Lemonade for a Cause

A couple of summers ago, I drove to my niece's Phoenix wedding by way of Southern California. It had been a hectic school year and I needed some time to myself. Along the way I was able to visit my best buddy Sally in Carlsbad, CA. She loaned me an extra bike one morning and we enjoyed a leisurely ride along the coast. Of course, I'm workin' even when I'm not and fundraisers always pique my interest. As we rode through the neighborhoods around Del Mar I was impressed with the cutest bunch of kids who had set up a lemonade stand for charity. It was a bit more decorative than the one our kids had recently, and with a fundraising twist. Instead of working to earn money for themselves, they were raising money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I didn't have my camera at the time--I've since learned to take it everywhere--so this photo of our little lemonade stand might inspire.

To take the concept further, one brave little eight-year-old-cancer patient enlisted the help her neighbors by starting a lemonade stand to fund treatment for other children with the same disease she had. Alexandra Scott did not survive cancer, but her first neighborhood lemonade stand earned $2,000 "to fight childhood cancer, one cup at a time." By the time she passed away, Alex's Lemonade Stand had raised over one million dollars to fund cancer research.

Now, Alex's Lemonade Stand Foundation raises money every year, by hosting community-wide events all across the country. Through her unselfish effort, one young girl made a difference for other children in a very simple way. As I work this month to provide community service resources for 210 summer school students to fulfill a requirement for the Living Skills course in our school district, I think about the creative ideas of unassuming young children who go out and make a batch of lemonade, with cookies or banana bread, and let go of "what the neighbors will think." They ask for a little support from mom and dad to get poster-board for a sign, and off they go--right out of their comfort zones to the side of the road peddling an often too-sour or too-watery lemonade. But the rest of us don't care about the actual product, we want to support their work ethic and "the cause."

So, any of you students or other young people who are bored and think you can't do much to make a difference without signing up for a major event, give it a try. Put yourself out there with a sign and some tasty lemonade. Throw in homemade cookies, or a baked treat unique to your culture. Your neighbors will be inspired, and you can provide funding for the cause of your choice. Describe to your customers the efforts of the charity you are supporting, and at the end of your sale take the proceeds directly to the post office to request a money order payable to that charity. You can even make a big "thank you" sign and post it where your sale took place, reminding them of when your next sale will be held. With one successful sale, you may find that little Alex's idea was worth repeating.

Tasty Lemonade Trick:
Make powdered lemonade, and add the juice of some fresh lemons to taste. Slice a few for effect and leave in the pitcher.

Other Sales to Try:
My girls made loads of cashing selling Italian sodas when they were young. Mix 1/4 c. Torino syrup, 1/4 c. cream (keep cold!), and 6 oz. seltzer water for a refreshing roadside treat.

One caveat: This should only be done with parent approval and supervision, in the daylight hours and in a safe area or neighborhood.

Alex's Lemonade Stand is now a national organization sponsoring events in mid-June to end childhood cancer: http://www.alexslemonade.org/

Joseph Biden Honors Students Who Serve

A you a true agent for social change? Would you do something good if no one was looking? Watch Vice President Joseph Biden's inspirational address to Parade Magazine's first All America Service Team Award winners at the White House on June 23, 2010.

http://www.parade.com/news/all-america/2010/0623-vice-president-joseph-biden-honors-all-america-service-team.html

Nominate a Student for the All America High School Service Team!

"It's about doing the right thing."

PARADE Magazine and generationOn, the global youth division of Points of Light Institute, are seeking nominations for The All-America High School Service Team, to recognize high school students who have made exemplary contributions in the service areas of: health, education, environment, economics or community. These students show service as a solution to solve community problems and the power of stories to inspire others to action.

The top 50 finalists, 10 per issue category, will receive certificates. The top 15 (3 per issue category), will receive a two-day paid trip to Washington, D.C. to receive their award and special recognition.

