Change by Doing

Coffee Kids=Grounds for Hope

Andrew Mersmann — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 02:48:49 +0000

Photo: Coffee Kids

I drink more than my fair share of coffee. I know what I want and I’m not afraid of the scorn of my fellow customers nor the barista when I ask for my very specific order. I don’t crow about it or demand certain temperatures or anything too over the top, but if you drink essentially the same thing every morning for ages, you kind of plan on consistency.

Because it is often in the community conversations online and elsewhere, I grow ever more aware of things like free trade and shade grown and why they matter. Because my cup o’ Joe matters to me, a new (to me) organization that cares for coffee-growing families also matters to me. Coffee Kids works with local, community organizations in Latin America to improve programs in education, health awareness, micro-credit, food security, and capacity building. More than 125 million people around the world depend on the coffee harvest for their income. This is a nice grassroots effort putting the decision making in the farming community (instead of dropping in and telling a certain population what they need–a danger of many international organizations). The main job of Coffee Kids is to provide technical resources and support, training, and follow-through for the locals, based on the community’s needs and priorities. Since every coffee farming community is unique, every project has a unique focus–it is nice to see an organization serving many populations while rejecting a one-size-fits-all approach. There are four main categories of projects: Health Awareness and natural medicines (including pre- and post-natal care), Education (from learning materials to school building maintenance and even scholarships for higher education), Micro-Credit (more than 4,000 women are now running their own businesses through this initiative), and Capacity Building (bringing technical expertise into a region).

Photo: Coffee Kids

There are ways for you to help and get involved, in every day circumstances as well as in disaster relief situations, when Coffee Kids and their partners take the lead in these rural communities. Jump in–your cappuccino is worth a little give-back, doncha think?

Books for People—Turning Your Castoffs into Help for Homeless Kids

Andrew Mersmann — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 02:26:33 +0000

A brightly painted van just pulled away from my house. I had put out several cartons of books for them to pick up. When we moved across the country, I got very into purging and simplifying…just not in time before the moving vans came, so we moved a ton of stuff we should have shed before the westward trek. I had, throughout my life to this point, been loathe to ever part with a book. Textbooks I skillfully avoided reading throughout college, novels that weren’t particularly good but I felt it my duty to finish (I can’t leave a book unread once I start…it’s a flaw), design tomes that once graced coffee tables but are now well behind the curve of current décor, languages and hobbies I thought would be kicky to learn but never did–and no longer desire to learn…all of them went from shelf to shelf, apartment to house, box to unpacked box. In the glacially slow unearthing of the space in our garage, we dive into new stacks of boxes and cartons each weekend and inevitably end up with lots of charitable donations.

I won’t give to Salvation Army for a host of reasons, and there are other charities that take donations of used goods, but I feel have outgrown their direct usefulness to the communities they intend to serve…so I was pleased to discover Books for People. This non-profit comes to Los Angeles area homes to pick up boxes of books, CDs, and DVDs and distributes them or sells them to raise funds for charities serving homeless youth in Los Angeles. Donations they are not able to sell for charity are re-donated to local libraries, so none of it ends up in landfills. By donating to them, you are re-booking AND being green–and I love that. The current charity recipient of their fundraising/bookraising efforts is S.A.Y. Yes! Center for Youth Development, providing tutoring, nutritious meals, recreation, and support for the roughly 300 kids living on Los Angeles’ Skid Row. That is a huge commitment, filling a huge need–believe me, Skid Row kids need any leg up this world can provide–it is a hellacious place to be at any age.

Support what Books for People is up to. If you’re in the area, schedule a pick up here (it was the easiest thing to do, and everyone I dealt with via email, a confirmation call, and the drive who just left, was exceptionally professional and grateful).

