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From Twitter 04-21-2010
Apr. 22nd, 2010 03:05 amTweets copied by twittinesis.com
Apr. 22nd, 2010
The Uniform Project again
Apr. 22nd, 2010 08:58 amThe Uniform Project is shortly going to be coming to a close (last day is April 30). Take a look at this extremely cute video she's produced showing the looks she's put together over the past year. It does a good job of showing the fun and whimsicality of the project.
Tomorrow is going to be another Little Black Dress Day: wear your black dress, accessorize it, and post the pictures to the Uniform Project's Facebook page (here's the link to the last time I did so. One of the dress pictures isn't displaying properly, so try this link.)
I managed to snag one of the limited edition Little Black dresses she sold (there are only going to be 365 produced) as a birthday present to myself, for the day April 27. I wanted to get April 28, my actual 50th birthday, but that day was sold already. But hey, April 27 is the anniversary of my Livejournal, so it's all cool.
Tomorrow is going to be another Little Black Dress Day: wear your black dress, accessorize it, and post the pictures to the Uniform Project's Facebook page (here's the link to the last time I did so. One of the dress pictures isn't displaying properly, so try this link.)
I managed to snag one of the limited edition Little Black dresses she sold (there are only going to be 365 produced) as a birthday present to myself, for the day April 27. I wanted to get April 28, my actual 50th birthday, but that day was sold already. But hey, April 27 is the anniversary of my Livejournal, so it's all cool.
Uniform Project Picture Book from The Uniform Project on Vimeo.
Global Soap Project
Apr. 22nd, 2010 10:08 amHere's a breathtakingly simple yet powerful Decrease Worldsuck idea I heard about on Betty Londergan's excellent What Gives blog: The Global Soap Project. (On Twitter at @GlobalSoap and Facebook here.) (Betty really has a knack for finding cool organizations to support.)
Every day, in millions of hotel rooms in America, something weird happens. The housekeeping staff makes the bed, cleans the room, and replaces the soap, removing the used bar and leaving a fresh bar in its place. This simple American habit of throwing away 800 million bars of hotel soap a year completely befuddled Derreck Kayongo when he first experienced it fifteen years ago, in a hotel in Philadelphia.
As a child, Kayongo’s family had fled Uganda for Kenya during the Idi Amin regime, and he was all too familiar with the desperation of refugees who have little or no access to clean water and soap. Kayongo was educated in Kenya, came to America to earn his Bachelors and Masters degrees, and continued to rise to his position as a senior level humanitarian relief expert working for CARE in Atlanta– but he never forgot the extravagant waste of hotel soap that first struck him. “I kept thinking, what if we took some of this soap back home, recycled it and made brand new soap to give to people who don’t have any?”
Not having soap is a clear and present danger in refugee camps all across Africa. Hand-washing is the first line of defense in the prevention of acute respiratory and diarrhea diseases that ravage camps, particularly afflicting children under the age of 5. In Uganda alone, 200,000 children a year die from preventable diseases. Studies indicate that hand-washing with soap can reduce the risk of these diseases by 42-65% — which makes every bar of soap we throw away a tragic missed opportunity.
So last year, Kayongo and his wife Sarah started the The Global Soap Project to recover and recycle soap from American hotels: sanitizing, melting and remodeling it into new bars that can be distributed to refugee camps in Africa. To the Kayongos’ great amazement, hotels like the InterContinental, the Ritz, and hundreds of others enthusiastically embraced his idea. Volunteers lined up to help. And today, just months later, he has tons of soap accumulated in warehouses and a brand new machine to recycle the old into fresh new bars of soap that will be shipped as extra cargo on ships already making the trip to Africa.
Every day, in millions of hotel rooms in America, something weird happens. The housekeeping staff makes the bed, cleans the room, and replaces the soap, removing the used bar and leaving a fresh bar in its place. This simple American habit of throwing away 800 million bars of hotel soap a year completely befuddled Derreck Kayongo when he first experienced it fifteen years ago, in a hotel in Philadelphia.
As a child, Kayongo’s family had fled Uganda for Kenya during the Idi Amin regime, and he was all too familiar with the desperation of refugees who have little or no access to clean water and soap. Kayongo was educated in Kenya, came to America to earn his Bachelors and Masters degrees, and continued to rise to his position as a senior level humanitarian relief expert working for CARE in Atlanta– but he never forgot the extravagant waste of hotel soap that first struck him. “I kept thinking, what if we took some of this soap back home, recycled it and made brand new soap to give to people who don’t have any?”
Not having soap is a clear and present danger in refugee camps all across Africa. Hand-washing is the first line of defense in the prevention of acute respiratory and diarrhea diseases that ravage camps, particularly afflicting children under the age of 5. In Uganda alone, 200,000 children a year die from preventable diseases. Studies indicate that hand-washing with soap can reduce the risk of these diseases by 42-65% — which makes every bar of soap we throw away a tragic missed opportunity.
So last year, Kayongo and his wife Sarah started the The Global Soap Project to recover and recycle soap from American hotels: sanitizing, melting and remodeling it into new bars that can be distributed to refugee camps in Africa. To the Kayongos’ great amazement, hotels like the InterContinental, the Ritz, and hundreds of others enthusiastically embraced his idea. Volunteers lined up to help. And today, just months later, he has tons of soap accumulated in warehouses and a brand new machine to recycle the old into fresh new bars of soap that will be shipped as extra cargo on ships already making the trip to Africa.