Deadline ends May 30. For more information on how to submit nominations, visit Parade.com:
http://www.parade.com/service

Mercy

I may have written about the good work of mercy once or twice before; I seem to need its presence in my life more lately. Due to stress, I'm not always at the top of my game. Exactly when I think I've mastered the art of juggling one more ball in the air, another two are thrown my way and I have to reach and stretch until my capacity increases. I suppose we should all be grateful for challenges that make us grow--I only wonder if I'll ever be able to coast in comfort or will I always feel like I'm trying to catch my breath. Time to take a few more things off my plate, to make it easier to focus on whatever it is that goes 'round and 'round in the air.

How to simplify a life that is already devoid of things such as movies, t.v., shopping, and ice cream? Answer email in chunks, don't check it so often. Let the voicemail handle the phone sometimes--especially when the cell phone breaks like mine did last week. I'm into a second week with no cell phone, and with an old broken one that I located in the garage (when it happens work). My daughter will be loaning me her old phone because I'm not willing to renew a contract for bad service in order to get the "deal" on a new phone. What does this have to do with mercy, you say? Everything. I'm not perfect--at keeping up with home, work, friends, or with life. Too much on my plate, as usual. I lost patience at home this week and had to ask forgiveness from my husband. I missed some email messages at work, due to a jammed inbox and a possessed junk mail folder, had to ask for re-sends and apologize for delays. I failed to check voicemail remotely for the broken phone and missed calls from people who are important to me, I'm still begging for mercy on that. And now, at the end of the week trying to stretch but still dropping balls along the way, I ask the Universe for mercy to help me grow into the demands on my life.

I am reminded that when we leave our hearts open to help, it finds us. Of course, the help that arrived this week was from countless volunteers, once again, at work. Mercy also came from kids and husband pitching in extra at home, and from friends giving me a second chance to connect. Some day I will "arrive," to a place where I can see that all this juggling of four-plus jobs at a high school made me the person who I will become. Today, I only wish to continue seeing this evidence of mercy in my life.

Abundant Helping Hands

My oldest daughter Sheridan got married last weekend and it was one of the most memorable times of my life, a real "family affair". Grandparents, siblings, nieces, husbands, and my children all worked together to make decorations, food, and favors ahead of time; then we put it all together and took it back down in a matter of hours. It was the best kind of celebration, with my daughters and son with his girlfriend helping one another, and my stepchildren pitching in wherever they were asked. By the time we returned home after the special occasion, it was time to jump right into work and the usual routine the next morning with only a little time for reflection. I made it through the week until Friday, when I worked with two skilled parent volunteers to host our twice-annual community service fair at the school. Twenty five community organizations manned lunchtime booths to promote volunteer opportunities for our high school students.

As one might imagine, by that evening I started to run out of steam. I struggled to find the energy to even drive home, and realized Saturday's plans might go on without me. The one activity I had wanted to do was a California-wide annual community service project with my church congregation; I suppose celebrating a successful event here will have to by my contribution.

Bob and the boys got up at 7:30 on Saturday and met at the church, where dozens of volunteers were sent to their locations: Montalvo Center for the Arts, or Mount Umminum. Either way, it would be a job of weeding, heaving, lifting, and moving. From nine to noon, fifty people from our congregation completed a total of eight spring clean-up jobs assigned earlier by the Montalvo coordinators, and another group just as large did restoration work at Mount Umminum. The hardest part about our site, according to Bob and the boys, was staying clear of poison oak. Sometimes we take for granted all the trails and walkways that are cleared of this noxious weed. These volunteers had no fear, trusting their gloves and a post-cleanup shower to keep them from infection. They also worked on repairing an overhang, moving a giant woodpile, and clearing a ditch what would have taken a bulldozer to accomplish.

