Community Gardens – Growing Hope

Columbus Community Garden © Larry Hamill

An industrial area off W. 5th Ave. seems an unlikely place for a community garden, yet tucked away there lies the East 8th Ave. Faith Mission homeless shelter. Within view of the Rumpke Recycle Center, colorful plastic wading pools dot a small plot of land behind the shelter. Vegetables spring from the soil filled pools – an unexpected use of objects designed for childhood summer fun.

Operated by Lutheran Social Services, the shelter’s garden is overseen by Dr. Job Ebenezer, along with help from church volunteers. The vegetables are planted in pools containing store bought soil, explains Dr. Ebenezer, because of possible ground contamination from nearby industry.

Working to help feed the homeless is just one of Dr. Ebenezer’s gardening projects. He also maintains a community garden at his local church on Morse Road.  Through the Helping Hands Clinic, the church offers free vegetables to parishioners in need and then sells any remaining produce to raise money for Ebenezer’s organization, Technology for the Poor.

Based on the philosophy of George Washington Carver, an African American scientist who taught sustainable agriculture to poor farmers, Ebenezer continues to address the needs of the under served through Technology for the Poor.

One of his inventions converts a standard bicycle into a device that can shell corn and peanuts, thresh rice, cut wood and pump water.  Visit YouTube to see Pedal Power at work.

For more info on Dr. Ebenezer’s work, visit Technology for the Poor.

COME+TOGETHER Over Hunger

Macy’s has joined forces with Feeding America to make supporting Hunger Action Month (September) almost as easy as whipping up one of your grandmother’s old Betty Crocker recipes.

Macy’s COME+TOGETHER campaign rallies the public to host private theme dinner parties and asks dinner guests to pledge a donation to Feeding America, in lieu of bringing a host gift. Macy’s will match donations dollar for dollar until their goal of 10 million meals is reached. Every dollar received enables Feeding America to provide seven meals for those facing hunger.

Click on the graphic above and follow the three easy steps to launch your own fund raising party.  Once on Macy’s web page, you’ll be able to…

*  Create a Profile with your own picture or avatar or use one of Macy’s icons.

*  Create an Invitation complete with Party Name, Theme and Map.

*  Create your Guest List by adding individual e-mail addresses or importing your contacts from Facebook or e-mail provider.  (Macy’s site sends the invites via e-mail for you.)

You’ll also be asked to enter your fund raising goal and suggested guest donation, so your party goers will know what is expected of them.

All party planning details can be managed from your COME+TOGETHER Dashboard including…

*  E-mail Notifications: Save the Date, Day Before Reminder & Thank You

*  Post Party Payment via credit card on a Feeding America secured web    page

Menu planning tips and recipes are also provided by theme:

Cajun by Emeril Lagasse

Mexican by Rick Bayless

Pizza by Wolfgang Puck

And of course, Martha Stewart, among others.

Feeding America is the nation’s leading hunger-relief charity. It is affiliated with more than 200 food banks, including Columbus’ own Mid-Ohio Foodbank, and supplies food to more than 25 million Americans each year, including 9 million children and 3 million seniors.

Feeding America’s web site also has a link just for kids entitled, Be A Hunger Helper. It includes a video of the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs film characters and a guideline on How-To Write Your Congressperson to encourage support for fighting hunger in America.

This is Buckeye Country – COME TOGETHER

And turn your next Football Party into a fundraiser!

Mid-Ohio Foodbank Welcomes Home Gardeners

Jalapenos at Mid-Ohio Foodbank © Pamela J. Willits

Mid-Ohio Foodbank’s This Is Hunger brochure sums it up best – Hunger is not a one-organization issue, it’s a community issue.

As part of the local gardening community, I recently bundled up the surplus from my home garden and delivered it to the Mid-Ohio Foodbank’s warehouse on West Mound street.

There I had the opportunity to spend some time with Christina Christian, MOFB’s digital marketing manager. The Mid-Ohio Foodbank jumped on the social media marketing train long before must of us realized it had already left the station.

With a strong presence on Facebook and Twitter, Christina spends a portion of her day promoting fund raisers and food drives through social media. On-line networking sites have expanded their audience, helping to broadcast their message beyond the reach of their mailing list.

Since the economic downturn, the Mid-Ohio Foodbank has seen a 30% increase in need. Serving as a distribution point, the MOFB supplies food to more than 500 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and senior housing sites in central and eastern Ohio.

