Please help! From an impoverished school in Uganda, where she is administering our Teens Connecting Continents Uganda project (see Walk the Walk and Global Work) Change the World Kid Alum Alanna proposed that would help make a dramatic change for the health of the schoolchildren. Help start a small farm to create a reliable source of food! Some days the children have no food at all, and when there is food, their diet is meager.  People in the community are anxious to grow crops, and some have offered to donate animals to the school, but land is expensive.  If many of us contribute even a small amount, we can purchase the land and help with start-up costs.

Our 2012 Anti-Cabin Fever Dinners start on Wednesday, January 4! Robert Meyers and chefs from Three Tomatoes Trattoria will prepare a fabulous kick-off meal. Our 2011 dinner season was our best ever, and this year’s will be equally as stupendous!  These dinners offer a great way to get out of the house, break up the week, and see friends on long cold winter nights. Each Wednesday until the end of March, a local chef, many from the area’s best restaurants, prepared a delicious meal. We had a full house for almost every dinner of the season.

Thanks to our incredible 2011 chefs: Michael Bellefeuille, Charlet Davenport, Nick Mahood, Brandon Little, Jason Merrill, Michelle Harris, Brian Allen, Sophie Starr, Edie Crocker, Change The World Kids, Alphonse Harris, Dan Croft, and Dennis Vieira.

These dinners are FUN, plus they subsidize costs for our annual work trip to re-forest Bosque para Siempre, the migratory rain forest habitat in Costa Rica that we are helping to conserve and reforest, and that supports our Vermont neo-tropical migrant birds, as well as native rain forest species.

Dinner is at 6:00 in the North Universalist Chapel dining hall in Woodstock, VT and costs $9.00 for adults and $5.00 for children.  Seating is limited, so reservations are suggested.  Please call (457-2622) or email us(changetheworldkids@yahoo.com) to get weekly menus. Come dine, laugh, and beat the winter blahs and blues!

Check out our galleries for more fun and interesting photos from the 2011 Anti-Cabin Fever Season.

Chins up! Measurement of growth rate took a new perspective at the sold-out grand finale of the Change the World Kids’ Let It Grow Wild! facial hair contest last Wednesday evening. Since January, members of our community, including teens and gentlemen who had been shaving for decades, took a break and grew for green. The evening was wildly fun.

The ten contestants — Ed Doton, Billy Gault, Jim Grossman, Doug Johnson, Ben Kaija, Howard Mayhew, Dave McFarlin, Alex Melville, Andy Townley, and Rich Vanderweit — excelled in world-class style and creativity. 60s wide goatee. Bushy lumberjack. Soul patch. Mountain man. Virile Italian crisp style.

The judges, Kent McFarland, Anne Dean, and Alison Clarkson, measured and deliberated for an hour. Facial hair was judged by three criteria: length and mass; style, and popular vote. Equipped with calipers, measuring tapes, tweezers, and magnifying glasses, they scrutinized each contender. Guests watched the proceedings while enjoying a fabulous dinner prepared by Michael Bellefeuille of the Movable Feast.

Change the World Kids declared everyone a winner and presented each contestant with a home-baked burly man’s pie. The final decision of the judges? Change the World Kid Alex Melville took the prize for style. Billy Gault took the length/mass prize with his massive beard. Howard Mayhew won the popular vote. Ed Doton was the runner-up and won double dessert.

When the contestants paraded into hall, the audience cheered. Each contestant had put his face forward to help make a positive difference in the world. The community supported them and a group of local teens that works hard to help individuals and our environment. The evening raised over $1,400 and will help to send us on a work trip to our Bosque para Siempre corridor.

Our magazine Regeneration is almost two years old, and we’ve published our fifth issue!  Its mission is to promote an ecologically and socially responsible lifestyle, and to encourage local and global environmental activism for future generations.  Our issues in 2011 were dedicated to Biodiversity  (Dr. Jane Goodall contributed an article!) and Mobility. Our spring/summer issue of 2012 is about Air..  The magazine is available for free at a wide range of businesses and organizations throughout the Upper Valley and Vermont.  For delivery by post, we appreciate donations to cover shipping.  Back issues of Regeneration will soon be available on our website!

Congratulations to the winners of our raffle, who live in Northeast Harbor, Maine! The raffle raised over $8,500 to benefit our Teens Connecting Continents project in Rwanda. Artist Henry Isaacs generously donated a painting titled, “View to Tanzania from Akagera, Rwanda (oil on linen, 38×52”),” painted just down the road from Rwinkwavu, where our project is serving children. The view is of the border area that once was the scene of tragedy during the Genocide. Now the area has a promising future as a national park. With great appreciation, we thank everyone who purchased tickets and made this raffle a success.

350

We are part of an international movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis. Check out our 10/10/10 event!

In 2009, advocacy occurred before the December climate treaty meeting of world leaders in Copenhagen, and stressed the critical importance of reducing the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere below 350.

On October 24, 2009, we joined people all over the world who held events inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis, and to create a new sense of urgency and of possibility for our planet. We held two events in Woodstock, VT, and Change the World Kids were in Times Square with Bill McKibben holding signs and calling out for change. In Vermont, in the pouring rain and temperatures slightly above freezing, people joined us to advocate for significant and immediate change. It was awesome.

Forever Forest 350

The Forever Forest 350! Change the World Kids are partnering with Three Tomatoes Trattoria to reduce the carbon in our atmosphere, and improve the survival rate of neo-tropical migrant songbirds that divide their lives between Vermont and New Hampshire, and Central America. Cool! Last year we received 641 tree sponsorships of $1.

00, and Three Tomatoes donated 350 additional trees. What to help? Send $1.00 for each tree that you’d like to sponsor.

These trees will be planted in Forever Forest 350 tree plots. One plot will be the in migrant songbirds’ summer breeding habitat, and one will be in their winter feeding grounds. The trees will be chosen for their benefit to the birds, and the sites will be selected to provide optimal environmental benefits, which may include species that provide maximum carbon sequestration, riparian buffer, erosion prevention, softening of field and forest edges, or connecting forest fragments.

Seven years ago with Costa Rican biologists and conservationists, Change the World Kids established “Bosque para Siempre, “ a migratory corridor in Costa Rica critical to the survival of indigenous birds and neo-tropical migrants from Vermont.  This successful effort focuses on habitat purchase, reforestation, and education in Costa Rica to preserve a refuge for migrating and resident species. such as the at-risk three-wattled bellbird. The Forever Forest 350 will extend this effort into the northeastern United States.

Save Energy for Free 350

Good day sunshine – harnessing the power of the sunshine and the breezes! To encourage, educate, and energize people, we gathered to make clotheslines be things of beauty – for the visual eye and for the future of our planet. We painted clothespins, pinned them on 350 inches of clothesline, and created diaries to record the annual energy savings of 350 households that choose to use renewable energy instead of fossil fuels to dry their laundry.

Download this Poster: 350 poster download