Humane Edge E-News November 2008

In This Issue:

• BEYOND GREEN: TIPS FOR BRINGING HUMANE CHOICES TO YOUR OFFICE
  
• FEATURED ACTIVITY: DARE TO BE DIFFERENT
  
• LESSONS FROM THE "ONE DOLLAR DIET" PROJECT
• PRACTICE THE POWER OF KINDNESS EVERY DAY
  
• KIDS BOOKS YOU CAN BE THANKFUL FOR
  
• IHE PRESIDENT WINS CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD
  
• FEATURED STUDENT: BILL PALKA
  

BEYOND GREEN: TIPS FOR BRINGING HUMANE CHOICES TO YOUR OFFICE

“For a company to be socially responsible, and not fall in the “greenwasher” category, then every member of the organization or company needs to begin to act as a socially responsible person. And being responsible goes beyond recycling the can of soda or reducing paper usage, it means learning about how our lifestyle impacts people, animals and the world, and how we can choose to change that.”

• Start with your own circle of control. What can you affect in your daily work life? Can you bike to work? Recycle all your waste? Find creative ways to reuse supplies? Bring cruelty-free personal products? Wear snazzy work clothes purchased at a thrift store? Bring your own tasty, organic vegan lunch (with a bit extra to share)? Model what’s possible to others.
• Share your humane messages in a compassionate, subtle way. If nothing else, you can share bits of information about your own choices with curious co-workers. If you have your own office or cubicle, you can put up (office-appropriate) posters or other paraphernalia. Is there a general information board where you can place flyers about upcoming humane events in your community, or veg restaurant guides, or tips about choosing fair trade? Look for logical opportunities.
  
• Begin with small changes. Recommend veg, organic food from a local business for the next meeting. Host a “zero waste” contest amongst your co-workers (from increasing recycling, to using double-sided copies, to only printing when necessary, to using technology to decrease use of paper, to bringing your own mugs and dinnerware from home, etc.). Bring a guest speaker to talk about investing in socially responsible companies.
• Find colleagues who share some of the same interests and concerns that you do and team up to work on small changes. Are both of you crazed over the number of plastic water bottles your company uses? Start a campaign to encourage reusable bottles and water filters. Tired of donuts and junk food? Organize a potluck featuring local, vegan, organic food. Want to bring awareness to fair trade? Pitch in together to supply fair trade coffees, teas, sugar and other products.
• Increase your knowledge about humane business practices by reading resources such as Cradle to Cradle, Sustainable Industries, and looking for resources such as Sustainable Business and the Rocky Mountain Institute. 
• Examine every aspect of your workplace (not all at once!) and ask yourself how the company’s policies and operations, and the actions and habits of employees, can be tweaked to do the most good and least harm for all people, animals and the planet. Look for opportunities to introduce positive change a bit at a time. Alternative transportation? Low-tox, cruelty-free office, kitchen and bathroom supplies?
• Provide credible data and positive solutions. If you want to replace a product, service, practice or policy, offer several specific positive alternatives that will meet the need as well or better. If you’re trying to change a company policy, write up a proposal, showing how making certain changes will save time, money, resources, etc. – the sorts of criteria that bring joy to the hearts of managers and CEOs.
• If your company produces a product or service for citizens to purchase, consider how you can make that product or service more MOGO. People are increasingly concerned about the impacts of their choices – and about the practices of the businesses they patronize. If you can provide them with compassionate, sustainable, just alternatives, you could well increase your business.
• Network with other businesses and community organizations to investigate how you can share resources and collaborate. Can you go together to buy sweatshop-free uniforms? Recycled or tree-free paper? Establish reciprocal business relationships with local/regional companies, so that profits stay in your communities.
• Be ready for “No.” When co-workers or employers tell you something isn’t possible because of x (it’s too expensive/complicated/time-consuming/radical, etc.), challenge yourself to investigate and develop creative solutions that can facilitate a “Yes.” Pull from the expertise and interests of others to help you.
• Explore ways that other businesses and employees are bringing the humane philosophy to the workplace and find out which ideas are right for your office. If another business is already doing it successfully, you're more likely to get a "Yes."
• Volunteer to coordinate a “Humane Office” group to work on steps toward sustainable, just, humane goals.
• Provide educational opportunities for your co-workers. Initiate discussion courses, such as those available from organizations like the Northwest Earth Institute, or start a brown-bag lunch series and invite in local speakers to talk about ways to live a humane life. Be sure there’s sufficient interest among colleagues.
• Use technology as a strategy for humane choices. Can your next meeting use web conferencing? Is document-sharing or the use of wikis a possibility? How about telecommuting at least part of the week?
• Remember to keep the journey toward a humane workplace fun and engaging and empowering for everyone.