The statistics are staggering. Forty-four percent of those in need have had to choose between food and heat or electricity, twenty-nine percent have had to choose between food and shelter, thirty-eight percent of all requests involve children and fourteen percent are for senior citizens.

The good news is that their weighty commitment has them handling over 30 million pounds of food each year. And for every dollar they receive from donors, they distribute $8 worth of groceries. Thanks to the value of their non-profit status buying power, they’ve elevated stretching the dollar to an art form.

Come this October, the Mid-Ohio Foodbank will be stretching those dollars even further as they move into a new LEED certified (environmental friendly) warehouse in Grove City. The move will also triple their storage space.

My Garden Tomatoes © Pamela J. Willits

So, while it’s too late to re-think this year’s backyard garden, it’s never too early to start planning for how you could expand your existing garden to create a surplus to share next summer. And between now and then, the Mid-Ohio Foodbank will still welcome any donation of fresh produce.

For up-to-date info and events, Join their Fan Page on Facebook, Follow them on Twitter @Mid_OHFoodbank or Call 614.274.7770.

Will Exxon and Tech Start-Ups Battle Over Algae DNA?

Algae Pond © Larry Hamill

In a recent talk before the Columbus Metropolitan Club, Ross Youngs, CEO of Algaeventure Systems, noted that while solar and wind power may have their place, “we’ll will never lift a plane off the ground or drive a truck down the freeway without high energy liquid fuels.”

And to that end, Youngs has been working on developing what may be the next big thing in biofuels – an algae based energy source. Headquartered near Columbus, Ohio – a city sited by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the best places for tech start-ups – you could say research is blooming at Algaeventure Systems.

However, last week’s announcement that Exxon will invest up to $600 million in research of algae based biofuels brings new competition for a share of the pond.

As part of Exxon’s research strategy, they have enlisted the help of genomics pioneer, Craig Venter. The announcement came on the heels of Dow Chemical declaring that they would be dipping their big toe into the algae pond in pursuit of a potential technology bloom.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Exxon and Venter’s company, Synthetic Genomics, will spend the next five years determining the most suitable strain of algae, as well as figuring out the best way to grow it and how to economically mass produce it.

The Economist noted that Dr. Venter believes it may be possible to produce ten times more fuel per hectare from algae than can be had from corn. An added benefit could be that the exhaust from industrial plants, which are currently powered by conventional fuels, would supply carbon dioxide, the raw material needed for photosynthesis to produce the algae.

However, in a CNN interview with Gillian Madill of Friends of the Earth, Madill warns of a possible monopoly on biofuel. “Many of these oil companies are making steep investments in synthetic biology because they can literally own the very microorganisms that aim to produce fuel because of the current patentability of DNA. If synthetic biology proves successful, ‘Big Oil’ will not only own the fuel itself, but own the very life form that produces it,” said Madill.

Clearly, the stakes are high. According to Chad Hummell, industry and government sales manager for Algaeventure Systems, the United States Air Force is the single largest consumer of fuel in the world. Ironically, some of that fuel is used to protect fuel sources in the Middle East.

While we can hope that competition to own the fuel of the future won’t become reminiscent of the competition for fuel in the Mad Max -The Road Warrior and Beyond Thunderdome movies, you have to wonder about the survival of tech start-ups looking to solve our energy problem.

As biotechnology start-ups continue to pursue venture capital to fund research, will they find that life in a small pond is not sustainable when big fish like Exxon and Dow Chemical hold the lure of deep pockets?

Or will they find themselves bogged down in the murky waters of a legal battle over ownership of DNA, as Madill suggests?

Share your thoughts….

Can Social Media Save Ohio Libraries?

Governor Strickland has proposed eliminating $200 million from the Public Library Fund over the next two years.

If approved, the proposal would cut the Columbus Metro Library’s state funding by 50%. The results would be devastating: closing branches, halting new books and materials and shutting down programs and services that are vital to our children and community.

ACT NOW – SAVE YOUR LIBRARY!

The Columbus Metropolitan Library encourages you to do the following:

* Post a tweet on Twitter or update your Facebook with the following message:

Our libraries are in jeopardy. I contacted my elected officials to save Ohio libraries. You should too. Find out more: http://bit.ly/B7IJ7
(or use http://www.columbuslibrary.org/save_our_library)

* Change your profile picture on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites to the Save Ohio Libraries image below.

