When J.R., the cofounder of the Facing Project hung up the phone after his call-in NPR interview about the Facing Project, I looked at him and said, “This just got real.”
And it had.
It’s one thing to have an idea in your head and it’s a whole other thing when others take that idea and run with it. Ft. Wayne is our first Facing Community to complete a project (4 other communities have projects underway). They’ve had art exhibits on Homelessness, this Thursday they’re reading monologues, and the Mayor of Ft. Wayne has even declared Thursday Facing Homelessness day.
I’m not sure I’ve seen a better looking group of folks than the University of Kentucky’s K-Crew, holding up copies of Where Am I Wearing? They’re using WEARING as a common reader this fall.
I’m giving the keynote address at the University of Oklahoma’s Social Entrepreneurship Symposium Tuesday at 4:30.
I’m free all day on Wednesday, how should I spend my time? I’m thinking maybe I’ll play flag football with Kevin Durant, but if that doesn’t work out I’m open to suggestions.
I held up my “Gas Eaters” and asked them what they thought they were. There were the typical guesses (adult diapers), but then I called on a bright-eyed girl sitting on the floor in the back.
“They go over your underwear,” she said, “so you can dance in the rain and not get your underwear wet.”
That was a response I had never heard before, and I loved it. And here’s the thing…none of the kids laughed at her. They thought it was quite possible that these were my dancing-in-the-rain underwear.
Kids aren’t bound by reason or logic; they are freed by curiosity and imagination.
EARTH University’s banana plantation isn’t your average banana plantation. They come up with unique ways to control pests and rodents that don’t always involve crap loads of chemicals.
You can find EARTH University bananas at Whole Foods. They are definitely one of the world’s coolest banana growers and their university is pretty amazing, too.
You have to read a lot of boring books to write an interesting one. (At least I hope WHERE AM I EATING? is interesting. The reviews should start coming in soon enough.)
I do find these subjects fascinating because I see firsthand how these global issues impact people I’ve met — garment workers in Cambodia, farmers in Colombia. But rarely am I absolutely thrilled to crack open a book written by some policy expert or economist. I’m amazed at their brains and I’m happy to have their info and knowledge flow into mind. But I’m less hungry for…
Workers in Chinese apple orchards earn a daily wage that their counterparts in the orchards of Michigan earn in 10 minutes. This and the lack of environmental regulation in China is why 75% of apple juice concentrate consumed in the U.S. is made from Chinese apples, and often have levels of inorganic arsenic higher than the FDA allows in drinking water.
My Minute Maid apple juice (right) may contain juice from apples from China, USA, Chile, Turkey, Germany, Austria, and Argentina.
Good thing, too, because if the beer world was a democracy, we’d surely elect another, better-tasting, beer to be our leader. But, alas, Budweiser is American as Levi’s (made in Cambodia) and Coca-Cola. In places like, China it is imported. Yes, China sends us computers and we send them our subpar beer.
I saw this dude chugging a Bud atop Shanghai’s Pearl Tower
What the strangest place you’ve seen someone chugging a Bud?
I visited Shanghai to research my new book WHERE AM I EATING?AN ADVENTURE THROUGH THE GLOBAL FOOD ECONOMY, which comes out April 22nd (Earth Day)! Over the next five weeks I’ll be sharing new photos, videos, and stories from…
Somewhere along the line aid has become less cool.
Everyone is all about teaching a man to fish, not giving him a fish. Everyone is all like trade and not aid. I’m guilty of this too. (See my give a man a job making shoes not a free pair of shoes argument regarding TOMS.) In response to this, Save the Children UK made a Monty Python inspired video about the not-so minor things aid has accomplished.
It’s hilarious and gets the point across.
Want to support smart aid? Be a smart giver. Learn how here – here….
Jessica Jackley in Uganda about to have her life changed by changing lives.
Jessica Jackley eventually became the co-founder of Kiva, but before that she was a lovestruck philosophy major who followed her boyfriend across the country to California where she worked a temp job at Stanford. While there she attended a lecture by Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, which makes microloans to the poor. She was impressed at how he simply sat down with the poor and asked them what they needed, instead of telling them what they needed. She was inspired to do the same.
She quit her job and spent three months in Uganda interviewing farmers and fishermen. She saw how small amounts of money could…
