My friend Katherine up the street just clued me in about this fantabulous organization.  Be An Elf offers guidance on how you can read letters that have been sent to Santa by kids in need.  They’ve been collected by the United States Postal Service, and the idea is that you then purchase gifts for the family, and make sure the kids receive presents by Christmas Day.  Katherine is planning a dinner party around the project–we’ll all pick up our letters and buy our prezzies in advance, then get together to eat and wrap.

Here are the steps they offer on how to get involved:

Three ways to volunteer:

1. The best way to help would be to select one or more letters to Santa and buy a gift for a needy child. It may take some research on your part to find out if there is a postal branch in your city offers the Santa letters. Follow the steps outlined below exactly. If there is no branch where you live, we offer some great alternative suggestions below.

2. Another way to help, if you can’t go to the post office yourself, is to Donate Online to Be An Elf. If you prefer to give by check, see Giving by Check. Your donation to Be An Elf will further our mission and help us recruit new volunteers.

3. Another great way to support our mission is to let your friends know about our group. If you like, use our suggested draft of a message to friends to tell them about us. Feel free to rewrite the message any way you wish.

There’s much more on their site, including help for finding the participating post office branch near you, so be sure to click here.

Sometimes, the opportunity to do some good is so darn easy, you’re likely to miss it.  President-elect Barack Obama and his legions of ardent supporters are proof that when people are inspired to take action, they can accomplish just about anything.  Today, I’m inspired, and I hope you will be, too.

My friend and role model, Tanya Petrovna, sent out this email today.  Please give it a read and follow the super simple instructions–it’ll take about a hot two minutes:

Help Close L.A. Zoo Elephant Exhibit And Send Lone Elephant Billy To A Sanctuary — CALL THE MAYOR THIS MORNING!

Zoo supporters are making a last push to influence the mayor on this important issue! Please call THIS MORNING!

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa
Phone: 213-978-0600

Talking Points:

• The $42 million L.A. Zoo elephant exhibit is a waste of taxpayer money and won’t provide the space that elephants need.
• Too many elephants have suffered and died prematurely at the L.A. Zoo, many due to painful health problems caused by inadequate conditions including pens that are far too small.
• Billy has spent years in solitary confinement in a tiny zoo pen, where he constantly bobs his head up and down, an abnormal behavior not seen in the wild.
• The City of Los Angeles has made great strides toward becoming more humane. Now it’s time to include elephants by closing the elephant exhibit and sending Billy to a sanctuary as soon as possible.

I’m really not the wedding planning type.  I just can’t be bothered to spend precious time and brain power on (what feel like) frivolous details.  I’d much rather read, or write, or walk my dog, or hang with my peeps, or cook, or practice guitar, or volunteer, or…well, do just about anything, really.

Despite my aversion to (what feels like) wedding nonsense, I am doing what’s necessary to put the big essentials in place: I’ve booked a band, a photographer, hair and makeup, got my dress, confirmed the officiant, and found my dream florist, Simply That Flowers.

Ginny and Natalie, the lovely ladies behind Simply That, are the inspiration for this post.  If anyone is going to add a tinge of *green* to this wedding, it’s them.  Not only are they actually based IN Yosemite, where the wedding will take place, but they’re also more than happy to utilize local flowers (or grasses, or sticks, or rocks, or reeds, or whatever this nature girl’s heart desires) in my bouquet and centerpieces.  Of course, these earth (and law) conscious florists don’t use anything that actually originates within Yosemite, which would be naturally disruptive.

But wait, it gets even better!  Check out the above photo of their outstandingly earth-friendly and unique idea for table cards.  My wedding will be at the beginning of Spring, so we’ll use something other than pine cones (river rocks, possibly?) and green leaves rather than fall leaves.  No paper, no garbage = happy bride.

So, I got engaged. About two months ago. And now, suddenly, I’m planning a wedding, which is great and wonderful and exciting, and which raises a whole host of environmental/social issues for me. Of course, I want my wedding to be representative of both me and Matt as individuals and as a couple. It’s fun to find ways to express ourselves in colors and music and ritual, but there’s so much more to it. This is a definitive life cycle event. Our wedding will be the gateway into our marriage, and the rest of our lives as partners. It’s a day that will symbolize our intentions together. Who do we want to become? What do we want to achieve? What do we want our legacy to be?

Weddings are a huge industry in America. It’s called the Wedding-Industrial Complex for a reason, and from the research I’ve done (watching Bridezillas, Married Away, Whose Wedding is it Anyway?, Rich Bride/Poor Bride, A Wedding Story, Platinum Weddings, etc., tee hee), I’ve seen that weddings have a tendency to be both wasteful and polluting. Yuck. That’s so not something I want to invest in. Like a lot of people right now, I’m trying to move away from that kind of mindless behavior. “Waste not, want not,” so the old saying goes. From here on out, this blog will be my place to explore and report on ways to throw a socially conscious, earth friendly wedding. It won’t be exclusively wedding info–I’ll post non-nuptial items as well–but I’ll regularly update on my planning process, from registries (ick) to honeymoon.

