Our Bosque para Siempre project caught the attention of a PBS producer, and after being filmed in Vermont and Costa Rica, we are featured in a documentary titled Saving Songbirds! Released this fall by New Hampshire PBS, it will go national in early 2012. It’s an awesome film that addresses some of our work. Check it out here!
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.
We raised over $14,000 during para la Tierra 2011, our annual fundraiser benefitting our Bosque para Siempre project in Costa Rica and Vermont! Bosque para Siempre is our flagship project, providing migratory corridors for neotropical birds (our migrating songbirds) and native rain forest species. To date we’ve helped purchase 72.3 acres of conserved land, and have partnered with other organizations and families to create hundreds of hectares of safe rain and cloud forest for these birds.
Para la Tierra is a series of events, usually on one weekend, but Hurricane Irene changed the schedule this year! We held our first two events to give a voice to the benefits of conservation and the power of creativity and community. Bonk for the Bellbirds, a sidewalk chalk drawing extravaganza in downtown Woodstock, VT enabled people of all ages to beautify the village sidewalks of Woodstock. In the midst of flood relief, drawing on the sidewalks was a fun and beautiful way to raise awareness about international environmental efforts and raise spirits during a stressful time in the community. Some drawings advocated for a reduction of
carbon in our atmosphere, which we contribute to through our reforestation efforts.
Beauty for the Bellbirds, a fun booth full of award winning youth art with a focus on the environment, also was held as scheduled. Change the World Kids members and Alums created a variety of pieces for the show, including photographs and a large scale piece titled “Migration” that utilized handmade paper. In addition to the artwork, we featured Fair Trade Costa Rican coffee, our signature homemade Plastic Bag Dryers, and other goodies.
Our gala dinner was held at the Woodstock Inn and Resort Country Club where guests enjoyed a five-course gourmet meal prepared by Chef Greg Farrell, a full silent auction, and an exclusive presentation of CTWK reforestation efforts. It was an awesome evening. Check out our photo gallery!
If you were unable to attend but wish to still contribute to our efforts to improve biodiversity, please feel free to donate via PayPal on our website.
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.
On Friday, May 27, we held our second Great Garments for Global Good clothing sale, followed by our annual yard sale on the lawn on Saturday, May 28. Shoppers declared that they found quality items, bargains, great finds, and had fun! Both events offered a creative solution to get things out of your home, and make a positive difference for our communities and planet. This is an annual event put on by the Change The World Kids, so look for it again next year in May!
Walk the Walk 2011 was a huge success! Part of our Teens Connecting Continents Uganda project, this effort raises funds to support the education and health of children in Uganda who suffered during its twenty-year civil war. Child soldiers. Girls and boys beset by violence of many types. We cannot take away their histories, but we can make a difference for their futures.
During the Ugandan Civil War, thousands of children walked and ran miles each night to escape the atrocities of the war. Now these displaced children – many orphans – walk miles each day seeking food, education, and shelter.
Walk the Walk 2011 encouraged people to go beyond “talking the talk” and take steps to action, metaphorically representing the nightly wartime walks of these children. Over 150 people participated, and we raised over $2,000 support sustainable quality education for this rising generation of impoverished Ugandans, abandoned through conflicts and diseases of war!
Last year one of the Change the World Kids went to Uganda and helped put the Walk the Walk 2010 funds to work building and supporting schools. That money provided:
We are thrilled about the establishment of a $3,000 annual scholarship in honor of our service and dedication to our community!
Lois and Harvey Watson, long-time Woodstock, Vermont, community supporters, were motivated to create the scholarship after observing our work for the past seven years. “We watch them do so much good and not ask for anything in return. This is something we can do for them,” states Lois.
The first year college scholarship will be given to a Change the World Kid senior, who is a member of the Woodstock Founding Chapter of the Change the World Kids. It is recognition of their service as a Change the World Kid to the greater Woodstock community and their academic excellence. The Watsons intend the scholarship as a boost for the recipient’s first year in college and motivator for their future.
For the Watsons, the community is important. Harvey grew up in Taftsville, and his community spirit is well known to many, particularly those who frequented the Taftsville General Store of which he was the proprietor for many years. Both Lois and Harvey love the outdoors and appreciate our commitment to the environment.
Lois and Harvey believe that everyone should try to give something back to our community. Of Change the World Kids, Lois says, “They make my heart soar.”
Change the World Kid Alanna Ojibway is the Vermont winner of the 2010 AXA Achievement Scholarship given in association with U.S. News and World report! She is honored for her leadership and hard work in our community and the project she launched in Uganda (now our Teens Connecting Continents Uganda initiative) that is improving education and health for orphans of the Ugandan Civil War. Check out our Walk the Walk link to learn more.
Incredibly, two other Change the World Kids have been declared AXA Achievement Scholars: Zoe Isaacs in 2008 and Heidi Keller in 2010.
Why do people go hungry in our world, when we have pantries and refrigerators stocked full of food – enough to waste? What are sustainable food practices, local and global? Are we blind to the effects of our eating habits? These are issues of food justice that we are working to address.
Food justice is the affirmation that everyone should have accessible, fresh, and affordable healthy food that is produced in a fair manner. This requires that we develop a sustainable and socially responsible food system, which meets the needs of the people and respects the environment. Food justice seeks to provide healthy food in communities – small and huge, rural and urban, economically poor or wealthy. It mandates consideration of future generations, and supports freedom for people to grow and choose their own food. Creating justice involves community building and social change, to help provide food security.
Our latest effort is building a root cellar for the Woodstock VT Food Shelf! A root cellar keeps vegetables and fruit from withering and spoiling during the winter without using electricity by maintaining a temperature between 32°F and 40°F and a humidity of between 80-90%. We’re in the planning stage, but intend to put our late harvest into an awesome root cellar so more produce can be offered to patrons of the Food Shelf year-round!
Anyone have root cellar construction tips?
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.