Discover Culture of First Nations People at Ice Hotel, Quebec

Andrew Mersmann — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:32:50 +0000

A few years ago I got to cross off my bucket list the entry, “Stay at an Ice Hotel.” In Quebec, Canada, each year, the Hotel de Glace is constructed entirely of ice and snow. It is different each year with elaborate theme rooms carved from glowing ice with saturated lighting making everything ethereal (often slowly morphing from deep indigo to magenta to forest green and so on). The beds are ice, the glasses serving vodka in the bar are ice, the dance floor is snow, the walls are ice blocks, everything is frozen and genuinely a spectacle to be seen. There are a couple of heated trailers used as communal restrooms, and a hot tub…but aside from that, it’s pretty dang cold. The ice beds are topped with reindeer pelts as insulation, then there is a foam pad, and you are given a thermal sleeping bag with a washable silk liner. At bedtime, after the hotel is no longer open for tours, you leave all your luggage and belongings in big suitcase lockers at a building up the hill, then walk down to the ice hotel itself. They teach you techniques to put your clothes stacked on top of boots, and how to wrap yourself up like a mummy, but don’t cover your mouth since condensation will freeze and make you colder. It is not a romantic experience by any means, but not as edgy or uncomfortable as you might guess. The extreme cold outside your sleeping bag, and the extreme snuggliness of the world inside your bag, means you actually sleep for a few hours, if not the whole night through. I recommend a visit highly, to the Quebec ice hotel or one of the others in various Northern climes (but if asked to do it again, I’d probably cheerfully say once is enough for an overnight…but I’d love to visit during the day and early evening).

A thing I love about the Quebec Hotel de Glace, is that this year they are partnering with community members of the First Nations of Northern Quebec—the Inuit, Cris, Innus, and the Huronne-Wendat Nation as the host Nation, will promote their communities through various activities and demonstrations. During the last three weekends of February, game tasting, artistic performances, traditional Native camps, local initiative regarding durable development, and much more will be on hand, providing a fresh avenue for cross-cultural understanding. This makes it the perfect time to go.

Enjoy! (Brrrrrrr)

Welcome to Responsible Tourism Week 2012

Andrew Mersmann — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 03:21:14 +0000

This week, February 13-18, is Responsible Tourism Week, with social media challenges (today’s is: “Be generous and write a testimonial on someone’s media page”), tomorrow’s, for Valentine’s Day, is to “Be Empathetic” and so on throughout the week. There are online webcasts and united conversations with National Parks departments and micro-finance companies as well as workshops for travel providers. Explore the link above and click around. There is also a mandate to tourism and travel bloggers to inspire conversation about how to be a citizen of the world in a way that is respectful to the communities we visit—OK, I made that part up, but that is the spirit of this week. Find new ways to interact with your world, find out new things about cultures about which you wonder, explore travel bargains to finally go to the spot that has been humming in the back of your brain, donate to a cause for a culture beyond your own, reach out and write or call to that old travel companion like you’ve been meaning to do and re-connect and catch up…just find a way to be different in the world this week, in a way that reaches beyond your boundaries of last week.

Get out there and occur in a big way. There is no downside to being more connected to the world.

Okaeri Project–Preserving and Renewing Memories in Japan

Andrew Mersmann — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:55:24 +0000

I am over the moon about this project, the Okaeri Project, dedicated to those who suffered in the earthquake and tsunami in Eastern Japan. Bookbinders around the world are laboring with love as they make handmade, bound, and stitched photo albums for the people of the area devastated by the flooding. It was initiated by the Tokyo Bookbinders Club and there are artists and printers volunteering from nations across the globe. Simultaneously, photo printers, film companies, and lots of volunteers are coming together for the painstaking task of cleaning and restoring photos that were discovered among the muddy wreckage. Eventually, newly printed or restored family memories and new beautifully crafted albums worthy of the honor will be united and given to the families. Cherished episodes of happier times will once again be in the hands of kin. The albums are beautiful, the sentiment even more so. Most of the month of March, the albums will be on display at Ofunato Civic Cultural Hall in Japan, and then families will be given the newly minted memory books with a big dose of support from around the world.

