Schools are back in session, and a crazily fun global movement may inspire you to spread some love (along with the peanut butter) into your child’s school day, and ideally – well beyond. Check out #HashtagLunchbag. It’s the perfect example of how a small group of people on a local level can make a tremendous impact, one small act at a time.

#HashtagLunchbag began on Christmas 2012 in a Los Angeles apartment when a group of friends kicked around ideas on ways to find a fun and meaningful way to give back. After a few failed attempts, they decided to hit up a local grocery store to buy enough food to prepare 100 lunches.  Stellar lunches that would make everyone not eating them jealous.

They hit the streets near the Santa Monica Pier and Venice Boardwalk looking for anyone that could use a meal. They smiled when asking people if they were hungry, exchanging small talk while handing over their mini-feasts, acknowledging a shared humanity. When they finished, fired up from the day, they shared images of the experience on their personal social media platforms, jokingly tagging posts with #HashtagLunchbag.

The posts attracted an abnormally large amount of likes/comments/calls/texts/emails from people wanting to join in for “the next one.” (They hadn’t planned on doing a “next one”, but riding the high of their good deeds, decided to repeat the project a month later.)

More friends joined, more meals were made, and more people were fed. As they say on their website, “The ripple continued and more people were hitting us up wanting to know how they could get involved. We ran it back for another go ’round in February 2013, growing out of our apartment to a local restaurant. We set a goal of making 1,000 meals. 100 hundred people showed up for the party. We added love notes of encouragement to each meal to further acknowledge those we were feeding, reminding them that they weren’t forgotten. Just like we did, everyone went on to share their experiences on their social platforms, intriguing and inspiring their friends and their followers.”

Since then, they’ve hosted monthly #HashtagLunchbag events across Los Angeles, seeing others around the world  replicate their model. n their website, they shared simple do-it-yourself instructions so anyone can repeat their efforts. To date, the #HashtagLunchbag movement has grown to more than 100 cities hosting #HashtagLunchbag events around the globe

The organization’s rapid growth has led to the formation of the Living Through Giving Foundation, a registered 501(c)3 non profit organization that empowers humanity with the tools to create & benefit from organized acts of Love.

#HashtagLunchbag is more than just a program that feeds the hungry in local communities. With handwritten love notes as our secret ingredient, they use bagged lunches as vessels to spread love, acknowledging the humanity of both the giver and the receiver. Volunteers make the meals and embellish simple paper sacks, both of which nourish the receiver on so many levels.

Who knew what could grow from a Christmas morning conversation among friends.  Find out more on their website, link here.

All images from #HashtagLunchbag‘s Instagram page

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NPR recently visited The Good Earth organic produce stand in Gaza City, where the attending clerk Rami al-Waffer explains that people pay no attention to the signs and charts detailing the benefits of organic foods.

The first thing they see is the price, which typically runs about 25 percent higher than foods that are grown using a whole cocktail of potentially toxic chemicals.

This store purchases its produce from an organic farm in southern Gaza that is run by the Palestinian Center for Organic Agriculture. This eight acre farm is on land previously run by Israeli farmers, and produces most of the organic produce in Gaza.

Related: Organic farming boom in Gaza

In the good old days, Gaza farmers could sell produce to their Israeli neighbors, but that practice is now forbidden so the farmers have to look within to sell their goods. Very often they end up having to sell their crops at lower prices in amongst standard foods at public markets – otherwise they would go to waste.

But perhaps there will eventually be a shift. Even if customers can’t see past the price, and who can blame them given that without work and the Israeli blockade so many families are desperately poor, farmers are beginning to recognize that it can be cheaper to farm using organic methods.

Samir al-Shaer, an agronomist who heads the farm, told NPR that there are about 30 farmers working with him.

“When they plant organic, they’ll tell people about it,” says Shaer. “Some farmers are first interested because they can’t afford the chemical fertilizers. They didn’t realize the other benefits.”

Instead of using chemicals, they have double doors on the greenhouse to keep out pests, and they shake tomatoes to pollinate them in lieu of bees. But traders “don’t care” Shaer tells NPR.

“It’s all cucumbers, they say.”

