Whole Foods and Chef Ann Cooper Bring Healthy Salad Bars to Schools with the Great American Salad Bar Project

Jamie Oliver isn’t the only chef personally investing in the health of today’s generation of children with a very hands-on approach, Chef Ann Cooper is also taking a good, hard look at the way children today eat and wants to do something about it. The facts are simple (and terribly tragic): this could quite possibly be the first generation of children in our country’s history to die at a younger age than their parents.

Chef Ann Cooper has recently partnered with Whole Foods to create the Great American Salad Bar Project that will bring healthy salad bars into schools, giving children a choice of healthy vegetables, fruits, whole grains and proteins to choose from and implement into their daily diets.

The initial goal of the Great American Salad Bar Project is to raise money for a salad bar to be brought into at least one school in the surrounding communities of each Whole Foods store across the U.S.

Over $400,000 has been donated to this initiative so far and beginning September 1st, schools will be able to personally apply for a grant to get their own salad bar. Grant applications will be accepted from September 1st to November 1st and for a school to be eligible they must be an elementary, middle or high school participating in the National School Lunch Program, located within 50 miles of a Whole Foods Market store. Schools who are accepted for this Grant Award will receive a portable 5-well Cambro salad bar, the necessary pan inserts, chilling pads and utensils, as well as numerous training tools for school personnel.

If you’re a school interested in receiving a salad bar review the grant application [PDF] and take the necessary steps in order to get your school’s lunch room a salad bar. If you’re a parent or just someone concerned with how children today are eating and want to make a positive difference in their lives, donate to your local Whole Foods Market’s fundraising efforts now.

Are You a Young Person Who Wants to Give Back? Join the Do Something YAC

Activism is, and has always been, tremendously important. It is because of people who truly care about what’s going on in their country, state and local communities that really motivates others to help get something positive done. Do Something is one of the largest organizations in the U.S. that inspires and helps young people to get out, speak their minds, volunteer and act. They are helping to create a culture of volunteerism, on track to activate two million teens in the year 2011 and they are well on their way to that goal by helping teens do simple things that make a big difference.

Do Something is currently accepting applications from teens all over the country who are committed to serving with Do Something on their Youth Advisory Council. Do Something is looking for teens who are committed to helping mobilize their peers and provide valuable insight only teens today can provide. If accepted, that teen will remain on the Do Something Youth Advisory Council for a period of two years. In that time, they will connect with other YAC members in annual in-person meetings and monthly conference calls, as well as email correspondence. Teens will have the opportunity to participate in focus groups and having the power to influence the organization’s direction, keeping Do Something updated with what’s hot and what they feel most passionately about.

Just a few examples of the impact that the Youth Advisory Council has are:

• Representing the Do Something Advisory Council at meetings, conferences and in the community at large by acting as official youth ambassadors.
• Helping with the selection of Do Something grant winners by reading applications for grants and flagging their favorites.
• Assisting in the creation of logos, images and campaign concepts.

Do Something relies heavily on their Youth Advisory Council, utilizing the input of the teens involved and essentially giving youth the opportunity, as well as the platform for participate in changing the world.

Check out Do Something’s Youth Advisory Council if you would like to participate and submit your application to be part of the 2010-2011 class!

Cast Your Votes for the 2010 Do Something Awards and Watch Live Monday Night on VH1!

Activism, changing the world and making it a better place for everyone is important business. We always hear about how important it is to donate to the causes we care about, but actually getting out there and doing something about it is something entirely different. Not only can you make a difference in your community and the entire world without sparing a nickel, by going out there and changing what you feel needs to be changed will also give you a unique sense of accomplishment and you will know that you did good and you made a tremendous difference.

The Do Something Awards focus on social change and honoring the best young world-changers who are 25 years of age and under. The people being honored by Do Something are making the world a better place and Do Something is making sure that they get the credit they, and all of their hard work, deserves.

The Do Something awards aren’t like the awards shows you usually see. There are no violins, no tuxedos and no almost-wedding-like dresses in sight. This awards show is loud and awesome and truly representative of the rock stars that are behind social change.

This year, the Do Something Awards will be hosted by Jane Lynch, who we all know and utterly adore from Glee. They will air live on VH1 on Monday, July 19th at 9PM EST.

