Posts Tagged ‘Food’

5 Reasons you should support your local farmers

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

I don’t know about you but fresh locally grown food sounds super delicious and refreshing! The “local food” movement is characterized by citizens obtaining food from farmers in their local communities

Many Americans are accustomed to eating FDA-approved produce from across the globe, all year.  However, there is growing concern within the food industry that the rising costs of energy for transportation, unfair labor practices, and the negative impact of chemicals used to boost food production are becoming increasingly unsustainable.  One way that environmentally- and socially-conscious eaters are addressing these concerns is eating local produce or by becoming a “locavore.”

  1.  Buy from your local farmers’ market: Buying from your local farmers’ markets means that your food could costs less as a result of the farmers’ market buying locally or receiving direct shipments of fresh food without costly warehousing and distribution delays. The consumer ultimately receives the highest quality and largest variety of fresh and organic food products currently available.
  2. Locally grown fruits and vegetables have longer to ripen. Because the produce will be handled less, locally grown fruit does not have to be “rugged” or to stand up to the rigors of shipping.  This means that you are going to be getting peaches so ripe that they fall apart as you eat them, figs that would have been smashed to bits if they were sold using traditional methods, and melons that were allowed to ripen until the last possible minute on the vine. Mmmmm, how yummy?
  3. Buying food locally supports local farmers! Why not support a local small business? When you buy local, you give those with local open space – farms and pastures – an economic reason to stay open. This keeps money in your community which stimulates your community’s economy. Since money remains in your community, your community becomes more desirable to potential residents and businesses.
  4.  Visiting a farm. Find a farm in your area and call to make an appointment to see the farm. The farmers are usually happy to show a family or a group around the farm. When you visit, ask the farmers what challenges they have had and why they choose to grow what they are growing. Be sure to take the kids along on this journey! This allows for great family bonding time and an awesome opportunity to learn about the hard work farmers put in to produce your food.
  5. Locally grown produce is fresher.  While produce that is purchased in the supermarket or a big-box store has been in transit or cold-stored for days or weeks, produce that you purchase at your local farmer’s market has often been picked within 24 hours of your purchase.  This freshness not only improves the taste of your food, but also improves the nutritional value which declines over time.

Purchasing local foods is beneficial to you, local businesses, your family, the environment, and of course your taste buds! (I’m already the deliciousness of a locally grown juicy tomato) Tell us how you and your family plan on participating in the local food movement in the comments!

Tips to Protect Your Heart this Month

Thursday, February 9th, 2012

The month of February has long been synonymous with tender heart shapes and the vibrant color of red—thanks to the annual celebration of Valentine’s Day.Heart Health

But there’s more reason than ever to be “heart conscious” and embrace the color of love this time each year because February is Heart Disease Awareness Month.

Heart disease disproportionally affects women. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that heart disease is the number one killer of women. The American Heart Associate reaffirms this by noting that heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined. But what can we do about it from a volunteer standpoint? Plenty!

Work to create smoke free public places Secondhand smoke is estimated to kill 35,000 non-smokers a year. In addition, smoking is strongly associated with heart disease. Start by finding out what the smoking laws & regulations are in your county and educating others. Too often we only notice smoking in inappropriate places when we encounter it, but by brushing up on the legalities you will be more prepared to lobby to create smoke free public areas in your community.

Volunteer at your local hospital or American Heart Association While some steer away from volunteer positions in the medical field, it can be a rewarding and eye-opening experience. You can spread cheer to those affected with homemade gifts, cards, or conversation. The American Heart Association relies on the difference on person can make; be that person to affect major change. Click here to find open volunteer opportunities.

Join a Go Red for Women community If an individual has extraordinary power to create change, imagine what a group could do! Meet up with like-minded advocates in your community to spread awareness this month at Go For Red.

Get children involved Its never too early to instill healthy habits in children! Get involved in First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative. It focuses on healthy eating skills and getting active with physical activity. Contribute to the health of future generations by creating access to affordable and healthy food, promoting physical activity, and educating others to make healthy choices!

How will you fight heart disease this month? Has your community been touched by heart disease? Let us know in the comments below!

