PARA LA TIERRA 2010

How can you inspire hope, increase the survival rate of songbirds, help teenagers, support local farmers, nurture creativity, and conserve rain forest while having fun? On September 10-12, we will offer a weekend of events that do just that, and help reforest degraded acres of critical migratory bird habitat in Vermont and Costa Rica.

Beauty for the Bellbirds will kick-off the weekend to benefit our Bosque para Siempre project. On Friday evening until dark and Saturday morning, we’ll hold a sidewalk chalk-drawing extravaganza on the village sidewalks of Woodstock, Vermont! People of all ages and artistic abilities and talents are invited to draw artwork that reflects the importance of conservation for our and future generations, and the magnificence of the environment.

Our annual para la Tierra dinner is on Sunday evening and will be held at the new carefully crafted venue at beautiful Cloudland Farm in Woodstock. The views from the porch and dining room are lovely. The evening will feature a fabulous dinner with a focus on local farm-raised food. We’ll host a silent auction, which includes incredible trips, hand-crafted jewelry and other items, art, many pieces from Costa Rica, and more. We’ll premier the latest edition of our presentation RARE: Research, Action, Results, and the Environment and footage done by Vermont filmmakers Anne Macksoud and Nora Jacobson for The Vermont Movie, which features the Change the World Kids.

Last year’s para la Tierra weekend raised $13,667 for habitat purchase and reforestation in Bosque para Siempre!

Walk the Walk is an effort to raise money and awareness for children in Uganda who have 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.

Join us, and “Walk the Walk” on Saturday, May 1. It is a three-mile, multi-generational walk that starts at 5:30PM at the Dothan Brook School in Hartford, VT. The path proceeds along the bike path to the Hartford High School. All those who participate in the walk are asked to get sponsorships or to make a donation, large or small. At the high school, you can experience a simulated refugee camp. Starting at 8:00, you are invited to spend the night in the gym listening to former child soldiers tell their stories, viewing movies about Uganda, hearing talks by people engaged in this issue, and discussing how we can help. Transportation is provided back to the Dothan Brook School.

Every penny of sponsorships and donations go directly toward helping a school in Uganda. This school is set up for children who missed out on years of schooling because they had either been kidnapped by soldiers or removed from their home due to the war. The walk symbolizes the ten to fifteen mile walks that thousands of Ugandan children made every night to find somewhere safe to sleep. Please join us on this walk. Every small step you take will go a long way.

We are featured in People Magazine in the issue including Earth Day 2010!

People Magazine selected us as one of three leading youth environmental crusaders in the United States. They photographed us while we planted white pine seedlings along the Ottauquechee River in Vermont.

The recognition is for our work to protect and reforest critical habitat for songbirds, the mission of our Bosque para Siempre project.  In June 21 of us travel to Costa Rica to continue to reforest a migratory corridor that is this winter feeding ground of birds from the Northeast and other parts of the United States, as well as essential habitat for indigenous rain forest species. After piloting Phase 2 of our Bosque para Siempre project last year, we launched the initiative this spring. Our mission is to improve the summer breeding habitat of migrating songbirds. Our partners in this work include US Fish & Wildlife, Audubon, and local conservations organizations.

Throughout the season we plan to help plant 10,000 trees in degraded wetlands, on river banks, and along forest edges to provide food and shelter during the time that the birds breed and prepare for their migration. We’ll also help stabilize riverbanks, remove invasive species, and establish riparian buffers and forest corridors.

On May 29, we’ll hold our second Great Garments for Global Good clothing sale in the social hall, followed by our annual yard sale on the lawn on May 30.  These events offer quality items, bargains, great finds, and fun. You probably have cool clothes, jewelry, and accessories that you don’t wear or use. And you probably have furniture or things in your home that you simply don’t need, and someone else may love to use! We offer a creative solution to get them out of your home, plus make a positive difference for our communities and planet.

How can you help?

Donate good to excellent items (stuff you’d like to buy, gently-used) or baked goods. Items can be left by the green door on the left front side of the Universalist Church in Woodstock, VT, beginning on April 30. Please call 802-457-2622 before dropping off large or valuable pieces, and please no old computers, electronic equipment that does not work perfectly, office equipment, or large appliances. It’s helpful if you bring clothing in plastic bags or cardboard boxes.

Come to the Friday evening event on May 29 between 5:30-8:30 in the dining hall of the Universalist Church in Woodstock. Catch up with friends and find some great outfits!

Join us at our yard sale on Saturday, May 30 from 10:00-2:30 for bargains!

Our fabulous annual “Anti-Cabin Fever” Wednesday night dinners are offered between December and March, and we’ve just finished another excellent season! The team of chef Robert Meyers, co-owner of Three Tomatoes Trattoria, and the Change the World Kids kicked-off the season with a sumptuous meal. It culminated in a sold-out feast prepared by Brian Aspell, Executive Chef of the Killington Grand Hotel and Resort. The 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 (excluding Christmas and New Year’s Eve), a local chef, many from the area’s best restaurants, prepares a delicious meal.

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 that supports our Vermont neo-tropical migrants, as well as indigenous birds. Dinner is at 6:00 in the North Universalist Chapel dining hall in Woodstock, and costs $9.00 for adults and $5.00 for children. Seating is limited, so reservations are suggested.

We say a huge thank you to all of you who came to dine, laugh, and beat the winter blahs and blues!

We greatly appreciate the awesome chefs listed below, who prepared dinners that wowed our diners and make the kitchen a fun place for us to be and learn:

Chef Dennis Vierira and sous chef Michael Bellefeuille

Chef Robert Meyers and dessert chef Michelle Werle

Chef Brandon Little and sous chef Nick Mahoud

Jill Hastings

Cindy Parker and Dave Cogger

Chef Michelle Harris of the Woodstock Farmers’ Market

Brian Allen of the Woodstock Farmer’s Market

Chef Jason Merrill of the Hanover Inn

Chef Jason Lawless of the Woodstock Inn

Sophie Starr, of Cobb Hill, and sous chefs Christine Scherding and Edie Crocker.

Chef Alphonsus Harris of The Castle Inn

Chef Brian Aspell of the Killington Grand Hotel and Resort

Join us next year!

We have launched our first magazine! Its mission is to promote an ecologically and socially responsible lifestyle, and to encourage local and global environmental activism for future generations. Our Winter issue is available now and it is dedicated to the issue of Water.  The magazine is available for free at a wide range of businesses and organizations throughout the Upper Valley and Vermont. 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.

Wow!

We are part of an international movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis. This advocacy occurs before the December climate treaty meeting of world leaders in Copenhagen, and stresses the critical importance of reducing the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere below 350.

On October 24, 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.
PHOTOS

Want to know more about our two events?

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! Hoping for 350 tree sponsorships of $1.00 each, we have 641, and the sponsorships are still arriving! Three Tomatoes donating 350 additional trees, so next spring we will plant almost 1,000 trees – more if donations keep coming.

The trees will be planted in two 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.

Six 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.

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Download this Poster: 350 poster download