Image of Arab farmer | Shutterstock

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Daniella first visited this remote island, formerly an Omani protectorate, with her ex-boyfriend. He moved on but she, now brokenhearted, decided to stay on in order to compile a “reportage” of the local fishermen. Which is where the love story begins. As Daniella spent more time with these men of the sea, the free-spirited Swiss woman couldn’t help but sympathize with their new world stresses. And they in turn looked to her to help.

Subsistence fishing has been disturbed by a variety of poorly documented factors along the coast of Kenya. Overfishing, climate change, pollution are  certainly among them, and the situation keeps getting worse as the progress mentality deepens its grip on this east African nation.

There’s not much else to do in the archipelago south of Somalia, though some tribes do depend on disappearing forests for medicine and food, and given that Lamu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, tourists are drawn to the ancient Islamic architecture, donkeys, dhow races, mangrove forests and other cultural activities.

But tourism is a shoddy way to sustain a growing population and scores of children end up quitting school early, even Madrasa, according to Ali, because they can’t afford the necessary uniforms.

One day, the fishermen and Daniella were trying to think of a way that they could make some extra money. Daniella suggested someone find a used tanga – just on a whim.

Ali Lamu went away and returned a couple of days later with a weathered sail that had a giant hole in the middle of it. Daniella instantly identified with the fabric, the authenticity which could not be replicated without years of wind and water.

“I looked at it and said…this looks just like the hole I have in my heart at the moment, created by the strength and pain of love…,” Daniella wrote on her blog.

So together she and Ali decided to cover the hole with a giant red heart painted with the same paint he uses on the dhow; she then added the words “Love Again Forever Whatever.”

Daniella loved the piece so much she decided to frame it and hung it in her friend’s art shop, and within an hour a pair of American tourists came by and bought it for a staggering some of money. Ali could hardly believe it.

That was in June, 2008. Five years later and the pair are married and employ roughly 16 full time workers who transform old tangas into bags, wall art, cushions and a series of other inventive designs accompanied with messages of love and peace.

They also arm an arsenal of private individuals with the resources to make their own Ali Lamu products at home, which goes a long way to soften the edge of poverty in Shela especially – the ritzier side of the island inhabited by a series of rich, famous, and notoriously private individuals.

Ali Lamu products are no distributed in several different African and European countries, and continues to spread – all without any marketing.

All images via Tafline Laylin; kindly ask for permission to use them.

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As though arriving in Dubai for the first time with nothing but $272 in his pocket, the Pakistani-Canadian entrepreneur will first get a job as a scrap collector and then work his way up from there. He will live with eight or ten other men in squalid conditions – like so many do in Dubai – and document the entire process with a three-person film crew. 

Inspired by a young Pakistani scrap collector he met, Mirza wants to see how far he can stretch his initial sum of money in order to highlight opportunities for the poor.

Once he gets a leg up as a scrap collector, he intends to find other jobs either online or using newspaper classifieds. He will exchange his services for room and board, if he can.

He will then distribute the DVD that Mirza Productions will generate over the 33 day ordeal for free. He will also pass out 100 survival kits to some of the most enterprising people he meets along the way, which will include mobile phone top ups and a Nol card that provides a few rides on Dubai public transportation.

This kit will also include tips for eating well and suggest places for  purchasing nourishing food.

Mirza seems to suggest that with a touch of pluck and ingenuity, even the most uneducated person on the street can improve their lot. And it’s an interesting experiment.

But it’s also borderline insulting. With his camera crew and pedigree, employers won’t  treat him with the same disdain that many foreign workers experience in the Emirate and he already has “reached the top” if living in a giant skyscraper is one’s definition of the high life.

He does acknowledge this, but claims that his project is about demonstrating to Dubai’s shadow people that it is possible to get somewhere from nowhere. In theory at least.

“The idea is to bounce back in 33 days, not to make millions but be stable,” Mr Mirza told The National. “Let’s see what Dubai has to offer.”

We’re kind of hoping Dubai has a nice big serving of humble pie on the menu.

Image of Burj Khalifa, Shutterstock

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163,000 Moroccans who previously had no access to electricity are going solar, thanks to Tenesol.

The world’s poorest two billion people have no access to any kind of electricity at all. Among them are people living in rural Morocco. These households are among the two billion that will greatly add to the world’s environmental problems over the next fifty years if they get on the dirty energy treadmill.

