CANSTRUCTION

Canstruction’s motto exceeds the traditional meaning of the phrase “One can make a difference.”

In fact, their motto should be rephrased: “One can makes a difference.”

Nick Telesca, Executive Director of Canstruction, explains that switching the subject for the verb is the essence of Canstruction’s mission. Led by architects and engineers, Canstruction design/build competitions showcase the designers’ talents through displays of giant canned food sculptures.

Their mission, however, does not end there.

“At the close of the exhibitions all of the [canned] food used in the structures is donated to local food banks for distribution to pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, elderly and day care centers.”

Canstruction has reinvented the social context of the food can.

And has created a literal meaning to the words “Sustainable art.”

With the help of over 30,000 volunteers, aka “hunger relief ambassadors,” helping to bring Canstruction exhibitions to life, who knows which product will breach its traditional boundary next?

The growing art movement dedicated to raising hunger awareness and distributing over 2 million pounds of food to the hungry “officially broke the Guinness World Record on February 11, 2010” with the largest canned structure exhibited in Walt Disney World.

Structure assembly—partnership with Disney

Structure disassembly— partnership with food banks in Central Florida, Miami, and Atlanta

Canstruction is bridging the gap between the bookends of our social structure.

And this year they are expanding the model to Egypt where canned structures will be assembled in 10 locations throughout the country, igniting unique cross-cultural trend in artistic reuse of everyday items.

Thanks, Nick, for teaching us how to build through reuse!

Please visit construction.org for more information.

(Canstruction’s design competitions are alleviating hunger through awareness and canned food donations)

THE FRIENDSHIP CIRCLE

Charity Change is honored to have its first guest post hail all the way from Cleveland, Ohio this week! A HUGE thanks to dear friend, Ellie Berlin (and hubby Jeff Berlin's photography skills) for sharing a charity close to her heart!

This summer, I had the privilege of working with The Friendship Circle of Cleveland to help plan their first annual walkathon.

This international Jewish non-profit organization began in 1994, and caters to children with special needs and their families. The Friendship Circle of Cleveland recruits their volunteers from local high schools, and currently has about 200 teenage volunteers. These volunteers help to facilitate the many programs that Friendship Circle offers. From “Friends at Home” to “Sunday Circle,” teen volunteers and children with special needs are able to create a long-lasting bond. Each branch has its own unique programs. For example, Cleveland’s “Friends at Home” program brings teen volunteers into the homes of their special needs buddies to play games, do art projects, or just hang out.

While working with the Cleveland Friendship Circle staff, I got a first-hand look at how the staff’s dedication and love can create a ripple effect throughout the community. The walkathon had a great turnout, and I can only imagine what next year will bring . . .

The Friendship Circle currently has seventy branches, worldwide, and is still growing.

For more information about The Friendship Circle of Cleveland please visit: www.friendscleveland.com

For more information about The Friendship Circle please visit: www.friendshipcircle.org

Would you like to share your favorite charity's story and tee? E-mail charitychange@gmail.com to be a future guest blogger!

PLOINK!

This post is dedicated to members of the twittersphere.

For those who have never ventured onto Twitter, check it out. It aggregates information, allowing individuals and organizations to multiply their impact through collaboration.

It’s pretty neat, just keep reading.

My relationship with ploink! began on twitter. In registering a twitter account, I found that my name, @charitychange, was already in use. Eager to reveal the source, I followed the account and discovered that a friendly tweeter was behind @charitychange, representing a fun microdonation website called ploink!

And so, @charitychange and @charity_change’s (this blog's twitter account) “intimate” relationship began.

On Twitter.

As a website, ploink! is enabling individuals to donate small amounts of money, even 1 pence, to charities in the UK. @charitychange was appropriately named, for it reflects ploink!’s mission that small amounts of change donated on its website do make a difference. Indeed @charitychange and @charity_change are both “charity changing,” albeit with slightly different connotations.

Ploink! uses Twitter as leverage to expand their campaign, and “The response and support we get from twitter is remarkable.” For an organization that has only used Facebook and Twitter as its sole source of promotion, ploink! has 1860 followers and is catalogued on 145 lists.

How’s that for social marketing?

While ploink! currently operates as a source of funding for charities in the UK, it has embarked on a phase II version of the website, which may include the option of donating to charities outside the UK. Upon registering on ploink!’s updated website, individuals will encounter their charity giving come to life—including “animated piggy banks that move, smile, wiggle their ears etc. when you put coins into them.”

We’ve come a long way.

Gone are the days of schlepping change to the bank.

Thanks Marc, for teaching us about the virtual piggy bank!

Please visit www.ploink.co.uk for more information.

(Ploink! provides a medium to donate small amounts of change to charity.)

SUSAN G. KOMEN FOR THE CURE

The pink ribbon is a story of 2 sisters.

One, who carried her family through her battle with breast cancer; and the other, who carried her sister's strength and relentless courage to survivors around the world.

Meet Susan G. Komen and Nancy G. Brinker.

Although one lost her fight against cancer, together, Susan and Nancy have saved the lives and the dignity of thousands suffering from the disease. They have created the activist against breast cancer.

With nearly $1.5 billion invested in the Susan G. Komen Foundation, millions of people fighting breast cancer have been touched through The Foundation's research, outreach tools, and educational programming around the world. For many though, the Komen Foundation has reached them through "The Race."

The Komen Race for the Cure has a tangible finish line. You can see it and even touch it. It is often only 5 km away from the start, the struggle, the battle of the disease. It is a model for surviving the haunting depths of breast cancer--alongside thousands of supporters.

