April 28, 2012
1.) Cultivate: To nurture; foster. Socially polished; Refined.
1.) Cultivate: To nurture; foster. Socially polished; Refined.
The way we live and treat one another is improving in communities where compassion for others is being revived. There are many stories around the world of ordinary people doing extraordinary things to help their communities. The examples modeled by people everyday provide answers and solutions to many of today’s problems.
One of the biggest challenges that we face today as a society is our unwillingness to be the difference the world needs. It is much easier to complain and wine instead. I believe that we all posses the ability to be difference makers and world changers. Unfortunately many of us are just not interested in taking the necessary steps to improve the conditions of others.
History continues to repeat itself and we continue to overlook the solutions to today’s problems. If only we’d follow the remnants and threads of productivity both old and new, we would rediscover practical solutions. Going forward I am extremely hopeful and excited about the amazing possibilities of today and tomorrow.
I have taken the liberty of providing a few articles on positive people doing positive things. I believe that we have to be reminded of what we are capable of from time to time.
WWW.CLOUD77PRO.COM TM ©April 2012
by Ade
No more food deserts. The drought is over!
You might be wondering what, exactly, is a food desert. Well, in the city of Chicago, it’s a pretty big problem. A problem in which entire communities have severely limited access to fresh fruits and veggies, and therefore suffer from significant health issues related to poor diets.
After reading a 2006 report that mapped food deserts in Chicago, a group of community activists banded together to work on a solution. Steven Casey and Jeff Pinzino were soon joined by Sheelah Muhammad. The three of them brought together the combination of skills and talents that helped make Fresh Moves a reality.
But this was not an easy problem to solve. The simple fact was that opening a traditional market wouldn’t address the multi-neighborhood needs quickly or efficiently. National chains have difficulty finding large parcels of affordable urban land to support their high costs of operation. Independents can’t gamble on unproven locations, and ethnic markets are slow to grow. So despite high profit margins for fresh foods and substantial unmet demand, Food Desert Action had to think outside the big box.
The answer? Put the whole thing on wheels! So Food Desert Action sprang into, well, ACTION. They were able to secure a bus, donated from the CTA. They partnered with Architecture for Humanity to transform the bus into a mobile produce market. They worked with volunteers at EPIC to put together this website. And now, they’re working hard to bring the Lawndale community fresh, delicious, nutritious produce – and educating the public at large about how fun it can be to eat healthily.
Want to get involved or learn more? Contact the FOOD DESERT ACTION team directly – fooddesertaction@gmail.com.
Fresh Moves Mobile Grocery Store An Innovative Solution To Food Deserts (PHOTOS)
In a move that exemplified Rahm Emanuel's approach to Chicago's most intractable problems, the city's new mayor sat down on Wednesday with the leaders of six major grocery-store chains to address the crisis of the city's so-called "food deserts."
For hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans, the nearest fresh fruits and vegetables are a mile or more away. This leaves residents stuck either taking long rides on public transportation and bringing back only what they can carry, or eating the processed and packaged foods available at the corner store.
Food deserts, areas that are distant from the nearest fresh foods, are a serious public health crisis, causing a marked uptick in diet-related illness like diabetes, obesity and cancer. Minorities and lower-income Chicagoans are far more likely to live in food deserts, which are almost entirely on the city's South Side.
Emanuel's "Food Desert Summit" sought to entice major grocery chains to invest in new stores in food deserts. But a small group of devoted activists have been working on the problem from the opposite direction.
A few years ago, Steven Casey, Jeff Pinzino and Sheelah Muhammad hatched the idea for the Fresh Moves bus, a mobile grocery store that would bring fresh groceries directly to the communities that needed them most.
(Scroll down to look inside the bus.)
"We talked to a couple of grocers, and realized that bricks and mortar wasn't the quickest solution, that the barriers to entry were too great," said Muhammad, now the board secretary at Fresh Moves, in a phone interview with Huffington Post Chicago. "We wanted a solution that was more flexible, that met the needs of more residents in more communities."
