I promise to properly dispose of every CFL (Compact Flourescent Lightbulb) that I purchase, and will help spread the word about CFL recycling options.
For more information, see Take the CFL Recycling Challenge
The visiting nurse told Peace Corps volunteer Katie McKenna that her Guatemalan village of Chuisac had one of the highest rates of childhood diarrhea in the region. The cause: Inadequate sanitation facilities. As many as fourteen people in the village of 140 families shared a single latrine. Lacking proper toilets, children frequently defecated in their yards and patios. Desperate to save their children and improve overall health, the villagers planned to build a latrine for every household that did not have one--about one hundred. Cost per latrine was $150, and the villagers could provide half that in labor and materials.
Water Charity, a non-profit organization with a mission to provide clean water and sanitation to people who don't have it, learned about Katie's work with the village and offered to provide the additional funding.
While Katie and the villagers worked to dig and begin building the latrines, Water Charity raised the remaining funds, one small donation at a time. Katie pulled a substantial portion of the funds herself, hitting up family and friends back in the States.
Water Charity credits Katie's determination and perseverance for the success of the program.
In many cases, we have 13 people currently using 1 latrine, and the picture of the men building the latrine is in a house where there is NO latrine. They had the hole dug, but they didn't have the money to buy the little house around it and the seat.
These families worked day and night to get the holes and latrines done, digging holes 23 to 50 feet deep! It is scary work in a hole that deep and narrow. For the latrine you see being built, the family went down 120 feet!!
All told, Katie and the villagers built 91 latrines. They also educated the children on safety and hygiene practices.
The faces of one family, shown here standing in front of their new toilet, tell us exactly how important this asset is to their lives.
It is easy in our land of plenty, where many of us enjoy multiple bathrooms in our homes, complete with hot and cold running water, to forget the enormity of sanitary waste disposal. We flush, wash and go. For billions of people elsewhere, a simple toilet can be the difference between life and death.
According to the United Nations World Health Organization, every year there are 1.6 million diarrheal deaths related to unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene—the vast majority among children under 5.
For giving selflessly of her time, energy, skills and talents as a volunteer in the United States Peace Corps; for working respectfully with the villagers of Chuisac in their quest to improve the health of their children; for building cooperation through partnership with local Guatemalan organizations as well as international organizations such as Water Charity; for providing a perfect example of a conscious and conscientious member of our world village, and thereby bringing the Village of Ordinary a little closer to reality, the Ordinary Heroes Award is kindly offered to Katie McKenna with humble gratitude.
Image credits: Images of Katie and the villagers courtesy Water Charity. Used with permission.
Too sick with flu last few days to post, folks, but will return as soon as possible. In the meantime, would love to hear from you how you are making your life a little more Ordinary these days.
Sometimes life throws us a rotten tomato. It's easy to blame external circumstances when we fail to meet our goals. Sometimes we live down to others' expectations of us. Sometimes we collapse into a debilitating depression, unable perhaps even to get out of bed. Nick Vujicic had every reason to give up on life from the get-go, but he didn't. Look at his face. Listen to his voice.
People say to me, "How can you smile?" ... Then they realize "There’s got to be something more to life than meets the eye if a guy without arms and legs is living a fuller life than I am."
Listen to me, please. ... Listen carefully to this extraordinary story, which is yours, and decide what you want to do with it.
Film's Narrator, Glenn Close
This is the trailer. For the full video, click through to YouTube. It's an hour and thirty-three minutes in length, so get comfy. I'm watching it as I write this. You and I are the stars. Only seventeen minutes in, and the scenery and story are equally beautiful. Looks like lots of people are watching tonight, as the feed is rather slow.
I'll update this post after I've seen the whole thing. Let me know if you watch it, won't you?
Gratitude to Tweep @kalsing for posting the link to blogger Mashable's post featuring the video.
Who knew that a simple act, such as choosing organic cotton over conventionally grown cotton, could save lives? Christine Nielson knew--and did something about it. A former school teacher who had helped indigenous women in Mexico use traditional skills to raise their standard of living, Nielson developed the entrepreneurial "fire in the belly" when she visited the cotton fields of her friend Sally Fox. Fox is a hero in her own right. She revolutionized the cotton industry when she developed plants that grew long-fiber colored cotton, reducing the need for bleach.
Nielson saw Fox's beautiful, cotton in earthy, natural colors as an environmentally sound and humane alternative and founded Coyuchi. Its mission, according to Coyuchi's Joanne Sims, in Hope & Luxury: To stop the production of conventionally grown cotton.
From the beginning our mission was to work with sustainable agriculture. Organic and fair trade means these farmers are paid an extra amount and it gives them a meaningful improvement in the quality of life.
Cotton is the most heavily sprayed crop on the planet. Doing an organic cotton bedding line is a way of offering people a quality product, as well as--since sheets are big and heavy and use a lot of fiber--making a substantial contribution to pollution reduction.
Frequently cited as the first company to manufacture organic cotton fabric for commercial use, Coyuchi launched a line of luxurious organic bedding and bath products and placed them strategically in upscale boutiques and shops, where trendy patrons couldn't get enough. Leveraging the growing demand for her products, Nielson forged exclusive relationships with mills and growers in India. Demand continued to grow, enough that prices came down to within reach of ordinary people like you and me.
In its December 2007, issue, Ode Magazine asked Nielson: What can make growing organic cotton sustainable for the farmers? Her reply was simple:
Only with the added benefit and support of fair-trade certification can organic cotton farming work over the long haul. The higher price for organic cotton in addition to the premium for fair-trade certification assures more returns. Half of the fair-trade premium goes to farmers’ committees and will be utilized for projects that benefit the community, such as setting up schools and providing drinking water.