Oh, yeah: The big day will be May 16, 2009, at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park.

Armchair Do-Gooder: Birthday Can Collection

Here’s an easy Armchair Do-Gooder project you can try: next time you have a party, ask all of your guests to bring a can of food to donate to your local food bank.

Armchair Do-Gooder: Locks of Love Haircut

This past summer, I started a project called “The Volunteer Chronicles.” I set out to volunteer with a variety Los Angeles organizations, and wrote about the experience over at blogging.la. The idea was to measure the personal effects - physical, emotional, psycho-spiritual - of volunteering, and also to provide detailed descriptions of different volunteer opportunities, to help others choose ideal organizations for themselves. Believe it or not, numerous studies have shown that doing good is good for you. Some have even demonstrated a measurable correlation between volunteering and good health. Volunteering can promote a sense of well-being, bolster the immune system, reduce insomnia, lower blood pressure and cholesterol, help keep weight in check, raise energy levels, increase relaxation, and volunteers have ultimately been shown to live longer lives.

Volunteer opportunites of all shapes and sizes abound throughout Los Angeles and beyond. Some of the incredible people who I’ve met through this project volunteer on a daily basis, some weekly or monthly, but they all rave about the positive effects volunteering has on their lives.

You can read about my experiences thus far by following these links:

The Volunteer Chronicles: Meals on Wheels West
The Volunteer Chronicles: BREATHE LA
The Volunteer Chronicles: Free Arts for Abused Children
The Volunteer Chronicles: Amanda Foundation, a No-Kill Shelter for Dogs and Cats

Being that I’m a total dog person, I got kind of hooked on the Amanda Foundation. Not only does it make me happy to no end, the hours are totally flexible, I can drop in whenever I choose, and it’s really convenient to where I live. I’m long overdue for my next volunteer gig, but I’ll get it on the books and post the link here in an update when it’s done.

Avid Oprah-watchers and dedicated bathing beauties are probably already well acquainted with Philosophy Cosmetics, one of the best selling lines of skin, body, and facial care available on the market today. What they might not know is that similar to Collective Wellbeing, which I posted about in March, a percentage of profits from various Philosophy products benefit charitable funds, organizations, and foundations.

They’re having a lot of fun with the project, some of which is excusably scatological: Their “Laughing Gas” room spray benefits the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance, and get this—Philosophy is donating 100% of its gross profit from the sale of this specially-designed bathroom spray to the cause.

Other charitable Philosophy items include their “Shower for the Cure” shower gel, which benefits the Women’s Cancer Research Fund, and the “Inner Grace” shower gel, benefiting the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation.

Cristina Carlino, creator of Philosophy and author of The Rainbow Connection: Seven Steps for Realizing Your Unlimited Potential (How to Use Color and Energy to Transform Your Life), has seen to it that animal testing is not done by her company, a relief considering just how many cosmetic companies still do.

That’s one good Philosophy.

Um, yeah, so–that happened. How on Earth (to Jupiter) did two months elapse since my last post? Insane, I tell you. It’s amazing how fast the time flies, but for what it’s worth, I’ve left my full-time job to freelance, so I’m looking forward to a lot more time to blog here.

Today, since we’re deep in the streets of summer, I figured I’d offer some vacation thoughts and ideas for the Armchair Do-gooder who “Has Brains–Will Travel.”

As a seasoned backpacker whose travels have brought me to destinations including Dahab, Egypt and Moscow, Russia I know how valuable tourism is, both for the visitor and the country visited.

The problem is, valuable as it can be, tourism is also an immensely destructive industry. As Dr. Tim Forsyth–a Senior Lecturer on Environment and Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science–writes in his introduction to a seminar on Sustainable Tourism:

Tourism is the world’s largest industry. Over the twentieth century, it has proved itself a destructive force. Coastlines have been transformed from still, sleepy beauty spots to over-developed resorts crowded by multi-storey hotels, bars and casinos. When fashions and tastes change, these areas are left to decline as the mass tourists head elsewhere. In other scenarios local communities have sometimes been displaced, as the powerful drives for development and preservation of natural national parks have in equal measure ignored their rights. Despite all this, tourism is a largely unregulated industry.

Dr. Forsyth believes that Sustainable Tourism is the best way to reduce damage to the environment and prevent negative impacts on human communities and wild animals. He defines Sustainable Tourism as “Tourism development that avoids damage to the environment, economy and cultures of the locations where it takes place.” Dr. Forsyth also makes the important distinction between Sustainable Tourism and Eco-Tourism, which can be equally destructive, and which he describes as “A form of tourism that focuses exclusively on wildlife, nature, or “exotic” cultures. Some argue that it is a vague term used to market anything related to nature or environmental tourism.”