The group was helped by a few key partners. The Chicago Transit Authority donated a bus for them to use, Architecture for Humanity helped transform the bus into a grocery store, and EPIC helped build their website.
On May 23, the bus began running routes in Lawndale and Austin, making three stops a day, two days a week. And the demand has been overwhelming: in its first five days, project manager Dara Cooper told HuffPost the bus served over 600 customers.
"The first day, it was pouring raining, and we sold out of organic collard greens the first hour," Cooper said. "We sold out of mangoes, cherry tomatoes, it was amazing."
Fresh Moves gives the produce it doesn't sell to homeless shelters. But so far, that hasn't been much. While much of their food is locally sourced and organic, they are also very focused on affordability. "When you talk about access [to fresh food], part of it is geographic," Cooper said, "but a big part of it is monetary, too."
Goodness Greeness, an organic food supplier, offers Fresh Moves a discount, and they're able to keep prices low across the board. "I'm always so excited when people get to the cash register and they realize they can grab something else and put it in the bag," Sheelah Muhammad said.
The most important lesson for both Muhammad and Cooper, though, was debunking the myth that low-income people didn't want fruits and vegetables, that they preferred fast food and junk food.
"We're proving that unfounded theory wrong," Muhammad said. "There's a huge demand for this. They're tired of the fast food, they're tired of the lack of options."
As Fresh Moves looks to expand its bus service to new routes and new neighborhoods, more and more people in Chicago's food deserts could have another option rolling down their streets before long.
School on a bus brings classes to Indian slums
Monday, 07 November 2011
A school-on-wheels in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad is the only chance for children living in slums to have an education. (Reuters)
REUTERS HYDERABAD
On a hot afternoon, a bright orange bus drives into a slum area of the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, parking amidst shelters made of tarpaulins and bits of wood. Barefoot children come running, eyes shining, and troop inside.
It’s a school on wheels that brings education to the doorstep of disadvantaged children such as these every day, halting for several hours at a time in different parts of the sprawling city.
The children, whose parents are day laborers on construction sites, or work as rag pickers and maids, either never go to school or drop out once enrolled. Many have to work as hard as their parents to pay off family debts.
It’s a school on wheels that brings education to the doorstep of disadvantaged children such as these every day, halting for several hours at a time in different parts of the sprawling city.
The children, whose parents are day laborers on construction sites, or work as rag pickers and maids, either never go to school or drop out once enrolled. Many have to work as hard as their parents to pay off family debts.
“These children have no time to go to school, unless the school comes to them,” said T.L. Reddy, founder of the CLAP Foundation, a non-governmental organization that runs the mobile school.
“At first we prepared a temporary tent in their slum to give basic education for the children. Then slowly we developed the concept of a school inside a vehicle to attract more.”
Reddy, a teacher for 25 years, first thought of doing something for the children when they caught his attention a decade ago. After gathering donations and setting up the tent first, they began operating the bus three years ago.
The inside of the bus is bright and clean, its walls festooned with the alphabet, numbers and pictures of fruit and animals. Children perch on seats around the inside of the bus, writing on slates they hold on their laps.
Some days, the bus is so full that children sit cross-legged on the floor as a sari-clad teacher talks to them.
“The teaching is good in this bus and nobody beats us,” said 10-year-old Devi, who enrolled in the first grade of primary school three years ago but soon dropped out.
She attends school in between helping her father collect rags, and hopes to be a teacher.
Manjula, another 10-year-old girl, bubbles with excitement about her studies and wants to be a doctor to bring medical care to slum children such as herself.
“Now I can read and write from 1 to 200 numbers,” she said.
The goal, Reddy said, is to teach the children enough for them to be mainstreamed into government schools. So far, some 40 children have done so despite the considerable odds.
“The greatest hurdles are things ranging from the erratic schedule of the students, and the varied mindset of their families,” he added.
But the school’s greatest achievement may be something far more simple.
“This is the only chance they get to be kids, even if it is for only two hours,” Reddy said.
“At first we prepared a temporary tent in their slum to give basic education for the children. Then slowly we developed the concept of a school inside a vehicle to attract more.”