This is also a great time to make your voice heard. You can cast your vote for who you think should walk away with a Do Something Award. Choose from categories like the overall ‘Do Something Award’, which will be awarded to a young do-gooder under the age of 25. There are also movie stars, television shows, comedians, charities on Facebook and even a Twitter category (where @BPGlobalPR is nominated and you should vote for them because that Twitter account is hilarious, but in that really very sad kind of way.)

So, do something and cast a vote for your favorite do-gooder and then tune in on Monday, July 19th on VH1 at 9PM EST. to see if who you voted for won.

Bacardi’s 60 Second Cocktails, 10 Minute Meals and $100,000 Donated to the USO

Summer is the time for going on vacation with your family, coming up with fun activities for your kids and best of all, enjoying the weather with good friends and great cocktails.

On the 4th of July Bacardi USA launched their “Salute to Summer’s Best 60 Second Cocktail Program” that will go on until Labor Day (September 6th). This program has brought together celebrity chef John Besh and celebrity mixologist Bryan Stowe, both who are also former US soldiers, who have created a phenomenal menu of cocktails and grilled dishes that are healthy and delicious. Both the dishes and cocktails feature and utilize the flavors found within Bacardi’s line of products.

The cocktail recipes on the menu take just 60 seconds to make and the grilled dishes take 10 minutes. With these recipes, you can put together an entire menu of exquisite recipes and accompanying cocktails that will look and taste fabulously. These recipes will also wow the pants off of your loved ones and will look like they were made in more than just a few minutes with incredibly easy-to-find ingredients.

The cocktail recipes use Bacardi’s unique and flavorful alcohol and some of the recipes include Grey Goose Fresh Berry Lemonade and Bacardi Limon Iced Tea. Among the grilled foods recipes you will find Grilled Chicken Breast with Tequila Cazadores Reposado Lime Glaze and Grilled Flank Steak with Louisiana Peach and Grey Goose Citron Glaze, among others.

Take a look at how easy it is to create the Bacardi hand shaken daiquiri in this video from Bryan Stowe.

You can find easy-to-locate recipes right on the cocktail recipes section of the 60 Second Cocktails Facebook page or you can download their entire recipe book! [PDF]

Bacardi USA hasn’t just put together some awesome menus for you to utilize throughout the rest of the summer using their products and flavors, although that is certainly pretty amazing. In addition to recipes and ideas for your own recipes, Bacardi USA has also committed to donate $75,000 to the USO and Bacardi consumers who are over 21 years of age can increase the total donation amount of $100,000 through their participation in the 60 Second Cocktails Facebook fan page. Every time someone becomes a fan of the page on Facebook, Bacardi USA will donate $1 to the USO until they reach $100,000.

So go become a fan of 60 Second Cocktails and get that donation amount increased!

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet Approach Billionaires to Donate to Charity

If there are two immensely wealthy people out there who can really get behind the Robin Hood belief system of taking from the rich and giving to the poor, it’s Bill Gates and billionaire investor Warren Buffet, who are launching a campaign to get other American billionaires to donate at least half of their wealth to charity.

The Microsoft co-founder and billionaire investor have approached a handful of the country’s billionaires over the past year to donate at least half of their wealth to charity. They are asking these people to pledge to donate either at some point during their lifetime or at the time of their death. Philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad are two of the handful of people who have been approached; they have already announced their pledges to donate.

Former Gates Foundation CEO, Patty Stonesifer spoke to The Associated Press about the campaign, telling them that of the handful of the billionaires approached so far, they have all embraced the campaign to share the wealth and help those less-fortunate than themselves.

This is a really awesome campaign. I can’t wait to see more news break about this and see who the country’s other big givers are.

Women Step Out of the Closet of Shame & Start Talking Openly About Periods

Most women remember their first periods and no matter what emotion or range of emotions they experienced on that day, they can still look back on it many years later and smile–for one reason or another. No matter what a woman thinks about her period, the bottom line is that it is with us for the long haul. It is one of our long-term relationships and even if we love it or hate it, it is with us for the majority of our lives; and if we live with our periods for the majority of our lives, why do women (in general) constantly feel shamed by it?