 Image courtesy of OfficeNow.

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FEATURED ACTIVITY: DARE TO BE DIFFERENT

What is prejudice? Why do some people judge others because of their differences? How can we make positive choices that reflect understanding, acceptance and tolerance? In Dare to be Different, an activity for grades 3-5, students learn about these issues and have a chance to “dare to be different” by altering their appearance for a day. Download the activity.

 Image courtesy of flaivoloka. 

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LESSONS FROM THE "ONE DOLLAR DIET" PROJECT

 by Christopher Greenslate

When is a spoonful of peanut butter the best treat ever? When you’re trying to eat on $1 a day. In our September e-news, we mentioned that IHE graduate Christopher Greenslate and his partner, Kerri Leonard, were embarking on a “One Dollar Diet” experiment to each eat on $1/day for 30 days. The experiment is over, and we asked Christopher to share about the experience. Read his essay below:

After working for ten hours, the last thing we wanted to do was come home and roll out tortillas. It wouldn't have been so bad if they were going to be filling enough to make sure we went to bed satisfied. However, the meager portions of homemade refried beans and minimally flavored Spanish rice often left us wanting more. On some nights, if we could afford it, we went buck-wild and had a spoonful of peanut butter to make the rumbling sounds in our stomachs subside.

Breakfast was always the same: plain oatmeal. Sometimes we could put a third of a tablespoon of butter on it. Either way, for the first few days it was difficult to choke down and by the end, given the option, we would have eaten anything else. The lunch menu was not much more appealing. Peanut butter and jelly on dry homemade bread left much to be desired. Once in a while we would split an orange.

In May of this year, the two of us were discussing how much money we had been spending on groceries. We knew that a fifth of the world's population eats on one dollar a day. Soon enough we decided to attempt to eat this way for a month, just to see if we could. In September, we embarked upon our quest to survive on a dollar. In order to help guide the experiment, we created five rules.

1. All food consumed each day must total $1 for each of us.
2. We could not accept free food or "donated" food unless it is available for everyone in our area (i.e. foraging, samples in stores, dumpster diving).
3. Any food we planted, we had to pay for.
4. We would do our best to cook a variety of meals; ramen noodles could only be prepared if there was no other way to stay under one dollar. (We had only six packages.)
5. If we decided to have guests over for dinner they had to eat from our share -- meaning that guests didn't get to eat their own dollar's worth of food.
   

Dealing with work, the stress of trying to figure out what was for dinner, and how much of we could eat led to frustrations on both sides. After the first week, the excitement wore off; it seemed as though dinner couldn't be ready soon enough. Not only did we have to make the food, we also had to calculate the cost and measure portions into affordable quantities. There were tense discussions on almost a nightly basis when we were trying to get dinner ready. It wasn't uncommon for the tension to break into an argument about who was or was not doing what. The validity of the "rules" was debated on more than one occasion. By the time we sat down to eat, we had gotten over our frustration, but the urgent need for food made for many slammed refrigerator doors and several dirty looks.

We created a blog to document our experience. (We also invited people to “sponsor” our effort by donating money for the Community Resource Center here in Encinitas; we ended up raising $1500.) While we expected to face hardship in terms of feeling hungry, getting bored with meals, and frustration at what we could not have, it didn't take long to learn there was more involved. We realized through our experience and through writing (as well as comments from readers), that there are a variety of assumptions about what it means to struggle to eat, and about poverty in general. While a month-long experiment couldn't account for all experiences concerning poverty, it brought up many important questions. One of the most universal questions to come up was: At what daily cost can people eat well? Not just get "full", but to actually eat well? At the end of our "One Dollar Diet Project," we knew that a dollar a day wasn't a sufficient amount of money to eat healthy meals.