In pink. Stride by stride, the survivor and the supporter reach the finish. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes, sometimes it takes an hour and fifteen minutes. But in the end, all that matters is crossing that line. The finish line, the end line to breast cancer.

Everyone has joined the fight-- sometimes in the solitude of a hospital room, and sometimes in the midst of thousands on the streets of Bosnia, or Boston, or Jerusalem. Wearing pink.

That pink ribbon--as large as a building cover or as small as a pin-- empowers and sustains breast cancer fighters around the world. Imagine how one color has impacted the lives of millions of individuals. Imagine how 2 sisters, together, have built a community that knows no barriers. They all have imagined a world without breast cancer. They have made the finish line a reality.

Please visit http://ww5.komen.org/default.aspx for more information.

(The Susan G. Komen Foundation is fighting breast cancer)

REBAR

Make a parking space your new living room.

Take a nap in public space.

The above are just a few of the avant-garde ideas heard over at Rebar—a studio dedicated to art, design, and activism. Although ideas are usually based out of their San Francisco office, their projects are viewed all over the world.

Encountering a Rebar project often initiates “a double take,” for the everyday objects or ideas used in these social experiments are repurposed to spark out-of-the-box conversation.

While some may chuckle upon seeing a dozen sleeping adults in a public art gallery, others may happily join the “Nappening.” Just imagine a group of business men jumping into a pile of Bushwaffle on the town green, or a “fully-functional corporate conference room submerged seven feet into the desert floor.”

No need to imagine.

This is reality.

Rebar is challenging routine and questioning monotony.

Among the most successful is Park[ing] day, which transforms “temporary public open space in a privatized part of town.” Initiated in 2005, a parking space in San Francisco was temporarily remodeled into a makeshift park—complete with grassy knoll, park bench and supple sapling, providing refuge for pedestrians meandering along the city’s busy streets.

While some may think the space unconventional for rest and relaxation, “more than 70% of San Francisco's downtown outdoor space is dedicated to the private vehicle, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to the public realm.”

Why not integrate the two?

And so, Park[ing] day has become an annual tradition—from California to Tehran. It is a time when vibrant green blades of grass overtake mundane gray strips of concrete.

A time when people around the world take a much needed break.

On a bench.

In the street.

Please visit rebargroup.org for more information.

(Rebar is redefining urban space.)

350.ORG

350 or 10.10.10—which is the greater number?

For the many who arranged wedding vows to the thousands who rallied to combat global warming, 10.10.10 will be commemorated for its pledges.

While the hype leading up to this momentous date was unique, the commitments that culminated from this historic event are unprecedented.

For the folks at 350.org, 10.10.10 was merely a vehicle to serve 350; the number that “scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.” If atmospheric concentrations of CO2 continue to generate above 350 parts per million, major human and natural disasters around the world will remain imminent dangers.

So, in partnership with the world, 350.org created a day dedicated to lowering the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere; also known as what CNN calls the “'most widespread day of political action in the planet's history.’” That was in 2009.

This year was 10.10.10.

The year of the global work party.

In 188 countries, 7347 events occurred. The people led the leaders. And grassroots initiatives showed the politicians that: “if we can get to work, so can you!”

People pledged and organized campaigns worldwide to reduce our global CO2 number. They partied, rallied, photographed, installed (solar panels), planted (community gardens), shot (movies), and cleaned (up public spaces). Verbs and actions we exhibit everyday—but on 10.10.10, they were reframed to address global warming in a different light.

350.org has successfully built an accessible network across the internet to tackle a complex problem that our political leaders have not yet effectively addressed. Their open portal has collected the photographs, videos, and events of 10.10.10 to unite global advocates in the fight against global warming.

No place is too far or too small to escape the harmful effects of global warming.

350 is achievable from the bright blue sky to the deep blue sea.

Please visit 350.0rg for more information.

(350.org is bringing CO2 levels back to reality)

REDU

The “no child left behind” mantra is transforming into the “no idea left behind” policy.

With the myriad of articles and policies surrounding the ever present U.S. education debate, blogs and websites are serving as venues for discussion and innovation in the education sector.

Redu: Rethink/Reform/Rebuild Education is a platform for entrepreneurs, artists, professionals, and individuals to share their ideas on education reform. Redu most recently sponsored the re:form school project—an interactive exhibit using art as a mechanism to transcend traditional educational boundaries. Housed in a public school in the SoHo area of NYC, re:form exhibited the work of over 150 artists uniquely displaying a public awareness campaign on education.

It transformed the traditional school building, classrooms, and playground into an open medium of questioning the conventional educational system.

While the exhibit was only a temporary gesture to get the creative juices flowing, redu’s website serves as a long term forum on innovative educational collaboration. Powered by Microsoft’s Bing software, redu is making a statement that education has crossed conventional policy.

With staggeringly troubling statistics on the future of education in the U.S., redu is aiming to step ahead of the game by creating “positive social changes through its powerful content, unique network, and expertise in education.”

Education is on the verge of reinvention.

While change in the public education sector is often a grueling process, there are some superheroes who have hit the ground running, or rather flying. Just look at the challenges and victories of the recent hit film “Waiting for Superman,” or the physical redesign of the school classroom.

While it seems that no idea has gone untouched—

schools: small v. big, charter v. public;
teachers: old v. young, experienced v. naïve;
students: inclusion v. self contained classrooms–

the work still remains.

And redu has just raised the bar—for it has just let ALL of us contribute to the presentation.

Please visit letsredu.com for more information.

(Redu is rebuilding education.)