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Category: Make a Difference: Community & Calls to Action

  • Chat about Ways to Save Money & Energy with #EnergizeDE

    Chat about Ways to Save Money & Energy with #EnergizeDE

    DIY clothesline
    One of our biggest $$ savers: DIY clothesline

    Delawareans can save energy and money and at the same time boost the state’s economy. DNREC Secretary Collin O’Mara and Twitter can help.

    Delaware’s #EnergizeDE Twitter Chat, hosted by DNREC Secretary Collin O’Mara, will take place Wednesday July 13th from 7:00- 8:00pm. Secretary O’Mara will be tweeting from the @YourDNREC account (love the bio: Explore beyond the door with an adventure enthusiast and natural resource advocate at DNREC), answering questions and providing information about energy efficiency solutions offered through the state’s nonprofit Energize Delaware and the Delaware Energy Office.

    How it works

    To join the discussion, Delawareans just need to use their Twitter account & follow the discussion through the #EnergizeDE hashtag. (If you’re a complete newbie, you’ll need to open an account on Twitter and then enter #EnergizeDE into the search box, periodically refreshing the page for updates.)
    Questions can be tweeted @YourDNREC before or during the one-hour online conversation.

    To keep the conversation focused, the hour-long chat will be divided into three 20-minute segments devoted to common energy challenges:

    First 20 minutes: How much is your monthly energy bill? Tweet your average monthly bill and let’s see what the range is and how it compares to the national average. The highest tweet (with verification) will receive a free energy audit.

    Second 20 minutes: Share your most frustrating comfort issues. Tweet about thermostat fights. Tweet about hot and cold guest bedrooms above the garage. Why is one level so much hotter than the other and what can be done? Does your business use a lot of lighting, refrigeration, or other energy-intensive equipment? Possible solutions will be discussed.

    Third 20 minutes: Have you had a home energy makeover? Share your experiences and advice and Secretary O’Mara will tweet links to useful resources.

    I don’t live in Delaware anymore (although I’m literally in stone’s throw distance) but I’ll still keep an eye on the Twitter stream. Delaware takes government-supported energy efficiency and sustainability in general fairly seriously, and I’m interested to see not only what info gets put out there, but who shows up and what level of eco-responsibility they represent. Of course, when you’re talking Twitter you’re already out of the realm of “typical homeowner,” but frankly I have no clue how one would go about having this sort of real-time engaged conversation about local energy for the masses.

    Anyway. Recap:

    Wednesday July 13th from 7:00- 8:00pm, on Twitter, tweet your questions to @YourDNREC and follow with hashtag #EnergizeDE.

    Here’s a list of ways we save money and energy… looks like I need to update with more recent changes.

    Have you taken steps towards energy efficiency? For the earth’s sake, for your wallet’s sake, or both?

    Let me know the best money-saving or obscure practice you’ve found.

     

  • Read. Share. Give: Recycle Your Kids’ Books & Make a Difference

    Read. Share. Give: Recycle Your Kids’ Books & Make a Difference

    read share give

    As a nation…

    • Two-thirds of 4th graders are below reading proficiency and 83% of low-income 4th graders are below proficient (National Assessment of Educational Progress)
    • Some 42 percent of American children (31MM) lack the income to cover basic needs including child care and access to books (National Assessment of Educational Progress)
    • In some of the lowest-income neighborhoods in the country there is only one book available for every 300 children (University of Nevada Study)
    • 44 million adults in the U.S. can’t read well enough to read a simple story to a child (National Adult Literacy Survey)

    If you’re anything like me, you’ve got shelves and shelves full of books your kids have outgrown.

    If you’re anything like me, the thought of one book for every 300 children makes you want to cry inside.

    Books were my childhood companion. They were an escape, an inspiration, a guide and a comfort. It’s no great stretch for me to say that I was shaped by reading, and it kills me that there are children deprived of that experience and opportunity for self-education.

    Read. Share. Give is a national book sharing program that launched in Atlanta on June 30th with a stated goal of “one million story times” this summer.

    This summer KinderCare invites you to read and share a book so that you can give a book to those in need.

    • Pick a children’s book to read with your family
    • Visit kindercare.com/read to download and print out a book label. Enter the book’s code found on that label, and start following your book’s journey.
    • Place the label into the inside front cover of the book and pass it on to family and friends. Ask them to pay it forward.
    • The more people who participate, the more books KinderCare will donate to Reach Out and Read.

    I’m thinking that we might donate a lot of our favorite books to our YMCA childcare and preschool center library. Hoping that we’ll be able to track our books moving from family to family. We have somewhat eclectic taste in children’s books and knowing that they are getting used again and being read, that we are helping those authors be exposed to new families, is nearly as satisfying as knowing that more books will be made available to kids who need them.

    Click here for more info and to get started. 🙂

    ** KinderCare sent me a paperback copy of Dan Freeman’s Corduroy to get our book journey started. I’ll pay that forward by sending it to the first person to send me their name & mailing address at simplegreenorganichappy {at} gmail {dot} com. I just ask that you pay it forward as well: log the book’s tracking number when you receive it, and pass it on to someone else who might enjoy it. **

  • Depressing Facts about the State of Play

    Depressing Facts about the State of Play

    skeptical


    42% of children have never made a daisy chain
    32% have never climbed a tree
    25% have never rolled down a hill
    A third of children have never played hopscotch
    One in ten have never ridden a bike

    72% of adults played outside rather than indoors,
    compared to 40% of children today.

    -from new research from Savlon and Play England

    August 3rd, 2011 is Playday, the national day for play, a celebration of kids’ right to play and a campaign that spreads awareness of the power of play in kids’ lives.

    In the UK, that is. It’s not happening here in the US of A.

    Apparently, in the UK they’re not being facetious when they talk about kids’ right to play:

    Children’s right to play

    In 1991, the UK government ratified the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. The Playday campaign is committed to achieving the full implementation of this right, to ensure all children in the UK can play.

    Article 31 of the convention states that:

    • Parties recognise the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts.
    • Parties shall respect and promote the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life and shall encourage the provision of appropriate and equal opportunities for cultural artistic, recreational and leisure activity.

    Similarly, last year in Berlin, a law was passed which stated that it was “fundamentally and socially tolerable” for kids to be noisy.

    Axel Strohbusch, from Berlin’s Department of Noise Protection, said it was “the first time we have it written in law that we have to consider the rights of children to shout and make noise while they are growing up.”

    I ask you:

    How depressing is it that laws need to exist to protect kids’ right to be kids?

    Is it more or less depressing that kids don’t have those legal rights to childhood here?

    I’m curious to know how our stats stack up against the UK… do me a favor and vote in the poll. (Poll embedded below. Subscribers may have to click through, sorry!)