Tag Archives: charitable giving

Top 5 Family Ideas for #GivingTuesday

We all know about Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but not everyone knows about #GivingTuesday, a campaign that kicked off in 2012 to promote a day of giving around the consumerism-focused holidays. That year, #Giving Tuesday (which is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving) inspired $10 million in online donations. This year, the campaign has gone global. It’s about non-profits, businesses, families and students coming together in a united movement of philanthropy. Here are 5 ways you and your family can give on #GivingTuesday. Play a Game Did you know there are online games that combine fun, education and philanthropy? One called Free Rice tests your vocabulary in quizzes; for every five you get right, the organization donates 50 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program. My Green Games offers a selection of kids games (categories include animals, sports, TV shows) and plants a tree in Peru for every 1,000 … Continue reading →

What We Learned from a Tour of Our Local Food Bank

By Donna DeForbes | July 16, 2013 - 5:30 am | Kids Going Green, Nutrition, Social Action

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Lately, Sofie’s been asking about the homeless guy she sees at a particular intersection we pass. She wants to give him food. This led to discussions about food pantries where people can go to get food. And then we asked our friend Erica, who works at our local food bank, to give us a tour. The RI Community Food Bank is a distribution warehouse that solicits, stores and provides surplus food to 178 member agencies at 238 sites across the state. (Find your nearest RI Food Bank agency here.) They have some pretty cool programs like Neighborhood Pantry Express, a mobile food pantry that provides fresh produce to low-income people, and Community Kitchen, a 14-week culinary job-training program for jobless adults that also provides healthy dinners to hungry kids. The warehouse alone occupies 35,000 square feet and can hold two million pounds of food at one time! Here’s a peek … Continue reading →

Save The Rainforest with This Reusable Water Bottle

By Donna DeForbes | May 14, 2013 - 5:30 am | Green Gifts, Product Reviews, Social Action

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SIGG and Cuipo (a social enterprise named for an endangered, towering tree) have gotten together to promote rainforest conservation. They recently debuted three new children’s water bottle designs: Tiko the toucan, Peaches the pink dolphin and Cezar the Emperor Tamarin monkey. With each purchase you can save one square meter of Central American rainforest. The SIGG bottles are typically Swiss—designed to be stylish, clean and functional—and made from 100% recyclable aluminum. The liners are BPA- and phthalate-free and have no VOCs (volatile organic compounds). My daughter likes her pink dolphin and doesn’t complain about a metallic taste in her beverage. The cool part is activating your special code to save a section of rainforest. Sign in and redeem your code online with Cuipo. You’re automatically taken to a map that shows the section (latitude and longitude) of rainforest designated in your (or your child’s) name. This makes a pretty cool geography lesson, … Continue reading →

Giving Back: How My Daughter is Saving the Chimps One Friend at a Time

By Donna DeForbes | March 28, 2013 - 8:00 am | Kids Going Green, Social Action

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My six-year-old made her first charitable donation this year. She decided to save the endangered chimpanzees. She’s an animal lover so the organization did not surprise me. The giving did. I donate regularly to wildlife organizations. She sees the catalogs, the free gifts. One day an appeal from Save The Chimps arrived in the mail. I did not know them, but asked Sofie—who had recently shown an interest in chimps and monkeys—if she wanted to donate. She immediately said yes. I explained this meant giving some of her money. (I offered to split the $25 donation with her.) We also discussed why the chimps needed saving. She wanted in. She opened up her piggy bank. I wrote the check. I thought that was the end of it. A month later, the mother of one of Sofie’s school friends thanked me for my daughter’s activism. “Huh?” I said. “Yes,” she said … Continue reading →