August 26, 2010 – The Orange County Register – Brian M. Cuaron – USA

A San Clemente woman is back from her latest trip to a Guatemalan community she has helped unify through gardening.

Allison Haynes wants to help end world hunger. A global traveler by nature, she decided to go to Guatemala in February 2009. She had no plans but hoped she would find some way to serve her cause.

“It was about making a difference,” Haynes said.

Once there, she took Spanish lessons in the city of Antigua and came upon some American university students. They told her about a nearby village where there was a project to teach the women there how to garden vegetables.

Haynes e-mailed the project director, who welcomed her to join.

“It was pretty amazing. It was like one of those serendipity moments,” Haynes said.

The gardening project in the village called El Remate had been stalled about a year because of waning interest.

Haynes, a life coach by trade, said she reignited enthusiasm for the program and got it running again. She also brought $10 worth of seeds so the villagers had something to plant to grow small gardens for their families.

Haynes left the country after two months and returned in June 2009 for one month. Unsatisfied, she wanted to help build one big community garden, and she brought help.

Haynes persuaded her friend Norma Carter and seven other women to join her on her latest adventure. They left June 19 this year and stayed in Guatemala for 10 days, clearing land for the community garden and getting it started. Among the crops planted are cucumbers, tomatoes, cilantro, radishes, chilis and beans.  Read story.

August 8, 2010 – USA TODAY – Christie Garton

“Would your family be interested in taking a break from cancer?”

Aileen Schissel couldn’t believe what her oncologist just asked. After years of battling breast cancer, a break from cancer seemed like an impossible dream.

“I was so sick of being sick. The whole family desperately needed a vacation,” says Schissel, of Glendora, Calif. “But with no money to go far, we never would have dreamed of taking this kind of trip.”

The Schissels left Friday on a Continental Airlines jet for Hawaii, where they will be staying at the five-star Four Seasons Resort Maui for four nights and five days. From door to door, all expenses were paid.

Their trip is an example of how corporations are supporting charities, even in a time of tight money.

Working through the Jack and Jill Late Stage Cancer Foundation, which gives vacations to cancer sufferers, airlines such as Continental, AirTran and Southwest Airlines provide airfare — for free. Hotel chains such as Starwood Resorts, Marriott and Ritz-Carlton provide rooms — for free. More than 300 families have been treated since its founding three years ago.

“We’ve raised $4 million in in-kind support these past three years,” says Jon Albert, who co-founded the organization with his wife Jill, who died of breast cancer in 2006. “We could not exist without this support.” Read story.

August 3, 2010 – Evansville Courier Press – Jessica Fehrenbacher – USA

As parents, we have many hopes and dreams for our children. We want to build their moral foundation, give them values and encourage them to be productive people.

Sometimes it becomes difficult to instill values in our children because we may not know about or have the tools necessary to implement values.

Youth workers, teachers, grandparents and other adult mentors also take an active role and have a great deal of influence over our children’s values’ development. Yet, it is most important for children to develop their own sense of social activism and philanthropic personality.

When each of us feels passionate about a cause or belief, we pour our hearts and souls into that which makes us passionate. So, how do we find the inspiration to give to our children that same philanthropic drive? In the article, “Kids and Philanthropy: Teaching Your Children to be Charitable,” author Beth Kanter has some helpful tips.  Read story.

July 18 2010 – Financial Times – Rebecca Knight – UK

Most aspiring MBAs go to business school to learn how to make a great deal of money. But these days, business schools are also teaching students how to give it away.

A growing number of business programmes are introducing courses focused on “practising philanthropy,” with the aim of teaching MBA students how to have a strategic edge in their giving by conducting site visits to non-profit organisations, tracking social and operational metrics and measuring the impact of their charitable contributions.

The courses are most popular with students specialising in non-profit administration, but the classes are gaining momentum with general management students too, according to Kristen McCormack, who teaches a course on practising philanthropy at Boston University School of Management.