* E-mail your family, friends, neighbors and colleagues.

* Call the Governor’s office at 614-466-3555 and state your opposition to this proposal.

* Visit the CML website to learn more.

* Visit the Ohio Library Council website for more information.

Taxpayers Pick Up Tab While Dealers Dine

When does too much become, well, too much? When a deal brokered by the U.S. House and Senate leaves auto dealers (and makers) cheering – again.

The ‘Cash-for-Clunkers’ bill, a $1 billion program that will pay qualifying consumers up to $4500 to dump their older model (read energy inefficient) vehicles for newer, more efficient models, has nothing to do with global warming and everything to do with furthering taxpayer aid in a bid to save the American auto industry.

Associated Press

The initial automotive bailout was a necessary evil. But now we’re rewarding individuals who didn’t have the foresight to buy an energy efficient vehicle in the first place? How about the tax paying citizen who is driving a 13-year-old, energy efficient vehicle that has 118,000 plus miles on it?

Wouldn’t that person like to have $4500 to apply to the purchase price of a new or newer vehicle? As the person driving that 13-year-old vehicle I can tell you, yes, I would. As my vehicle doesn’t qualify for this latest government bailout, I’ll have to set money aside for my next vehicle – right after I finish paying more in taxes to cover the vouchers for those who bought gas guzzlers.

But there’s a sadder part to this tale of automotive woe. Congress attached the vehicle voucher bill to a $106 billion spending bill to fund troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill passed by a 91 to 5 vote, despite attempts to strip the voucher add on from the original bill.

I’m all for funding our troops who are fighting forces that threaten our safety and way of life, which happens to be intrinsically linked to the world’s oil supply, but proposing a bill that couples our troops’ safety with a secondary automotive bailout that will only further strap the American taxpayer seems like an insult to the military and taxpayer alike.

But take heart, George F. Will recently wrote in his Newsweek column that “two other senators have three better ideas pertaining to the government’s wallow in the auto industry. A bill written by Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander and Utah Republican Bob Bennett would prohibit using any more TARP funds for GM or Chrysler… And it would require the Treasury to distribute, within a year, all its GM and Chrysler stock evenly to the approximately 120 million persons who paid 2008 income taxes.”

Perhaps once I have my shares of GM and Chrysler stock in hand, I can trade them for a newer vehicle. But given that two years ago one share of GM’s stock was worth $40 and last Friday it was worth $1.22, I may have to hold onto my little hatchback a while longer.

See The Washington Post for voucher qualification info.

Semper Fi: Leave No Woman Behind

AWP Logo

What began as one young woman’s quest to document other young military
widows like herself, turned into a nationwide, non-profit support group called the American Widow Project. After creating a documentary film that tells the stories of six young military widows, AWP co-founder Taryn Davis, whose husband Michael was killed in Baghdad by a roadside bomb, has taken her stories of healing on the road.

If she rolls through your town, she’ll be hard to miss. She’s the 23-year-old
Texan behind the wheel of a black RV, with the names of hundreds of servicemen lost in Iraq and Afghanistan printed on the sides of the bus. You can track her route on the AWP Tour blog, whose tag line reads, “Unifying the New Generation of Military Widows…On Mile at a Time.”

Putting aside political party lines and individual opinions on whether
our involvement in the war was justified, it’s interesting to note
that it’s a young woman from Texas now on a mission to help carry other military widows through a time of great personal loss. “Military widow is an honorable title,” said Davis in a CNN interview last month. “It signifies our husband’s sacrifice.”

The American Widow Project website reminds us that these young women shouldn’t be the only ones to carry the burden of sacrifice. The site’s Help Board notes that anyone can place a yellow ribbon magnet on their car, but it’s the small deeds, like picking up groceries or offering to mow the lawn for a newly widowed, that are most appreciated.

The website also provides a page for women to post their own stories, while a MySpace page and a Twitter feed @americanwp give them a venue to chat. You can also donate through the website by sponsoring a military widow or helping to fund the AWP RV Tour.

Mix & Mingle for a Cause, a newly formed Meetup group, will host a fundraiser on Friday, June 26 at the Hyatt on Capitol Square to benefit the American Widow Project, as well as the Mid-Ohio Foodbank. During this economic downturn, food banks across the country are striving to meet a growing demand for food assistance. And for military widows struggling to provide for their families, sometimes a little comfort food can go a long way to heal more than hunger.