At church today, I heard accounts of some other Helping Hands activities around the area, as far away as San Diego; more than fifty thousand members of our faith from all ages came together in an effort to be of service to our communities and especially for our state parks. A nearby young adult congregation rebuilt fences at Calero Park, making an assembly line with their leader's instruction and competing with each other to see who could build the fastest fence. In San Diego, the church volunteers were asked to serve breakfast and to work as course monitors for a community-wide 10K race. In my experience, having run many 5-and-10Ks, a race can never have enough volunteers! I'm sorry I had to miss our annual community service event due to my own physical exhaustion, but I am blessed with the perspective of an observer which allows me to contemplate the service that is given all around me every day. Because of last weekend and my benefiting from helping hands of family and extended family in support of Sheridan's Utah wedding, and after hearing about the monumental efforts of 50,000 church-member volunteers on one Saturday morning in support of parks and nonprofits in California, I feel blessed to be living in this time of abundant good works.

"By their fruits shall ye know them." (Matt. 7:16)

Cranes for Healing Wishes

Last month our students, parents, teachers and I all wondered what could be done to show support for the tsunami and earthquake victims in Japan. With California's Ed Code, fundraising on high school campuses can be tricky. The parents decided to host a bake sale anyway across the street, and they also raised relief dollars by selling "Pray for Japan" bracelets. But what could the students initiate? From dosomething.org, I heard about a crane-folding project where the students could mail origami cranes to studentsrebuild.org. That organization would receive a two-dollar per crane donation from the Jeff Bezos Family Foundation (Jeff is the founder of Amazon.com). Our goal: 1,000 cranes to send healing wishes for Japan, to be folded in one day, April 18th.

Our gifted Japanese teacher, Ms. Kamikihara, began to share the artful folding technique with all of her students, and by Spring Break our students were folding hundreds of cranes to bring on the day of the event. Last Monday, over one hundred energetic teenagers stood at ten tables near our student center during a rainy lunchtime, keeping their fingers and the little origami squares dry. I knew we would surpass 1,000 when I saw seven or eight bags full of cranes already made during Spring Break. The Japanese foreign language students wore red and white yarn on their wrists to designate their status as crane-folding mentors. The thirty-five-minute soggy lunch break passed quickly, and the origami artists were having so much fun that we had to remind them that the bell had rung and it was time to stop. Now came the hard part. How many cranes did we have? Mrs. Tajima, our stalwart parent volunteer, had a plan to place sets of 100 cranes in paper bags, then into the copy paper boxes we had gathered from the other departments.

As I ate a little bowl of soup to warm up, the parent volunteers counted the students' lunchtime effort. I finished the soup and had to get back to my class assignment. I left the parents to finish counting cranes into paper bags at the folding tables. An hour or so later, Mrs. Tajima sent word that not only had we wildly surpassed our goal of 1,000 cranes in one day; our students had made 6,000! She made the little 6,000 crane sticker above, so we could post it around the school to say thank you to all who participated. As it turns out, we just barely missed the deadline to sponsor the two-dollar-per-crane donation from the Bezos Family Foundation, but the foundation decided to double their overall donation from this promotion (thanks in part to groups like ours that came so close to the deadline).

In the process of mailing cranes to studentsrebuild.org and Architecture for Humanity, Mrs. Tajima also discovered the lofty "1,000,000 Crane Project" going on at Princeton (coincidentally, Mr. Bezos' alma mater). They were sent some of our cranes as well. We sent the remaining cranes to Osh Kosh B'Gosh, for their program to donate clothing to thousands of children in Japan who have been affected by the devastation. With the deadline for mailing cranes to the original organization having passed while we were out on Spring Break, the activity turned out to be less fundraising and more raising awareness. Either way, our students felt empowered to finally be able to make a difference for Japan.