One solar company focused on the problem is the solar manufacturer and project developer Tenesol, headquartered in Lyon in the South of France, with its principal markets in the French Overseas Territories. The French company is helping rural Moroccans go straight to solar by installing 26,000 household solar systems far from the grid.

The world’s poorest leapfrogged the land line telephone (and the telegraph) and went straight to cell phones. If they could similarly bypass the medieval energy technology that damages our climate, all of us will live in a safer future.

So, the smart thing for clean tech companies is to find a way to switch these people on to an energy supply that has staying power in the long run. That is not fossil fuels, but wind and solar power.

Tenesol did it by partnering with Morocco’s National Electricity Office, and with funding from Agence Française de Développement. Temasol, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tenesol in Morocco since the transfer in 2008 of the respective shares of Total Maroc and EDF EDEV, focuses on decentralized rural electrification activities.

“Rural electrification is a major part of a country’s socio-economic development and this project reflects Morocco’s commitment to assisting and improving rural communities” says Jacques Mathan, export sales director at Tenesol. “Many of the families we work with have never had access to electricity but solar energy is fast becoming the renewable answer to their power needs.”

The company designs, manufactures, markets and operates solar-photovoltaic power systems, making about half of its solar panels in the South of France in Toulouse, where they just tripled production capacity from 17 MW annually to 50 MW annually.

The project will bring solar power to 163,000 people in 26,000 homes in rural Morocco. The project is scheduled to be complete by 2018 and is expected to cost 25 million Euros. The subsidiary company Temasol will supply, install and maintain the systems.

Since these homes are far from any grid, each household’s PV modules will be connected to a battery to store the power generated for use during the night. Temasol also plans to construct solar heating systems and solar generators to power remote telecommunications in Morocco.

::Tenesol

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The post Moroccan Poor Leapfrog Fossil Fuels – Switch on the Sun appeared first on Green Prophet.

Born and raised in Beirut and trained as an architect, Nina Rahal-Lott is a women with a vision. After witnessing the dire conditions that Palestinian refugees live in across Lebanon, she is single-handedly attempting to setup a voluntary organisation of environmentalists and architects to help in any way possible to improve the environment of the refugees.

The idea is to improve first the living units of the most needy, such as the elderly and the handicapped,” she explains. “That can begin with simple help, such as thermal insulation, or new hinges for the doors, simple water taps, cleaning their streets and planting trees for them…I will be doing my best to provide sustainable solutions with minimum cost. ”

The conditions of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon such as the Badawi camp are notoriously poor with sewage running in the streets and houses of low quality. Nina tells me that she is interested in improving the living spaces for the marginalized in Lebanon starting with the Badawi camp which is home to over 13,000 people and one of the worst camps in Lebanon.

There is an estimated 400,000 registered Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, many of whom are denied social and civil rights as well as access to public social services. She added: “Some people who showed some interest in my idea preferred that I keep the Palestinian camps out of this proposal as this may provoke negative responses in Lebanon, due to the political significance. This actually made me more determined to highlight the cause.”

Although Nina is currently living in France, she insists that there is lots that can be done: “I can provide my architectural skills, therefore any required designs and drawings, 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional if needed too, based on any given measurement drawings, photos & surveys of the current living spaces.”

She is also hoping to get schools in Lebanon involved in architecture and the environment to take part and help come up with sustainable solutions to the refugee camp problems. As she states students need to be directly involved with those they are working with and recognise their humanitarian and environmental responsibilities.

When I ask Nina why she thinks the environmental aspects is central to her vision she replies: “The environment was not part of  my own architectural education- we were focusing on the visual aesthetics, functionality of space and even the concept / poetry behind the design, without taking into consideration the impact of all those ideas on the environment.

“I now see our planet burdened by our ill practices, and I am impressed by the contribution of environmental designs on architecture. I do believe there must be an ethical responsibility in all human behaviour towards our environment.”

:: Image via Al Jazeera English/Flickr.

For more on Lebanon and green architecture see:

Beirut Activist Try to ‘Green the Grey’

Beirut is Getting Its First Green-Roofed Tower

Lebanon Rocks Out To Cure The Green Blues

The post Greening The Refugee Camps of Lebanon appeared first on Green Prophet.

Pro-aid and anti-poverty lobbyists are trying everything from giant letters to banging pans to raise awareness of the high-level event.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) suffer from a lack of widespread public recognition, not least in the summit’s host country, the US.