Non-Profits and Social Media – A Cycle for Change

If you’re in the non-profit sector and still aren’t sure how or if your organization can benefit from social media, consider the following story.

In addition to this blog, I also oversee and write content for Larry Hamill Photography’s blog. Last weekend, he photographed ZombieWalk Columbus 2009, as part of his ongoing documentation of Columbus events. Turns out the walk benefited the Mid-Ohio Foodbank, so naturally I linked to the organization in Larry’s blog post about ZombieWalk.

Once on their website, I followed the link to their Twitter feed. There I learned that if you shop at Kroger, you can use your Plus Card to benefit the Mid-Ohio Foodbank.

Scrolling down their list of tweets, I also discovered FOODFIGHT 6.30, a partnership between the Central Ohio Restaurant Association and Mid-Ohio Foodbank’s Operation Feed. It’s a hunger initiative scheduled to take place on Tuesday, June 30. Participating member restaurants will donate 5% of their sales receipts from that day to Operation Feed, a community-wide food and funds drive.

The event is part virtual food drive, so if you can’t visit a participating restaurant on June 30, you can still help by making an online donation. All donations will help provide food for the hungry in central and eastern Ohio.

Lastly, there was a tweet about ZombieWalk. The numbers weren’t in yet, but word on the street, or at least in the ethers, was that it was a great success. I learned quite a bit – all from a blog posting about zombies. Zombies who had their heads on straight when they created a MySpace page titled ZombieWalk, to promote their fund raising event.

When I log off my blog site in the few minutes, I’ll log into my Twitter account to post a tweet of my own about this blog post, completing the cycle social media tools afford us to help spread our messages for social change.

G.M. Getting Down to Business – Better Late Than Never

Seventy-two hours after General Motors officially filed for bankruptcy, I saw the first New G.M. television ad. It aired minutes into a re-run of The Mentalist. If you haven’t seen it yet, it contains images of Americana interspersed with images of the American classic – the automobile, along with factory line shots complete with workers.

The voice over announces, “We’re not going out of business, we’re getting down to business.” A catchy line about General Motors now being leaner, greener and faster follows and finally ends with G.M.’s new reinvention website.

Clearly, a good amount of thought, time and money went into the making of that ad. If only that much thought had gone into the direction of the company years ago….

For the tens of thousands of jobs and hundreds of dealerships about to be lost, you may think G.M. decided to get down to business a little too late. But as William Holstein, author of “Why G.M. Matters: Inside the Race to Transform an American Icon,” outlined in a recent talk before The City Club of Cleveland, failure of G.M. is not an option in these economic times.

On June 1, Nightline aired a G.M. timeline using the iconic G.M. sign to chronicle the company’s fall from grace. General Motors went from Grow Mighty to Gross Mismanagement to Government Money. And if they don’t make it following a government bailout and restructuring, said the reporter, the sign might as well read Gone Missing. The New G.M., according to Nightline, will be more like the son of G.M. and as they noted, the sign now reads Gotta Make(It).

But for those now standing in growing unemployment lines, feeling perhaps a bit more nostalgic for the job they once had than for automobiles from yesteryear, we have to wonder – How are they Gonna Make(It)?

General Motors – A Shakespearean Tragedy?

On May 18, I attended a lunch with Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, at the Columbus Metropolitan Club. I sat next to an attorney, who upon learning that I was a writer, asked if I thought his son should pursue a career in journalism.

Having graduated with a degree in Shakespearean literature, his son had already worked a 7 month stint for the Charlie Rose show, and recently moved on to the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. As there was also a former Columbus Dispatch journalist seated at our table, I quipped that the pending demise of newspapers could be likened to a Shakespearean tragedy.

The mention of demise steered the conversation to General Motors, a topic that Senator Brown would address in his talk. Brown spoke of moving Ohio’s employment opportunities forward by developing alternative energy industries, like wind and solar power, but emphasized that he’s not willing to throw the automotive baby that helped build Ohio out with the bath water and vowed to fight to keep jobs.

Following his talk, I asked the senator what the overall mood was in Washington, in the wake of G.M.’s announcement that they might move factories overseas as part of their cost savings plan and how that move would fare with the American taxpayer.

Senator Brown said upon hearing the announcement he had called G.M.’s headquarters and was told that G.M. was not going to use public dollars to open those plants, but beyond that he was given no details. Brown further said that use of American tax dollars to fund plants in China and elsewhere would be unconscionable and that he planned to discuss the issue with Secretary Geitner during the next senate banking committee meeting.