“At some point in their lives, most of these students will either be a corporate donor or an individual donor and my class teaches them how to do philanthropy effectively,” she says. “Most general MBAs that I’ve taught marvel that there is this world out there that they never thought existed, and they are surprised by how hard it is to give away money.”

The curricula vary from school to school, but most courses involve lectures and readings on the history of philanthropy, issues in the grant-making process and issues in philanthropy and public policy. In addition, many courses include an element of experiential philanthropy, whereby students donate an amount of money to non-profit organisations they have deemed worthy, based on a variety of metrics.

According to Campus Compact, a collation of college and university presidents that promote civic engagement and service learning, there are more than 100 college and business schools in the US offering courses about philanthropy that involve students as grant makers. Read more.

July 12, 2010 – The Philadelphia Inquirer – Daniel Rubin – USA

The front door of Busch’s seafood is locked, but that doesn’t keep Lana Samuels out.

She slips around to a side entrance of the Sea Isle City institution, hoping to catch owner Al Schettig off guard.

Schettig is walking through the empty dining room in his chef’s whites when he spots the humbly dressed woman.
He starts running for the kitchen.

“How are you doing this year?” Samuels calls after him, and he takes a couple of steps before freezing.

She begins her spiel in a gentle voice, full of facts and figures and urgency.

“People are hurting,” she says. “We need money to help them.”

There’s the Absecon man whom she helped get a kidney transplant, and now he isn’t doing so well, she tells him. The Cape May County woman with Tarlov cysts, another woman with an immune deficiency. The list goes on.
Schettig digs into his pocket. He hands her $50, says he wishes it were more. His restaurant is closing after the season.

“The reason I can’t run from you is that you have a spirit of dedication,” he says. “How can I say no to you? How can anyone? I call it ARK. You’re one big act of random kindness.”

Valerie Kirby, owner of Valerie’s Restaurant down Landis Avenue, couldn’t say no either – she was good for $20. Nor could the gray-haired woman renting the house a block from the ocean on 87th Street, who rubbed her hands as Samuels made her pitch, then handed her a five.

Neither could I.

Lana Samuels called several weeks ago about her tiny nonprofit called People in Crisis, which raises money to buy insurance and provide rides and rent for those who are ill and have fallen through the cracks. Too good to be true?

I did a little checking.
Read more.

July 5, 2010 – SFGate – Rob Baedeker – CA, USA

How much to do you give to charity, and is there a method to your kindness? How do you decide whether and how much to give, and to whom?

Does your philanthropy, for that matter, really spring from kindness — or generosity or altruism — or might your giving be driven by something else: a sense of obligation, self-satisfaction or guilt?

These are the kinds of questions that arise when I think about my own charitable giving, which has slowed considerably in the past 18 months.
A few years ago, my wife and I decided to set aside $75 a month for charitable donations, which we selected from online resources, requests from friends, or causes that otherwise caught our attention.

That monthly number didn’t come from any rigorous budgetary or philosophical analysis — it just felt like a reasonable and meaningful amount.
Then the recession hit, our incomes fell, and we stopped making that automatic contribution.
Read story. 

June 23, 2010 – FOXBusiness – Nancy Colasurdo – USA

There was an episode of the sitcom Friends in which Lisa Kudrow’s character, Phoebe, tries every which way to figure out how to do a selfless good deed. The idea being that so often we give — through deed or checkbook or whatever — to make ourselves feel good.

At one point, Phoebe thinks she finally accomplishes this by letting a bee sting her. As she told Joey in her inimitable way, it let the bee look cool to its bee friends and she suffered in the process. She becomes thoroughly deflated when Joey informs her that bees die after they sting someone.

The eccentricity of Phoebe notwithstanding, I always found that line of thinking fascinating and, frankly, puzzling. What in the heck is so wrong with feeling good that you’re helping someone? When did anything that makes the “self” feel better become so frowned upon?

