger history.”

Barrymore has been an WFP ambassador against hunger since 2005, and has traveled to Kenya twice in the past two years on behalf of WFP.

The biofuel boom has driven up the cost of grains all over the world, leaving the WFP tcope with a $500 million gap in funding. While in Chicago today, Barrymore took a trip to the Chicago Board of Trade’s corn futures pit with Josette Sheeran, WFP’s executive director, who noted that a donation of just $50 “fills a child’s cup for a year.”

Find out how you can help feed the world at www.wfp.org.

Our second installation of the TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is here give you the very best of Katie, Nicole, Giulia, Gina and Kerry! More blogs means more to love this Valentine’s Day week, and more social action means a healthier and happier world for everyone. Check out our most popular posts of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites.

Katie:

5 Ways to Take Action and Get Action On Valentine’s Day

Top 10 Guilt-Free Valentine’s Day Jewelry Gifts: Show Your Valentine You Have a Heart

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Nicole:

Kiva: Microlending to Change Lives

Top 10 New Releases to Inspire Social Change

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Giulia:

Alicia Keys Uses Grammys to Help Keep a Child Alive

V-Day Celebrates Its 10 Year Anniversary!

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Gina:

Top 10 Movie Characters That Make A Difference

Art As Politics In “The Silence Before Bach”

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Kerry:

Tap Project Gets Donations Flowing For Safe Global Water

Levon Helms’ “Dirt Farmer” Wins Grammy Gold

Celebrate 10 years of V-Day on April 11 ” 12, 2008 with V-Day’s mega two-day anniversary celebration in New Orleans at the New Orleans Arena and Louisiana Superdome.

For two days, thousands of women and men will harness their collective energy to mobilize V-Day, the worldwide movement to end violence against women and girls into the next decade. On both Friday April 11 and Saturday April 12 folks can gather at SUPERLOVE , a place to heal, gather, protest, celebrate and activate to change the story of women! There will be story telling, great art, mural making, spoken word poetry, singers, dancers, rituals and marches.

Saturday night, April 12th audiences can witness V TO THE TENTH takes place This once in a lifetime event will feature international performances of The Vagina Monologues, musical guests, V-Day activists from across the globe including Kenya, Afghanistan, Iraq, The Philippines, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eastern Europe , men standing up for women and much more. The show will include notable guests such as Salma Hayek, Oprah Winfrey, Jane Fonda, Jessica Alba,

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