In providing Westerners with gorgeous comforters and sheets, pesticide-free crib bedding on which to lay our baby's heads, and luxuriously soft towels in the bath, Nielson gave nearly destitute cotton farmers in India, many of whom were already sickened from exposure to insecticides they used on their conventional cotton crops, a hand up and hope for a much brighter future. How did she do it? By giving them a market for cotton fibers grown in the traditional--and organic--way, as they had grown them for thousands of years.
If you watched the The Conventional Trap at the beginning of this post, you'll be heartened to learn what Coyuchi and its partners have achieved in Growing Back to Organic, here.
Not only did Nielson pay more for organic cotton than GMO prices (Note: Due to lower yields in early years, returns are about even with GMO returns, but expected to increase as the soil is replenished.), but in partnership with Solidaridad and the Chetna Organic Farmers Association, she helped bring fair trade practices to the farms, insuring that workers are treated humanely and compensated fairly.
Although Chetna trains and supports its members in organic growing practices, the farmers are missing some essentials - most importantly, livestock. Cows and bullocks provide the manure for making compost; their urine is collected, fermented, and applied to cotton plants as a concentrated soure [sic] of nitrogen and natural pesticide. Meanwhile, the cows' milk supplements family diets and provides an additional source of income. On average, the calves born each year contribute more than 3,000 rupees, or $75, to the the groups of farmers and their families.
Together, Chetna and Coyuchi have developed a pilot program with the aim of acquiring 91 cows and constructing 10 cowsheds for six villages as well as building shelters to help lengthen their life expectancy.
Nielson did not stop with the farmers, however. She partnered with fair-trade mills to ensure their workers were also compensated fairly, without discrimination, and that dyes and finishes are safe. Your baby, sleeping on a Coyuchi crib sheet, will never inhale residual formaldehyde, for example, which is used in most conventional cotton products.
This year, Nielson sold Coyuchi to Organic Style, Ltd. "I didn't have the fire in the belly anymore to want to keep investing tremendous amounts of energy into commerce," Nielson told Organic Bouquet's Clark Merrefield.
The work Nielson began will continue under the leadership of Organic Style's founder and CEO, Gerald Prolman. Says Prolman, "You've got six thousand growers in India that are counting on us to sell their goods. I'm going to scream the Coyuchi message as long as I'm running this company."
For changing the way we think about organic products, for providing us with beautiful bed and bath linens made of sustainably grown, harvested, milled and shipped fibers, for saving lives, for improving the quality of life for textile laborers from field to packaged goods, for helping farmers to earn a better living, safely, while replenishing the soil upon which we all depend, for going beyond her company's needs and working with local organizations to provide safe drinking water and livestock for food and crop management, for caring about the earth and the generations to come at home and abroad, and for bringng the vision of the Village of Ordinary a little closer to reality, the Ordinary Heroes award is kindly offered to Christine Nielson with deep gratitude.
For more about organic cotton, including links to numerous organic cotton products and suppliers, ranging from baby toys and crib blankets to high fashion white shirts for men and yummy fashions for women, visit my Squidoo lens, Why Buy Organic Cotton. For more on the effects of conventional cotton growing on the lives of growers, see the PBS documentary, The Dying Fields, on the cotton farmer suicide epidemic in India.
They are everywhere. In corporate highrises and in remote villages miles far from cell phone towers. They're sitting next to you on the bus. They're building schools in Africa. They're pounding the marble halls of Congress, seeking protection for our children, our health, our food, water, air and planet. They save heirloom seeds, plant organic gardens, teach the rest of us how to adopt sustainable lifestyles in our throw-away, buy-more culture. They save the forests, rivers and oceans without which we cannot survive.Their work brings the vision of the Village of Ordinary a little closer to reality every day. They show us how wonderfully possible it is to live in a world much like Ordinary right now. They are my Ordinary Heroes. I tell their stories on this blog frequently, because it is people like them, people like you and me, who are building Ordinary.
This is not my time to stop and rest. This is my time to clean up the messes we've made and build a good world, not a better world, a good world. I do not want my grandchildren to think I did not do enough to prevent runaway global warming and create a better world for them and their children. Every day, I do what I can. Every web page, blog post and network contribution I make is part of that. Every dollar I spend--or choose not to spend--is part of that. Every light, every faucet, I turn on and off is part of that--or not!
Day by day, I am learning to make better choices. When they work for me, I share them that others might take heart as well.
The visiting nurse told Peace Corps volunteer Katie McKenna that her Guatemalan village of Chuisac had one of the highest rates of childhood diarrhea in the region. The cause: Inadequate sanitation facilities. As many as fourteen people in the village of 140 families shared a single latrine. Lacking proper toilets, children frequently defecated in their yards and patios. Desperate to save their children and improve overall health, the villagers planned to build a latrine for every household that did not have one--about one hundred. Cost per latrine was $150, and the villagers could provide half that in labor and materials.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vLcXDAVxdJKDhFOeWwvv66rlVZvmcXAUdT7uwAUPsRD6jB3LexLrTHZsD0ozKdJ9OSuV-EA9QKCnZP0b77gBjfpvrNOz5o9nHebfyTeVhUsskT9S71hoeCZ0Tb4TOaQxKzbDIYLueiaXffvUQ9IFs=s0-d)
Send this post to a friend
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vRuxODLQu3OijFdG3CxpvV9LXSwYJOPlook5qA0DAgG4MuQjylzSXJPJhobX0O2_03KYYWeVWBpK5RrrdZhCBGsxGn2EdoZxzmFKaNwFstJOgMpx2StXTbUCNiShpWp4voZOhUjUiHMdUEgSZL-qjF=s0-d)