Forsyth wraps up Session 1 of his seminar (all of which is online, by the way, and definitely worthy of a thorough read-through) with commentary on what it will require for Sustainable Tourism to really succeed:

The achievement of sustainable tourism, therefore depends in part on providing the right incentives for companies and resort managers to reduce the negative impacts of tourism, and then a variety of local practical steps (such as limiting numbers, or zoning land use) to reduce these impacts. But in the long term, the ultimate achievement of sustainable tourism also requires tourists and companies to think more about how tourism may impact on other people’s homes and livelihoods. Marcel Proust once wrote that most tourists seem to want to travel through one hundred countries with one pair of eyes, whereas the best journey would be to travel through one country with a hundred pair of eyes. By seeking more diversity and depth in holiday destinations, tourists may help avoid the impacts of tourism on destinations, and also achieve a more satisfying experience.

It will be up to us–you and me–to think more about how our travels impact the people and places we visit, and up to us to seek more diversity and depth in the destinations we choose.

With this in mind, here are some interesting approaches to travel as created and promoted by Conservation International, a nonprofit that applies innovations in science, economics, policy and community participation to protect the Earth’s biodiversity around the world. Their mission statement: “To conserve the Earth’s living heritage, our global biodiversity, and to demonstrate that human societies are able to live harmoniously with nature.”

The organization provides a list of “new Eco-Tourism” destinations and itineraries that they’ve developed, such as the Camino Posaderos Andinos (Andean Inn Routes) trip, which offers five main routes, and promises “a network of spectacular trails and smalls inns allowing tourists to experience the Mérida Cordillera. The Mérida Cordillera is part of the Andes mountain chain within Venezuela, which extends from the Colombian border and has an area of 11,866 square miles. High plains, valleys, páramos (high, bare and cold regions) and mountains predominate its geography. This complex topography is interwoven with a wider variety of ecosystems, making it one of the most valuable reservoirs of biodiversity in Venezuela and in the world.”

Food and lodging services are managed by local families.

Other destinations include Bolivia, Brazil, Ghana, Guatemala, and Panama.

Do you think they qualify as Sustainable or not?

It’s national Arbor Day, so I thought I’d put together a little piece on trees.

If you’re more comfortable gardening from your armchair, there are a number of organizations that offer opportunities to virtually plant trees. Choose the one that’s right for you!

First and foremost, today only, plant a tree in the Michoacan Monarch Butterfly Forest for free with your order when you shop the Greater Good Network. Every order placed on Friday, April 27th will automatically generate a contribution to pay for the planting of a tree through the Michoacan Reforestation Fund.

Jewish National Fund: A charitable organization specializing in the development of Israeli land and infrastructure, especially planting trees. JNF has planted over 240 million trees, built over 180 dams and reservoirs, developed over 250,000 acres of land, created more than 1,000 parks throughout Israel and educated students around the world about Israel and the environment.

Get On Board Initiative: Universal Pictures and The Conservation Fund have teamed up to launch the Get On Board Initiative (as part of a promotion for the upcoming Universal release Evan Almighty). The website, which is now live, features the “Almighty Forest,” an online destination where people can take real action to slow the effects of global warming. For a donation of $5, visitors can plant a virtual tree in the “Almighty Forest,” knowing that 100% of the money goes to The Conservation Fund to plant real trees that help reduce greenhouse gases around the globe. Donations, which are tax-deductible in the U.S., can be in the donor’s name, given as a gift or dedicated in memory of a friend or family member. Trees can be acquired individually, in “groves” of 50, or as a “forest within the forest,” with a donation equaling 1,000 trees.

The Plant-A-Tree-Today (PATT) Foundation: Formed in 2005 with its mission to react to problems caused by the massive and increasing levels of deforestation worldwide, raise awareness of environmental issues and the role forests play, take action against climate change, educate children on these issues and to PLANT MORE TREES. Select the projects you’re interested in and make a contribution here.

If you’re not afraid of getting your hands dirty, you might want to check out the United Nations Environment Programme’s “Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign.” A major worldwide tree planting project, the campaign encourages people, communities, business and industry, civil society organizations and governments to enter tree planting pledges online with the objective of planting at least one billion trees worldwide during 2007. The site offers information on how to plant a tree here.

In Los Angeles, get involved with TreePeople, a nonprofit organization that’s been serving the Los Angeles area for over three decades. Volunteer to help them plant 300,000 trees on city park lands over the next few years, and join TreePeople staff and volunteers this May for planting and tree care events. There are all kinds of ways to get involved, from full moon hikes to workshops. Visit their calendar to stay informed.

In San Francisco, reach out to Friends of the Urban Forest, a nonprofit committed to the belief that trees are a critical element of a livable urban environment. Donate, dedicate a tree, or get involved as a volunteer.

Further Listening: Belly, Star, “Feed the Tree”
Further Reading: The Giving Tree