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February is the Time to Donate Your Cans

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

February is a very special month indeed! It is a month full of Valentines love, heart awareness and black history. With all of these fun things going on in one month, can you believe there is even more events to celebrate? (GASP!) Yep, that’s right February is also National Canned Food Month!

This month is a great time to volunteer without straying from your hectic daily schedule. Donating canned foods can be a lot easier than you think and can actually help a great deal of people.

How exactly can you incorporate this service idea into your schedule? Check out our tips below to get inspired to feed those in your community!

  1. Partner up: Ask your local grocery store about placing a canned food donation bin in the store, so that customers can donate to the cause. It is an easy way to attract donations because people will just pick up an extra can during their shopping trip. Hand out flyers to shoppers so that they understand your cause and the people that their donation will be helping.
  2. Make it a food collection competition: Compete with friends, neighbors, classmates, or family members to see who can collect the most food. You can design a scoreboard and who ever collects the most cans, wins the prize!
  3. Host a movie night: Invite your community to watch a movie such as a documentary about hunger in America. The price of admission into the movie is a canned good! You will get great discussion and help your community members understand the impact that their donation will make.
  4. Host a casual Friday: Ask your boss if your company or organization can join in on the canned good fun. If a majority of employees bring in a canned good, all employees will be rewarded with a casual attire day.
  5. Make your next event a donation opportunity:Whether your kids have a big sporting event, or you are hosting a
    party encourage attendees to bring cans instead of gifts.
  6. Raffle:Make your canned donation an event. Ask local companies whether they would be interested in donating a gift to
    your cause. Whoever donates a can, gets a chance to win an awesome prize!
  7. Get your kids’ teachers involved: Ask your principle if you can get the school involved in the donation. Have the teachers do something for the amount of cans donated. For example, if every student donates a can, the class gets a longer recess.
  8. Make it a theme: Put a theme around your donation cause. For example, Tomato Tuesday every person must donate a canned good that contains tomatoes. More people will donate if they have a little twist added to the mix.
  9. Ask your neighbors: Kill two volunteer birds with one stone. Offer to do something nice for someone in your neighborhood such as clean their house, mow their lawn, rake leaves, or shovel snow in exchange for canned goods.

Canned food donations are an easy way to truly help your community members who may be in need. Food banks and soup kitchens often run low on supplies after the holidays, and your decision to donate canned goods will change that fact.

We hope that these ideas help make your canned food celebration both meaningful and fun. Are you donating canned goods this February? We would love for you to share your stories in the comment section below!

Make a Play to Fight Hunger

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

Ready…Set…Volunteer! This Sunday, February 5 is every American’s favorite day SUPER BOWL SUNDAY!!! Woohoo hear the crowds roar with excitement! Who can resist watching funny commercials, seeing Madonna perform for the halftime show, seeing your favorite teams fight to the death, eating yummy food, and just participating in some good ol’ American fun!

Here at HandsOn Network we are not only excited about the opportunity to hang out with friends and family while watching the greatest sports event of the year, but also for the opportunity to make a party out of a service event. What do you mean, you may be wondering to yourself? You got me all hyped up about a day of good ol’ day of American fun to then have the obligation to volunteer?

Wrong, turning your Super Bowl party into a service project is just as easy as predicting that you will see a million Doritos commercials on Sunday.

So how does this happen, how can I make my day of fun into a day of service as well? Easy, we have a list full of simple fun ways to make service a good call rather than a penalty to your excitement! Come on put that plate of chicken wings down and check out our service ideas below:

  1. Make a substitution: So we all know that eating fatty American foods is just part of the Super Bowl tradition. While this is still an option to your event planning, why not add a little twist to the mix? Ask guests to bring a couple canned foods to your party that can be donated to your local food bank. It is a win-win situation unlike Billy Cundiff, of the Baltimore Ravens who missed the winning field goal game tying which would have knocked the Patriots out of Super Bowl contention. You win because you get to hang out with your friends while  serving your community. Your local food bank wins because their shelves are stocked thanks to your wonderful donation!
  2. Team up: Add a little competition to your Super Bowl event. Compete with your neighbors (I mean it would not be the Super Bowl without a little competition, right?). Tell your neighbors about your idea to fight hunger for the Super Bowl and encourage them to do the same. Compose cheers, make signs, wear uniforms, etc. Whoever collects the most food gets the trophy. Competition adds a fun aspect to the service initiative because it keeps players’ adrenaline going! Isn’t that why the most of us watch the Super Bowl in the first place?
  3. Draft: While you and your community is in the midst of this great hunger competition make a pact to fight hunger year round. With all the fun you are going to have it will not be hard to recruit people for your hunger team! You can make this happen through making a donation calendar, assigning a bin to be stored in a local area for donations, writing up a schedule to define who will take donations to the food bank each month, etc. Just remember communication is key to any successful team!
  4. Celebrate your victory: After all this fierce hunger game play, you and your teammates are allowed to take pleasure in your hard work. Enjoy the game, eat great food, have fun with your friends. What is the point of competition if you cannot celebrate it at the end?

After the holiday hype, food banks tend to run low on supplies. By making your Sunday Super Bowl party into a “Fight Hunger” service project you will help this reality become a fact of the past!

Organizations such as Souper Bowl of Caring are great ways that you can get your event started, as well. Souper Bowl of Caring is a youth driven organization that actively fights hunger around Super Bowl time. They go around in their communities collecting money and food donations in a soup pan. They will donate 100% of their proceeds to a local hunger relief organization of their choice. Last year, more than $9.5 million dollars worth of donations were collected by youth volunteers across the nation. Learn more by visiting Souper Bowl of Caring’s website where you can register to participate and find many resources to get involved in this great cause.

Still hungry for more? Our friends at generationOn also have a huge resource database for kids, parents, and teachers to get involved in the hunger fight!

So put your game face on this Sunday and make the play to fight hunger for your community members! You will reap the benefits and go home with the gold thanks to your pledge to end hunger in 2012!

Mountains of Sandwiches

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

by Michele Reiner

Recently, my son’s kindergarten class learned about hunger.

They discussed what it might be like without enough food (bad) and how they could help (share lunches).

Tying the lesson to both academics and ‘doing good’ the teachers asked that students earn money at home doing special chores and join together to make a contribution to an organization focused on ending hunger.

The kids also made graphs and charts showing who did what to raise money and contrasted their results.

I was glad they did this.

In addition to fundraising though, I wanted my son to do some hands-on service.

I wasn’t sure what, so I began at Pebble Tossers for some inspiration and links to projects kids can do.

After exploring I found the Open Door Community; literally a place we drive by almost every day.

What I learned was they are a residential community dismantling racism, sexism and heterosexism through loving relationships with some of the most neglected – the homeless and those in prisons.

While they do so much, what clicked was that every day they serve 400 sandwiches.

I told my son about this place and asked him “What can we do?”

He decided we could make 200 sandwiches ourselves.

After further discussion though, we thought that if we got friends to join we could do the whole 400!

I must say we were really pumped up.

I sent a note out to nine other kids in his class inviting them to join us.

Given the pace of most people’s lives, I assumed we’d get a few participants.

Amazingly every single family said yes.

With siblings, parents, bread and meat in tow, we joined together one Saturday to make sandwiches.

It was a great morning.

The kids truly did the bulk of the service and were excited to track their progress.

The final tally – over 430 sandwiches!

The next day we dropped off the sandwiches.

There we met James, who greeted the children with joy and gave them more kudos than we could imagine.

He invited us to make sandwiches in their kitchen next time.

As we drove away I reflected aloud on how James referred to the people who’d eat the sandwiches as ‘friends’.

He made a point of it many times over and told us that this is what we should do as well.

His point, well taken, was that we served these people as we would our friends; inviting them into the Open Door Community and giving them what we would anyone who was hungry in our presence.

I talked about how important words can be and left it at that.

A week later my son, the consummate builder, found a really cool spot under a tree in the park.

He excitedly rushed to tell me about the clubhouse he wanted to build there.

He ran through the plans with a vision shining in his head of what he could do.

Then he stopped and said, “You know what it could be, mommy?

It could be a house for our friends”. He looked pointedly at me again and said, “You know mom, our friends”.

I think he gets it.

Michele Reiner is a consultant who provides strategy, action and results to her clients and is currently developing HandsOn Network’s role in the Cities of Service movement.