A great deal of women will give you an odd, ‘what planet are you from’ look if you ask them to tell you about their first periods. Many women (and especially men) will visibly become bothered if you dare speak its name during a conversation. Most men downright refuse to go on late-night or after work runs to the store to pick up a box of pads or tampons and all of these situations deal with the shame that is associated with menstruation. Sure, our lack of openness can be chalked up to menstruation happening to be an awkward subject, but it goes deeper than that, especially considering that it doesn’t have to be and it only is because our society has let itself become a woman-shaming society.

I have always been very open about my body, my sexuality, and the miracles that the body of a woman can perform in her lifetime. I honestly did not know where this openness came from, being raised by a single father, but I always had strong female role models in my life, one of which was my father’s girlfriend who became my mother-figure throughout my childhood. She taught me that the anatomy of a woman is beautiful and despite the abuse I had endured as a child from my mother (and the reason why my mother has not been in my life for more than a decade) there is nothing to feel ashamed about when it comes to your own body because it is yours and no one else’s and no one can tell you that you are not beautiful and that your body is in any way something to be looked at as vulgar or disgusting; including menstruation. For a while I thought that perhaps my natural-born feminism was something instilled in me from my upbringing, but from running this website (and hello, have you noticed the name of my website?) as well as paying special attention to the women who come from my generation, I am noticing that there are a great deal of women who are coming out of the shame closet; who are demanding that the awkwardness associated with the bodies and bodily functions of women are what is truly shameful and that the period is something that should be spoken about openly and honestly. That is exactly what Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, a young woman of 18, did when she started asking women to tell her about their first periods.

Nalebuff realized with her own first period and hearing the story of her Aunt’s first period that she had kept a secret for over 50 years, that people needed to start talking about this and the other events that happen in a young woman’s life that people are simply refusing to talk about openly. Something needs to be done in this society that would let this silence continue for so long and keep so many women captive in its process of women-shaming. And so she started collecting stories from women and girls all over the world about their first periods and now presents us with an absolute gem, My Little Red Book, for women and girls of all ages who are either just about to get their periods, just got it and feel awkward about it, or for women who remember their first periods vividly and celebrate the right of passage that we as women have to talk openly about it.

There are 90 short stories in all and several names we’ve come to know through their own books and activism work make appearances in this book, including Jennifer Baumgardner, Meg Cabot, Megan McCafferty, and Gloria Steinem’s 1978 essay, ‘If Men Could Menstruate’ which originally had appeared in Ms. Magazine also appears in this book. There are stories of how many women thought themselves to be dying when noticing the small stain in their panties, women who “faked” their periods when knowing that their friends had gotten their periods before them, and my favorite is a story about a mother who when her daughter first got her period and felt awkward about it, she had to do something to mark the day and so she bought her daughter a vase full of red roses and in another story, her daughter talks about how special those roses were to here and how she had kept the vase for years after that first period. Another one of my favorite parts of this book is that so many women talk about the Judy Blume book, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret a book that you would think comes with all little girls at birth due to how widely-read and coveted it is, albeit a bit out of date for those of us who have never seen these menstrual pad belts Margaret speaks of.

My Little Red Book is a must for all women who have ever felt shamed or awkward about their period and also for every girl’s first period kit.

All of the proceeds of this book are being donated to charity because there is a lot to be done as far as making the bodily functions of women something that can be widely spoken about. There is also a great need for activism in countries like Africa, where because of the lack of menstrual supplies, a young girl will not receive the education that she is entitled to because one week out of every month will be spent out of school due to her period.

In the back of My Little Red Book, there is a section of books to read about periods including, yes, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and there is also a Do More section where your support for organizations like Planned Parenthood, who are the largest provider of sexual education and health services in the United States, as well as Choice USA, a youth-led organization that seeks to protect women’s reproductive rights, can tremendously help girls receive the sexual education that they too are entitled to. A company that I would like to add, is Lunapads. Lunapads are based in Canada and make reusable, cloth and fleece pads. Not only do they make a transition from disposables to reusable pads easy, their pads are completely harmless, unlike disposables that contain bleach and synthetic fibers. Lunapads also does great work for girls in Africa by giving them their Pads4Girls Kit and each pad has a lifespan of 5 years or more that will help African girls attend school when they have their periods.

You can find out even more about this book and even share your own first period story at MyLittleRedBook.net.