On May 29, just days before G.M.’s bankruptcy became official, they announced plans to build a future small car in the United States. The following comment appeared in the progress reports section of gmreinvention.com.

“Small cars represent one of the fastest growing segments in both the U.S. and around the world,” said Fritz Henderson, General Motors President and CEO. “We believe this car will be a winner with our current and future customers in the U.S.”

Too bad General Motors didn’t see the wisdom of building smaller vehicles back in the early days of Honda and Toyota, who both built competitive brands on the notion that Americans wanted more economical cars. At least G.M. will being utilizing an idled UAW-G.M. facility to build their new car of the future here. Yet, will smaller translate into more reliable?

On June 1, D-day for General Motors, they posted a progress report stating the following: “G.M. has entered chapter 11 to launch the New G.M. through the powerful tools of the Bankruptcy Code. G.M. will take the necessary actions to transition operations and launch a highly competitive New G.M. Importantly, G.M. has the support of the U.S. and Canadian governments and the UAW in this effort.” It’s good to have allies, but did we really have a choice?

In A Primer on the G.M. Bankruptcy, New York Times reporter, Micheline Maynard, states that in addition to $20 billion G.M. has already received, the treasury will provide the automaker with $30 billion in debtor-in-possession financing, so it can continue operating while in bankruptcy.

Nice deal if you can get it, but my original question still stands – As G.M. transitions operations to become more competitive, will American jobs start landing on foreign soil and thus will the American taxpayer really be funding the sweatshop salaries of overseas workers?

Will Social Media Save Us?

Driving to WordPress Camp – Columbus, I heard a story on NPR about more victims of the economy. Dan was a L.A. based photographer who hadn’t booked a job since December. His wife, Caitlin Shetterly, was a freelance reporter for public radio. And then there was the baby and the dog.

Caitlin spoke about how they forfeited their apartment, shuttered the business and moved back to Maine, to live with her mother. They crossed the country in a car too small for all their belongs, or at least the ones they hadn’t opted to leave behind. With two adults, a restless baby and one 90lb. dog, her husband had worried that the back end of the car was riding too close to the ground. Arriving safely, they found her mother had decorated the guest bedroom with photographs of Caitlin as a young girl. Her father was just glad to have them home.

As a writer, who also works with photographers, the story hit home.
Given the current economy, I too have considered the possibility of returning home. But for today, I was attending WordPress Camp.

During the first presentation, a woman in the back of the room began calling out comments. As this continued, I began to think of her as the WordPress Camp’s heckler. Any comedian will tell you there’s one in every crowd.

Later that morning, I learned that Lorelle VanFossen was no heckler.
In fact, she was one of the first sixty people to test drive WordPress’ software in early 2000. She’s a walking warehouse of blogging knowledge and had come from Portland, Oregon to share the WordPress love.

As she walked through the audience, microphone in hand, she called out
the question – What has WordPress done for you? I was too busy taking
notes to realize she had zeroed in on me. I looked up to see the mike stuck in my face.

Well, I stumbled, I’ve only been using WordPress since Monday.
She stood over me, her finger pointed down toward my head and yelled -
Virgin! The audience laughed. She had gone from heckler to comedian.

Lorelle moved across the room, placed the mike in front of a man, roughly in his early 50’s and asked – What do you do and what has WordPress done for you? He replied – I used to be a journalist. Used to be? My heart sank. The Columbus Dispatch had recently let go a batch of writers – perhaps he among them. Our used to be journalist was also new to WordPress, and was just hoping to keep his writing skills honed.

Displaced creative types are becoming a theme in my life. A photographer I know was recently shadowed by a high school student wanting to become a photographer himself. The optimism of youth. For those who have spent a lifetime in the creative field, we wonder if there is a future in the wake of this economic downturn, or at best, what that future will look like.

Months before, this same photographer had commented that social media
platforms, like LinkedIn, would become the new marketing forum for photographers. I wonder about the L.A. photographer, now living in Maine. Will social media save his career? Will Caitlin’s blog save hers? Perhaps we’ve all been riding along life’s highway too overloaded and a little too close to the ground.

As we look to a President, who built his campaign on social media, to fix
so much that’s wrong, perhaps like Obama, the best we can do for now is just keep the conversation going in an attempt to keep moving forward.