Paragility. Canine tricks and obstacles are the very least of it.

Andrew Mersmann — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 02:41:35 +0000

Wow. As the adult lifts the young person from the wheelchair, and so lovingly and carefully works through the canine agility course with child and doting dog…it takes my breath away. To watch how the dog makes absolutely certain the kid is fine before every obstacle…THAT is how dogs make every day better.

So the World May Hear–Starkey Hearing Foundation

Andrew Mersmann — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:21:41 +0000

When I was a kid, not yet a dozen years old, a girl moved into our neighborhood who was deaf. She was the daughter of the pastor of the church on the corner, and since she was our age, several of us decided to learn American Sign Language. We tried to self teach (a big deal for eleven-year-olds) and I seem to remember an adult giving us a few classes. My memory is fuzzy as to why we quit, but even through the haze of time, I certainly still know my hand alphabet, so if needed, I could communicate in a slow, spelled out, laborious way (if, for instance, I was on a desert island where there was no pen or paper…or computer…or texting phone…or stick in the sand…). I have a few friends who are quite fluent in ASL and sign as volunteer work teaching, even a friend who used to sign Broadway shows, perched on the corner of the stage apron, for special performances. I’ve always been jealous of them–to watch someone sign, especially lyrics of a song, is truly beautiful.

This comes to mind because of a conversation I had last night with an old friend who has been working in audiology–fitting people for hearing aids and calibrating the devices (which are sooooo much more advanced than the clunky and squealing things that my Grandpa had in the arms of his chunky horn-rimmed glasses). This friend told me about her hopes to start working with the Starkey Hearing Foundation on some of their Global Hearing Missions. The foundation goes to developing nations–more than 100 trips to impoverished regions each year–and using donated old hearing aids, takes the components out to build new assisted listening devices, and gives the gift of sound to hundreds of thousands of children and adults. That is the gift of hearing a mother’s voice for the first time…or music…or birdsong…or the children around you playing…or laughter…or wind in the trees… Thousands of volunteers and donors around the world bring hearing to more than 50,000 new patients each year. Making a donation to become a “Hearing Angel” is a great way to make the music in your life a little louder, to be heard by more minds and stir a few more souls.

Caring Bridge–a Brilliant Service I Hope You Never Need

Andrew Mersmann — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:22:38 +0000

Several years ago, when a then acquaintance and now dear, dear friend, was valiantly fighting (and eventually kicking the ass of) Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, she spent a lot of time in the hospital, and more time in bed at home, wiped out by the battle raging within and the weapons used by the doctors to win. As is so beautifully the case around the world when a friend or family member faces illness or is somehow incapacitated, those in the inner circle rally and come around to make life a bit easier in any way they can…ordering in favorite take-out food, bringing cookies, getting kids to school or appointments, taking care of pets, driving to doctor’s appointments, just hanging out quietly, springing for a massage or manicure or some way to indulge, fresh flowers…there are as many ways to reach out in a caring way as there are people who are inclined to do so.

One of the things I remember so vividly from that time was that our friend’s partner sent out a chain of emails with amazing regularity and incredible detail, updating those of us that weren’t in regular contact on her condition and current needs. His messages were witty and erudite and filled with every little nubbin of info…that’s his style, but I remember not only having the thought myself, but also discussing with several mutual friends: This is amazing how we are able to follow this journey. A large group of us laughed and cried and laughed a lot more, and knew how we could best check in, and know when NOT to bring the fourteenth tuna noodle casserole thinking it would be just what she wanted. Even from afar, I felt so close to the day-to-day, and remember thinking there should be a way for any family to do this, to keep loved ones in the loop.

