Aid Still Required Nutritional Partner OneEgg Receives Major Tyson Foods Grant

Children • Environmental Sustainability • Haiti

Great news from OneEgg CEO Chris Ordway!  The ASR partner has received  $341,490 from Arkansas poultry giant Tyson Foods and its subsidiary Cobb-Vantress to establish an egg-producing farm west of Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.  In addition to supplying much needed nutrition for local children, the farm will create jobs in the community and become self-sustaining over time. OneEgg began its work in Rwanda and has expanded to 8 countries, its mission to provide animal protein to undernourished children.  53% of all deaths of children under 5 are due to malnutrition. One egg provides 13 different essential vitamins and minerals needed for…

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A Note from ASR Supporter Jill Higgins

Children • Environmental Sustainability • Haiti • Jatropha • Trauma Relief • Women

While Hunter and Andrea were in Haiti for the last two weeks, Jill Higgins and her daughter Ivy took time to fly in for 6 days to visit and get a look at several of the Aid Still Required programs around the country.  Below is Jill’s reflection on her time there.

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Indiegogo Here We Go : Haiti and the Jatropha Tree Program

Environmental Sustainability • Haiti

Fund a Jatropha Seed Oil Press for Haiti, Change the Lives of Thousands For the past three years, 1,000 farmers have been growing hundreds of thousands of Jatropha trees in southern Haiti.  Why?  Because the seeds from these trees produce oil so rich it serves as a straight replacement for diesel fuel.  Yes, that means you can run your car, truck or farm machinery on it.  Right now, Haiti has to import all of it’s petroleum.  The jatropha program can reverse this trend.

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Thank you for 2013 and looking ahead to 2014

ASR Events • Business Angel • Current Events • Darfur • Environmental Sustainability • Haiti • Katrina • Media • Tsunami • Women

What a year 2013 has been! Aid Still Required has seen incredible growth and achieved major accomplishments: In Haiti, we began our support and guidance of OADENN, a children’s mentoring and support program in the northern city of Cap Haitien.  The program is working with over 100 kids weekly and provides everything from educational counseling, medical care, and team building, to safe places for play, yoga and meditation.  Heading into 2014, we aim to establish a physical center for expanded programming, to increase enrollment, and to support more kids going to school and receiving medical care.

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Haiti Update: 6/2 Leogane and CODEP

Environmental Sustainability • Haiti

CODEP currently employs 600 people that support 3,000.  These 600 are divided into roughly 30 sub-groups that work on different sections of the mountains. This year, CODEP is going to be doubling its membership. These groups also manage tilapia ponds. These are fish are used both for consumption and for selling at the market.

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Haiti Update: 5/31, Cap Haitian and Pandiassou

Environmental Sustainability • Haiti

A lot has happened since our last post, so I will give a quick summary here. From Port-au-Prince, we headed up highway 1 on the west side of the country. About 6 hours later we arrived in the northern city of Cap Haitian, the second largest city in Haiti behind Port-au-Prince. It is a beautiful place, right on the water with much cooler temperatures and a slower place. This is the home of our wonderful trainer, Lovely, and she rode with us back to Cap Haitian. We visited with two Art of Living trainers that are based in Cap and…

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Haiti Update 5/21: We Have Arrived!

Environmental Sustainability • Haiti • Women

A lot to catch up on and I will do a bigger summary tonight but we have had some incredible meetings so far and will be getting together with our trauma relief team today to go over strategy for the upcoming course. If possible we will visit Wharf Jeremie today to make plans for the sessions starting in the morning. So far we have had good luck in terms of getting together with knowledgeable players in the nonprofit world and getting an update on progress in the country. Yesterday we had the chance to go and visit both the Patience…

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Team Aid Still Required heads to The Big Easy

ASR Events • Current Events • Environmental Sustainability • Katrina

One of the people we met with in New Orleans said that her city is more like “the Little Difficult than the Big Easy” but we found in our jam-packed week there that there is a lot to be hopeful about in the Crescent City. We were all in New Orleans about 6 months ago and it just felt like a different city then. This time we met with 4 powerful  after-school and extra-curricular youth development programs at both the middle and high school levels. Charter schools now represent 85% of the city’s public education system and for the most…

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Aid Still Required and World Water Day – Send a Tsunami of Love to Indonesia

