Dinner for Six

I recently saw a great story about a family who wanted to spend more quality together and chose to do so by putting together food bags for kids who are hungry. It's called Kids Against Hunger.

The bags have a combination of rice, crushed soy, dehydrated vegetables and vitamins/flavoring "secret sauce" powder. When boiled up it will feed six children.

A 32-pound box contains 36 packets that make a total of 216 meals and costs approximately $50.

So here is how to make this a budget philanthropy project:

Make dinner and invite five of your friends over. Tell 'em to bring ten bucks each.  You feed them one meal, they feed six kids 36 times.

Do it once a month and that's almost 2,600 meals that you and your friends have provided hungry kids.  It only costs you ten bucks a month.

Acts of Kindness Retold

Today I wrote about an experience of an "accidental act of kindness" I committed as a teenager. It was never intended as such, but made an impact on someone and I found out about it MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS LATER.

You may want to go read about (the link is below). But when you do, try to make yourself aware that the smallest of things can make a difference. And even if you don't TRY to make a difference in someone's life, just being kind cane make all the difference in the world. And, in my case, it wasn't about being kind as much as it was "don't make a crappy situation worse than it is." I can't take any credit for being kind and that's why this is a perfect example.

I always tell my kids that the goal is to make the world better when you leave it than when you come into it, but if you CAN'T do that, at least leave it as good. Or if you want to be succint, "Do no harm." That's the minimum we can all manage, surely.

Okay, now off with you... go read How to Deal with a Bully.

Backyard Campout

The Great American Backyard Campout is June 27 this year. What on earth can this possibly have to do with good deeds and spreading change?

Well, there have been numerous articles in the last couple of years about children and getting them outdoors. Many of the articles talk about childhood obesity, but the importance of children communing with nature goes way, WAY beyond getting more exercise.

There has been a study about childhood myopia. It is proven that children SEE BETTER when they spend less time indoors.

There has been a study about the alleviation of ADHD symptoms.

There has been a study about how children learn about their physical world better when they do it while outdoors.

There has been a lot of writing about how children relate to the environment and show concern about the environment when they've spent more time in nature.

As adults many of us are entrenched in our various ways of living. Sure, I agree it would be great to use less gasoline, but I haven't done anything to change my driving habits. It is difficult for most humans to make the large-scale changes in our daily lives that are needed to benefit the environment.

So, one thing we can do is use our influence to help the next generation do better than we are and we can start by getting kids outside.

And here we circle back to camping in the backyard. Mark your calendars. Do you have kids? Grandkids? Nephews and nieces? Why not plan to camp out in your backyard this year? The site even has a map that shows people all around the U.S. who have made the commitment to camp out this year.

Don't have kids and don't know any kids? Consider making a kid-friendly cache and registering it at geocaching.com. That will provide one more place in this small world of ours where kids can go to explore nature.

If you want to read more about this topic, check out the article at APA Online. Also, the wiki on "nature deficit disorder" has more info and some interesting links.

And one last cool thing... nature is free!

Global Knowledge, Global Tolerance

It is said that the more experience people have with other cultures, the more they travel in other countries, the more accepting and tolerant they are of other people in the world.

And the opposite could be true -- the more we limit ourselves to a homogeneous environment, to a vanilla culture with narrow boundaries, the less we feel comfortable and open to people who are different than we are.

What does that accomplish?

My Wonderful World is running a letter writing campaign to encourage schools to put Geography education back into the curriculum. Apparently over the last few years, geography has become less and less a focus in the education of Americans with some staggeringly embarrassing statistics such as only half of young Americans can find New York on a map and only 37% can find Iraq on a map.

Head over to the web site and help send a message to schools. Keep Americans educated on the world around them. There's a lot of cool stuff going on in the world. They shouldn't miss it.

[photo: noticelj]

Raise Money by Booking Travel Plans!

At the last Rotary meeting I attended the speaker was from Arkansas Sheriff's Youth Ranch. This awesome non-profit is a residential care facility (like a group home) for abandoned, abused and neglected children. The kids live in cottages in groups of 12 or less with two house parents. They are fed, cared for, go to public school and are allowed to stay in the care of the Ranch after they turn 18 so the organization can help them get through a tech school or college if they want or just to help them transition to total independence.

The organization and their residences sounds so great my husband and I are planning to go up for a tour of the facilities and are thinking of planning a small fund or supplies drive for them. (We haven't decided yet which but will let you know when we figure it out.)

In the meantime, if you or someone you know needs to book any travel plans, I just found out when I went over to the Ranch's web site, that if you book your travel plans there, some of the proceeds go to the Ranch. Pass the word!!