Caring Bridge is a non-profit organization, funded by donors, that provides free, private websites to people experiencing significant health challenges so they can maintain and strengthen contact and communication. It is a personal and private space for health updates as well as messages and support from all the friends/family/colleagues/community, and it saves time and emotional energy when those things are at a premium. Not having to tell the story of what the doctor said or how a treatment is going a zillion times to a zillion well-meaning friends can be liberating for a patient and immediate circle. Photos, updates, health reports, well wishes, needs and requests, all of it can be posted on the easy-to-set-up websites, and a patient can read them any time of day or night, since energy and visiting times don’t always correspond. Every day, more than half a million people are already using the service in more than 225 countries around the world.

In this age of constant contact and social media, what better use of communication technology than finding ways to support one another? If you’d like to support Caring Bridge with a tax-deductible donation, click here.

The Nature of Wildworks–Volunteering in the Animal Kingdom

Andrew Mersmann — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:26:06 +0000

Someone recently told me a bit about The Nature of Wildworks, a charitable organization in Topanga, California, that is dedicated to interactive wildlife education programs, to enhance our understanding and respect for wild animals while simultaneously ensuring lifetime quality care for non-releasable wild animals. The facility is currently home to 45 wild animals that have been displaced from zoos, confiscated from people who had been keeping them as illegal “pets,” or rescued orphaned and injured animals. Most of the species living out their lives here are native to California, including snakes, birds of prey, bobcat, coyote, wolf, fox, skunk, opossum, tortoise, and more…even a blind mountain lion named Pirate. These are well cared for and highly respected animals who also work hard in the field of education. Many of the animals make classroom visits to teach kids about the amazing world outside their doors, and how to take a stand and care for wildlife.

Volunteers make the world of Nature of Wildworks go ’round, including direct animal care (after appropriate training classes and orientation). There is also volunteer need for such tasks as wildlife presentation, fundraising, clerical/office, construction, grant writing, advertising, or some other as-yet-unthought-of way for you to contribute your talents and passion. Check them out…WRITE a check to support them (tax-deductible), and align yourself with their mission to make sure we all respect and care for wild animals.

Video below is of Pirate, the blind mountain lion, and his pumpkin…LOVE HIM!!!

Downs Designs–Because Off-the-Rack Doesn’t Work for Everyone

Andrew Mersmann — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 02:34:48 +0000

Photo: Downs Designs

I find this so fascinating and inspiring….It is not a surprise when we talk about it, but a detail most of us never consider. People with Down syndrome can’t comfortably wear a lot of the same clothes as those without the congenital disorder. The creator of Downs Designs was sick and tired of not being able to buy clothes for her granddaughter who has Down syndrome—not only were off-the-rack clothes uncomfortable, they could even be dangerous with pants dragging on the ground. You see, people with Down syndrome tend to have shorter and thicker limbs, a shorter neck, and shorter stature than those without the condition. Under-active thyroid can cause weight gain and some muscle slackness, and many have a particular discomfort and aversion to restrictive clothing. Add to the physical issues of clothes that don’t fit the slam to self-esteem from feeling perpetually awkward because of what you are wearing, and it takes a larger toll than you might imagine.

Downs Designs has created jeans for men and women that taper at the knee of a person with Down syndrome (typically with a shorter femur, so the knee is higher up the leg) and expandable waist, and different styles for specific body types. They also carry a full-figure, long-sleeve t-shirt for women with raglan sleeves for a better shoulder fit, and what they call “Down Sizing” with a scoop hem, V-neck, and ribbed cuffs. They have had to create sizes and cuts that never existed before, and the result has been rewarding for the company founders as well as customers who finally have someone addressing their fit issues from a place of understanding.

Their mission: Our goal is for people with Down syndrome to have proper fitting clothes that fit their unique body shapes and have style as well. Our clothes are more than just shortening a sleeve or taking up a hem. They fit at the elbows and knees appropriately. Fasteners will be simple to open and close. These clothes are made to fit! We promise that rolling up sleeves and hems will no longer be a problem and settling for uncomfortable clothing because there are no other options will become a thing of the past.