So, what does it cost to eat healthy in America? We’re going to find out. We are embarking on a quest to discover the answer to this question. We’ve got our ideas and new experiments ready to go, and you can be sure that we’ll share our results.

In fact, it’s the impetus for our new book concerning the subject. Through a number of new food-cost experiments, and research with professionals in nutrition, economics, and cultural studies, we will bring you with us on our journey. Check back at our blog for occasional updates.

Editor's Note: Christopher and Kerri were recently featured in the New York Times.  "Money is Tight, and Junk Food Beckons" describes their experiences and talks about the difficulties of eating cheaply AND healthfully. And Tara Parker-Pope (who wrote the article) also mentioned them in her blog.

Image courtesy of One Dollar Diet Project blog.

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PRACTICE THE POWER OF KINDNESS EVERY DAY

One of the most meaningful actions we can take is to be kind in everything that we do and say. November 10-16 is World Kindness Week, and a great opportunity to remind ourselves and others about the power of kindness. Get tips and ideas for celebrating kindness from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation, or just give out Free Hugs (be sure to watch the video!). You can also get kindness tips and inspiration and give out smile cards from HelpOthers.org.

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KIDS BOOKS YOU CAN BE THANKFUL FOR

In the U.S., November often brings tales of pilgrims, Indians, turkeys for dinner and the “First Thanksgiving” to children in schools and library storytimes. If you want to celebrate the season with kids, but prefer stories reflecting more compassionate food choices  and/or want a more accurate portrayal of the relationship between colonialists and natives, look to titles like these to share:

In A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting, Mrs. Moose asks her husband to bring home a turkey for Thanksgiving, but what they turkey doesn’t understand is that they want him to join them FOR dinner, not BE the dinner.

‘Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey follows what happens when a group of school children visit a turkey farm and decide that the turkeys shouldn’t become anyone’s Thanksgiving dinner.

You can also look for books that are about harvest or that focus on particular fall foods, such as pumpkins.

There are a slew of “First Thanksgiving” children’s books available, but most of them are from a “colonialist” perspective. Judy Dow and Beverly Slapin have written an article deconstructing myths about “The First Thanksgiving.”

They also offer recommendations of books by Native authors to use during Thanksgiving time, including:

Squanto’s Journey: The Story of the First Thanksgiving by Joseph Bruchac, which tells the tale more accurately from Squanto’s viewpoint.

1621: A New Look at Thanksgiving by Catherine Grace O’Neill and Margaret M. Bruchac, which provides a view of the “first thanksgiving” from a Wampanoag perspective.

Dow and Slapin also recommend other books that focus on Native thanksgiving and harvest, such as:

Four Seasons of Corn: A Winnebago Tradition by Sally Hunter, which follows a young Winnebago boy through the year as he learns about his people’s relationship with corn.

The Sacred Harvest: Ojibway Wild Rice Gathering by Gordon Reqquinti, which follows an Ojibway wild rice harvest.

Giving Thanks: A Native American Good Morning Message by Jake Swamp, which offers up a message of thanksgiving to Mother Earth.

Ininatig’s Gift of Sugar: Traditional Native Sugarmaking by Laura Waterman Wittstock, which follows a young boy who learns the traditions of tapping trees to make sugar.

Image courtesy of justjennifer.

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IHE PRESIDENT WINS CHILDREN'S BOOK AWARD

We at IHE are pleased to announce that our President Zoe Weil's children's book, Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs, has won the 2008 Moonbeam Children's Book Award for juvenile fiction. The award is designed to "bring increased recognition to exemplary children's books and their creators, and to support childhood literacy and life-long reading." 

Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs is the first in a series of children's novels (ages 9 & up) promoting humane values through an exciting mystery. Claude and Medea are two very different Manhattan 7th graders who become clandestine activists seeking out opportunities to right wrongs and do good in the world. In The Hellburn Dogs, the duo and a group of friends team up to solve the mystery of a rash of dog thefts.

If you're interested in purchasing a copy, you can get 10% off the list price if you order it from IHE. 

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 FEATURED STUDENT: BILL PALKA

Bill's dog, Jedi, helped spark his epiphany about how humans treat animals of different species, and an encounter with IHE President Zoe Weil led Bill to humane education. Now Bill uses his humane education skills to work with youth in a variety of settings. Read about Bill.

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