Cool Community Service Idea:

Folding Cranes to Help Japan
(These sites also have instructions)

Architecture of Humanity project
http://studentsrebuild.org/japan/

Clothing Donations for Crane Donations
www.oshkoshbgosh.com/cranesforkids

Princetons Students' Healing Wishes
http://www.millioncraneproject.org/?page_id=7

Cesar Chavez Day of Service

What a day we had, celebrating the core values of Cesar Chavez on his birthday, March 31st. After a stirring message from Karthik Prasad, a Fellow from Stanford University Haas Center for Public Service, a diverse group of 120 Paly students contributed 7200 hours in service-learning around Palo Alto and beyond. They chose from seven organizations based on their interests and the values of Cesar Chavez: Milpitas Food Pantry; Magic, Inc. at Stanford Dish; Half Moon Bay Restoration; Lytton Gardens Senior Community; Creative Montessori Preschool; InnVision; and Ecumenical Hunger Program. My daughter Grace and her best friend signed up for Ecumenical Hunger Program, but I was needed at Milpitas Food Pantry.

Once we got the four buses loaded, we headed to East Palo Alto for two of the sites, then to Milpitas with my group. Of course, the exciting part of community service is that you never know what you may be asked to do. Karen Kolander, the director and one-woman-show thanked us for coming and informed us that our group of nineteen working four hours each, represented seventy-six man-hours--a feat she could never accomplish alone. She assigned us the task of emptying the storage closet and the storage unit of all donations made since the holidays and check each package or can for a valid expiration date. If a can was badly damaged or expired, we tossed it. The "would-I-eat-this" test was also applied, with permission to throw out rusty or aging cans with no dates. It is astounding to see how many food donations are inedible. At the food pantry, and earlier in the month at a food donation bin, I noticed someone's discarded "specialty diet food." Of course, if you wouldn't eat that yourself, why would a needy or homeless person find it appetizing?

Our students stayed focused on the job at hand, and I worked to keep them busy. There's nothing worse than a bored volunteer. When some students were standing around, I found a job inside sorting shelves in the "share area," where recently-expired foods and household goods can be taken, two per client. By the time the students were finished with that part of the project, the shelves looked as good as a Mom and Pop grocery store. Lots of organizational talent was contributed that day at the food pantry. My only regret was that I couldn't be in two places at once. Grace and her group ran out of things to do at the Ecumenical Hunger site. The overworked director wasn't quite the drill sergeant that Karen was at the food pantry, and they didn't have a parent ordering them around. Maybe next time, they kids will be bold enough take the initiative and find extra ways to fill the time and make a difference. As Karen said, "I'm the only paid employee for this facility, except for the janitor who works a few hours a week. I could never do it without dedicated volunteers." One of her regular volunteers even brought a platter of freshly cooked Afghan food while we were there, "For everyone to share," he beamed. Volunteering with kindhearted people is just one of the perks of giving back to the community!

Core Values of Cesar Chavez:
www.cesarechavezfoundation.org/.../Core_Values_with_Service_Project_Ideas.pdf

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A Small Act of Kindness Saves the Day

"Ms. Owen, Ms. Owen," I heard my name as a student I had never met approached me. I was juggling half a case of bottled water, community service day sign-up sheets, and a dvd case from fourth period before lunch. We had a training meeting during lunch for student leaders participating in our Cesar Chavez Community Service Day. When I arrived, my daughter Grace gasped through her pizza, "Mom, do you have any water?" I trotted across campus to get one of the leftover cases from a recent event and then back to the meeting. I tossed the bottles to the parched students, stayed in the lunchtime meeting for ten minutes, then headed back to take the rest of the water to my office before the start of the next class period.

As one might imagine, with all this hustling to and fro something might fall apart. I had forgotten about my cell phone and keys tucked into a shallow pants pocket and the phone went crashing to the cement after I stopped to talk on the last lap to the Tower Building.The girl looked at me very quizzically, as I didn't even realize I was missing something. She could have ignored my mishap as "one of those staff people," or she could have given the phone to someone who might have a little fun breaking into my photos and text messages. No, our students aren't that cynical anyway. They are known to do the right thing, turning in lost wallets, keys, phones and such. By her small act of kindness, this girl saved my feet from further trotting that day, making it so much easier to put myself back together after the most harried morning I can remember!