Reddy, a teacher for 25 years, first thought of doing something for the children when they caught his attention a decade ago. After gathering donations and setting up the tent first, they began operating the bus three years ago.
The inside of the bus is bright and clean, its walls festooned with the alphabet, numbers and pictures of fruit and animals. Children perch on seats around the inside of the bus, writing on slates they hold on their laps.
Some days, the bus is so full that children sit cross-legged on the floor as a sari-clad teacher talks to them.
“The teaching is good in this bus and nobody beats us,” said 10-year-old Devi, who enrolled in the first grade of primary school three years ago but soon dropped out.
She attends school in between helping her father collect rags, and hopes to be a teacher.
Manjula, another 10-year-old girl, bubbles with excitement about her studies and wants to be a doctor to bring medical care to slum children such as herself.
“Now I can read and write from 1 to 200 numbers,” she said.
The goal, Reddy said, is to teach the children enough for them to be mainstreamed into government schools. So far, some 40 children have done so despite the considerable odds.
“The greatest hurdles are things ranging from the erratic schedule of the students, and the varied mindset of their families,” he added.
But the school’s greatest achievement may be something far more simple.
“This is the only chance they get to be kids, even if it is for only two hours,” Reddy said.
CHARTER FOR COMPASSION GAINS SUPPORT
27 MAR 2012
More than 85,000 individuals, organisations and cities have now signed up to endorse the Charter for Compassion, a document that aims to inspire compassionate action around the world
Karen Armstrong speaking at TEDGlobal 2009 in Oxford Photo © TED / James Duncan Davidson
The document states: “Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity,” adding that it is a necessary resource in creating “a just economy and a peaceful global community.”
Recent signatories include the Canadian city of London, Ontario, which has a population of 350,000 and is the first official Compassionate City in Canada and also includes the first school to formally endorse the charter. Meanwhile, Spalding University in Louisville, US, is the first university in the world to be designated a Compassionate University.
Internationally, there are over 70 cities and regions working towards official adoption of the Compassionate City status, from New Delhi in India to Nottingham in the UK. Governing bodies in each city will work with citizens to develop means of cooperation and empowerment.
The charter calls for empathy with the suffering of all human beings – even those regarded as enemies – as well as for accurate information to be given to young people in order to encourage a “positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity.”
Physical and spoken acts of violence, as well as the exploitation or denial of people’s basic rights, are condemned in the document as it urges us to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion. Any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate, it states.
“One of the chief tasks of our time must surely be to build a global community in which all peoples can live together in mutual respect,” explains the founder of the charter, Dr Karen Armstrong, in her book Twelve Steps to A Compassionate Life, published in 2011. “Yet religion,” she continues, “which should be making a major contribution, is seen as part of the problem. All faiths insist that compassion is the test of true spirituality and that it brings us into relation with the transcendence we call God, Brahman, Nirvana or Dao.”
In her book, Karen looks at religious history alongside neuroscience and finds that our brains have evolved for us to be caring and to need care. By investigating our enemies, knowing their history and participating in dialogue, we can stop the vicious cycles of attack and counterattack, Karen believes.
“We need to create a world democracy in which everybody’s aspirations are taken seriously,” she says. “In the last resort, this kind of ‘love’ and ‘concern for everybody’ will serve our best interests better than short sighted policies.”
A former nun, acclaimed theologian, historian and author, Karen received a TED Award (Technology, Entertainment and Design) in 2008, which enabled her to create the charter. As well as the $100,000 prize, Karen was also granted a ‘wish for a better world’, which TED would help her fulfil.
“I asked TED to help me create, launch and propagate a Charter for Compassion that would be written by leading thinkers from a variety of major faiths and would restore compassion to the heart of religious and moral life,” explains Karen.
Members of the public – of any or of no faith – were invited to help shape to the charter. Through the project’s website, more than 150,000 people from 180 countries were involved in submitting and commenting upon contributions. Drawing on this input, an interfaith group of religious leaders then crafted the final charter.
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