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 350 event this year, 10/10/10 Smooth Power, celebrated the power of advocacy, collaboration, and work through a living collage of interactive and fun activities for all ages on the Woodstock, VT Green.

Over 6,000 events in 180 countries took place during the 10/10/10 Global Work Party, the largest day of carbon-cutting action in our planet’s history. The point was
to do something that will help reduce global warming and raise awareness of the need to reduce the carbon in our atmosphere to a sustainable 350 parts per million, or lower.

What could you do at our Smooth Power party? Make a local berry smoothie with bicycle-power. Bring your bicycle to our well-bicycle clinic. Learn simple weatherization techniques. Make a unique walking stick. Enjoy soda stream seltzer making. Create some wild bicycle streamers, help to plant a tree, and more. Local organization Sustainable Woodstock joined us to offer a work party with a purpose.

10/10/10 was ten weeks before world politicians meet in Cancun, Mexico to try and move forward with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The goal of the day wasn’t for each event to solve the climate crisis, but to send a critical message: we’re getting to work, and politicians must, too, on legislation and political solutions that will effectively reverse the current surplus of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

Be on the cutting edge: cut your carbon emissions. Last year alone, we experienced horrific mudslides from excessive rains, ocean catastrophe from a huge oil spill, ever more rapid melting of Arctic sea ice, drought, and heat waves. On 10/10/10, a steady stream of people joined us to shape the sustainable future of our communities, local and global!

Walk the Walk is a Change the World Kid effort to raise 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 encourages people to go beyond “talking the talk” and take steps to action, metaphorically representing the nightly wartime walks of these children. In its second year, the event raises awareness in our community and funding to support sustainable quality education for this rising generation of impoverished Ugandans, abandoned through conflicts and diseases of war.

Walk the Walk 2011 takes place on Saturday, April 30, 4/30, at 4:30 in Wilder, VT. Participants can chose a 4 mile running course or a 3 mile walking course, which both start at the Dothan Brook School.

Last year over 150 people participated in Walk the Walk 2010, which involved a walk, simulated refugee camp to raise awareness of various issues facing the children, live music, speakers from Uganda, and an overnight. Over $4,000 was raised from sponsorships and donations! One of the Change the World Kids went to Uganda and helped put these fund to work building and supporting schools. That money provided:
• New books, pencils, pen, paper, and soap to 200 students
• New uniforms (sewn by a village tailor) for 2 schools
• New shoes for 2 schools
• Medic first aid kits for 2 schools
• The repair of an old well so an entire village can have clean water
• Renovation and building supplies for 2 schools
• Bunk-beds, with sheets, pillows, toothbrushes, a new book and stuffed animal for each child at a new school
• A month of a breakfast/lunch program for 47 the students in that school

Please join us this year or make a donation to make this event an even bigger success.

We are featured in People Magazine in the issue including Earth Day 2010, and also in a PBS and New Hampshire Public Television Special entitled Saving Songbirds!

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.

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. Check it out here!

On Friday, May 27, 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 Saturday, May 28.  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 May 1. 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 27 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 28 from 10:00-2:30 for bargains!

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.