Environmental Sustainability • Media • Tsunami

-from the desktop of Maureen Charles, ASR Board Secretary Today is World Water Day, and in Aceh, Indonesia, where an estimated 160,000 people perished and over a million were displaced in the wake of the 2004 Tsunami, thousands of people have been without safe, clean, accessible water for over 7 years.  Imagine all that ocean water rushing over your land, taking the leaves of your loved ones, and leaving you with no livelihood, and ironically, without water. Imagine going 7 years without a shower, unable to pour yourself or your child a glass of water without first hauling it for miles in heavy jugs or buckets……

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Steal to Your Heart’s Content: The Incredible Edible Project

Current Events • Environmental Sustainability

  We just heard about a town in West Yorkshire, England where you can steal to your hearts content without being arrested!!!!! Steal fresh fruits and vegetables, that is. The town of Todmorden has created Incredible Edible, a program to make their town completely food self-sufficient by 2018. Citizens plant fruits and vegetables in approximately 70 large fruit and vegetable beds planted around the town. Broccoli is planted by the railroad station in honor of a much-beloved recently deceased ticket master, raspberries, apricots and apples grown next to the canal towpath, beans and peas are planted by the area college,…

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Family Fun Day Event Benefiting Aid Still Required and The Garden of Eatin’

ASR Events • Environmental Sustainability • Katrina

Hello Pismo Beach!  Playful Planet Co-founder Karen Duggan called ASR a couple of months ago and asked us to be the beneficiary of a wonderful event she is co-hosting in Pismo Beach July 30th with Harmony House Yoga and Honeymoon Cafe.  Why, yes, of course, Karen, THANK YOU, we’d love to participate! There will be something for everyone:   Whole Family Cookbook author, Scholastic 2010 Parent Blogger Award winner, mom, and former high-school teacher Michelle Stern will be signing copies of her new cookbook.  Clark Valley Organic Farms is providing healthy snacks, Storyland Yoga is presenting a yoga class,  Kids Entertainer Jody…

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FOUR YEARS. GO. – ASR joins the Alliance!

Environmental Sustainability • Media

The last day of the Bioneers Conference began with plenary speaker Lynne Twist. Lynne is a passionate and compassionate advocate for the planet! She has revolutioned the world of money and philanthropy with her book The Soul of Money. She co-founded The Pachamama Alliance which is leading a crusade to constitutionalize the Rights of Nature ( see last year’s Bioneers Blog with Margi Margil and Ecuador)

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Ladies! Wake up, Grab Your Wallet, and Cast Your Ballots!

Environmental Sustainability

Today, when we go to the market or Target or even the convenience store we are asked 9 times out of 10 if we would like to add a donation to our purchase to save the whales or feed the children or save little Timmy’s music education program. That’s pretty new. (There have been donation boxes for as long as I can remember, but this is still pretty new). It is an easy, near effortless way to make a contribution to an organization that is working to make someone, somewhere’s life a little better while buying our (toxic) laundry detergent or tonight’s (gentically modified) dinner. NGOs have learned how…

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Green Ways to Cleap-up an Oil Spill

Environmental Sustainability

We’ve all been inundated with the news, more news, live feeds, and contentious debates surrounding the oil spill (gush?) in the Gulf of Mexico. Since we can’t all sell our belongings and relocate to help clean up the mess there are some things we can do (alongside Kevin Costner’s nifty little invention, of course)! And, some interesting things to know when having those pesky debates about whether or not those (toxic?) dispersants are necessary…. Alternative #1 Donate your hair, your pet’s hair, or go on hair collecting missions around your city! Yep, it’s true, our hair collects and retains oil…

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Dirt! Featured on PBS Independent Lens

Environmental Sustainability

In honor of Earth Day, April 22, PBS Independent Lens will be featuring Dirt! a film produced and directed by ASR friends and supporters Bill and Laurie Benenson and Gene Rosow! Jamie Lee Curtis narrates. A few of the featured environmental rockstar interview subjects: Andy Lipkis of LA’s TreePeople, Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Maatthai, Bioneers Paul Stamets aka Mushroom Guy, ecological designer John Todd who makes waste-managment the most fascinating topic in town, South Bronx advocate Majora Cater, and biomimicrist Janine Benynus. Wine guy Gary Vaynerchuk and Alice Waters of Chez Panisse fame represent the foodies. Congratulations, Laurie, Bill,…

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Village Life

Darfur • Environmental Sustainability

Just visited our project village for The Village Reforestation & Advancement Initiative and saw why 40% of the villagers have had to leave.  The center of the village is now one large sand drift.  Some of the houses have been crushed by the sheer weight of the sand.  Other houses have added a second story which now serves as the ground floor. There is one area of the village which looks normal.  It’s the area on the north end where a break of trees has been planted. The solution is so simple! http://www.aidstillrequired.org/media.html

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