I am of the humble opinion that if more people lived in a way that focused on the self and how their gifts and passions can best be used, the world would be a better place by extension. The less disgruntled, worked to the bone, frustrated and martyred we are, the better off everyone around us, even peripherally, will be.

When I recently published an article called “Finding My Niche as a Volunteer Coach” about my experience with pro bono life coaching, one of the comments posted on the piece got me thinking. The reader wondered if this trend, “is moving towards the necessity to find a niche, self-actualization, spiritual calling, and the transpersonal psychology domains.” Read story.

June 17, 2010 – Hartford Courant – CT, USA

In the midst of a mired economy, volunteerism has increased throughout the state and nation, according to a new federal report.

The Corporation for National and Community Service reported the largest increase in volunteers since 2003, with 63.4 million Americans 16 and older giving time to some cause in 2009, an increase of almost 1.6 million over 2008.

Connecticut ranked 17th of the 50 states in the number of volunteers, with 31.7% of adult residents contributing a total of 103.3 million hours of service, on average. The contribution of service was valued at $2.2 billion annually, according to the report.

The national increase in volunteerism “was surprising, given that unemployment and foreclosures —economic challenges typically related to lower rates of volunteering — increased so dramatically across the country last year,” a press release about the report said. “Moreover, citizens across the nation are seeing volunteering as a solution to real problems such as poverty, illiteracy, crime and homelessness.”  Read story.

June 6, 2010 – Journal Sentinal – Laurel Walker – USA

Town of Delafield – To Kathy Bero, healthy eating goes way beyond the food pyramid.

She believes she’s survived three bouts of different cancers since 2005 not only because of her conventional medical treatments, but also by incorporating food as medicine into her recovery.

She’s become a passionate advocate for a daily regimen of specific foods commonly found on “anti-cancer” lists – asparagus and apples, watercress and walnuts, and dozens of others in the alphabet soup.

Now, with a healthy glow and her considerable power of persuasion that’s turning others into dreamers, if not believers, she’s cultivating a big idea.
NuGenesis Farm is sprouting from that seed. It’s a 37-acre prototype organic farm-to-be that will grow vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs and spices found to have the strongest disease-preventing properties.

Coupled with that will be research to test those properties and their impact on health – the scientific evidence that Bero thinks could entice more doctors to add food to their medical repertoire.

A planned $3 million education center of classrooms and a kitchen on the farm – still in need of funding – would spread the word and the food to medical professionals, chefs, the chronically ill, schoolchildren and backyard gardeners, among others.

Partners have been lining up for this venture.
Read story. 

May 11, 2010 – Examiner.com – Anne Hart – USA

Life-long learning traditionally in Sacramento has been focused on topics to learn about (without exams) for those “active in retirement.” You have programs such as seniors teaching seniors, the Renaissance Society, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and Exploritas, formerly called Elder Hostel, where people travel to various campuses in the summer when there’s lots of empty dormitory rooms, or to convention resorts. Check out   Exploritas: Train Tracks Across the Sierra: Sacramento to Reno. See  Senior Day Trips and Travel.

Why are more and varied life-long learning programs needed in Sacramento? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, self-employed people in the US who stated in Dec. 2009 that they were self-employed only because they couldn’t find full-time jobs numbered about 1.2 million. One third of the US work force in 2005 had part-time or temporary jobs. See the May 11, 2010 Sacramento Bee article by Anita Creamer, “Freelancers create jobs for themselves.”

Ten million people were independent contractors. That’s 42 million people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2005. With the rapid growth of flexible employment programs comes the need for flexible life-long learning opportunities. That’s why the local area could use more variety in life-long learning.

Maybe you’d like to set up life-long learning programs on how to avoid financial or other elderly abuse situations. Or travel programs. Life-long learning might focus on starting a part-time online business, or retirement living and lifestyles in Sacramento. How about forming a not-for-profit learning institute showing seniors how to participate in multimedia productions online?  Read more.