Mobilizing popular support and influencing delegates will demand a range of online and offline techniques, according to advocacy specialists, some more quirky than others.

Human rights in general, and gender rights in particular, are at the heart of these calls. Amnesty International, for example, has a 3,865-strong online petition to put human rights at the centre of the fight against poverty. In addition, an enhanced focus on gender rights will likely be reflected in the revised “outcome document” to be signed by global leaders in reaffirming their commitment to the eight goals at the 10-year mark.

Another focus is the financial gaps: approximately US$20-$40 billion could be required annually until 2015 just to meet global targets on reducing child and maternal mortality rates, according to the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health.

Awareness-raising

An energized public serves a crucial role in holding political leaders accountable to meeting financial and other commitments to the MDGs, says Lysa John, campaign director for the civil society coalition of more than 160 partners, the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP). It makes an even bigger difference when activists pressure leaders in their home countries.

Passionate rallies cannot always match the impact of a private meeting with top senior officials, however. Most NGOs and advocacy groups have been using this traditional campaign method in the past few months, said Elisa Peter, chief of the UN’s non-governmental liaison office in New York.

But the term MDG is not an easy sell, advocacy workers say.

“We’re trying to help people understand MDGs as global issues related to hunger, poverty, health, women and children and to use terms they can identify with,” said Aaron Sherinian, spokesman for the UN Foundation charity.

According to a 2010 Gallup poll, 68 percent of Americans think the US and UN should be more focused on “issues” such as disease, poverty, education and health, Sherinian says.

When the UN Foundation unveils an “interactive” digital advertisement in Times Square at the beginning of September, it will be with the assumption that “people recognize the issue of the promises more than they recognize the term [MDG] itself”, Sherinian explained. “They understand the issue and they get behind the issue.”

The term “MDGs” is not widespread on the social change site BloggersUnite.com, where more than 50,000 bloggers log in monthly to post events related to health, climate change and education in developing countries.

“In the world I live in, the issues that the MDGs address are being talked about, but not in those exact terms,” said BloggersUnite founder Tony Berkman. “We all have our own approaches to getting the word out about eradicating poverty.”

Political will

As well as being little known, the investment and stamina required to maintain the goals in the face of public disinterest and public sector deficits needs a special type of commitment.

When Millennium Promise Alliance CEO John McArthur spoke at the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs on achieving the MDGs – the first hearing of its kind – in July, he lobbied in terms of domestic politics.

“The MDGs should be, but have not been, a strategic priority for the United States,” he said in the hearing. “The President’s recent national security strategy placed a strong emphasis on development in the poorest countries.”

“For the US to incorporate the goals into its development policy and thinking is hugely important,” McArthur later told IRIN.

Super-sized campaigns

During the June hearings, GCAP wrote a 1.8m high open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, recommending a stronger human rights focus within the MDGs.

We’re trying to help people understand MDGs as global issues relate d to hunger, poverty, health, women and children and to use terms they can identify with

UN security stopped it from entering the Secretariat, but Ban’s office heard about the roaming letter and invited GCAP organizers to a private meeting, pledging enhanced collaboration with civil society.

GCAP, with Oxfam, Amnesty and others, plans to continue its super-sized campaigning in September. Its partners are planning thousands of events, including a bell-ringing session in Indonesia and a gathering of homeless people to bang on pots and pans in Malaysia, during Stand Up, Take Action, Make Noise for the MDGs events from 17 to 19 September.

In Bhopal, India, university students will sign a compilation of songs about ending poverty. Activists in Italy will gather at various events to make a steady noise mimicking heart beats by pounding on their chests, drums and clapping their hands. Across the Philippines, people will partake in a massive church bell-ringing campaign on 19 September. More initiatives are being announced daily.

GCAP will also display giant signed charters from its networks across Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East that joined in answering the question of “The World We Want [in] 2015”. Viewers at multiple New York sites can then supplement the charters and write their own expectations and demands for the summit.

“We want to make a noise around the world and it is intended to be a big one,” said Rajiv Joshi, a GCAP organizer in New York.

If that noise is clear enough and uniformly pitched, it stands a strong chance of reverberating inside the General Assembly hall from 20 September. It remains to be seen if the activists make it past security with their giant paperwork or not.

:: image and story via IRIN

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