A few years ago, I read Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder's excellent biography of Dr. Paul Farmer. The book (like Farmer's life) reminds me of the immense power of a determined individual.
Dr. Farmer found his place and purpose in an impoverished place not so far from our own borders.
His organization, Partners In Health, has been serving rural Haiti since 1987. Now, although two hours from Port-au-Prince, earthquake victims are arriving for treatment. A local church is being used for additional treatment space.
Partners In Health is an American foundation born out of Haiti. This organization is one of the most knowledgeable and prepared to serve Haiti. Within hours of the quake they were already working to route critical supplies through the Dominican Republic. Their Stand with Haiti site offers news from their Haitian clinic.
Please consider helping them help others. Giving (according to psychological research) is one of the most gratifying ways to spend your money.
***Baby Toolkit is the work of a some opinionated geek parents. Partners in Health is an AMAZING non-profit humanitarian organization created by a hard-working doctor with genius and compassion. These opinions are freely given and we have no undisclosed relationship with Partners in Health (beyond the sizable intrinsic benefits in giving). These are good people with insight; Help them change lives.
This year, we are looking forward to a peaceful Thanksgiving with those we love. However you spend your day, we wish you happiness and respite.
Thank you so much for being a part of Baby Toolkit. This ongoing conversation with other parents and friends invigorates our daily lives and keeps the old synapses firing.
Tomorrow, for Black Friday, we're planning on staying out of the stores. Observing Buy Nothing Day has become a tradition for Jim and I. As we've chosen to cut our spending and stick to useful and meaningful gifts, Buy Nothing Day reminds us to enjoy rare vacation days together doing something interesting.
If you are shopping tomorrow, please remember the cardinal rule of discounts:
It's only a good deal if you needed it or were going to buy it anyway.
Fewer gifts are good for the planet and your bottom line. Your savings can also help change the world:
As always, we ask everyone NOT to buy chocolate (unless it is Fair Trade certified) until it no longer brings injury to children half a world away.
Some friends who gave up commodities chocolate and switched to fair trade were talking about how much they missed Reese's cups.
So, for day 5 of my 29 day giving challenge, I'd like to offer all you fair-traders a sweet alternative: my family recipe for peanut butter bars with chocolate. We can only trace this recipe back to a staff newsletter (Faultless Caster's Top Drawer) from the early 80s.
Brace yourself, this confection is anything but healthy.
Peanut Butter Bars Grease 9"x13" pan.
Cream together: 2 sticks unsalted butter 1 c. peanut butter
Add and blend: 1-1/2 to 2 c. crushed graham crackers (throw them in a baggie and let your kid pulverize them with a rolling pin for family participation) 1 lb. powdered sugar
When fully blended, press into pan.
Melt and spread evenly over peanut butter mixture: 12 oz. of deliciously child-slavery-free Fair Trade chocolate chips
Cool in refrigerator until firm. Cut into bars before chocolate gets too solid to cut.
Do not eat entire pan in one sitting.
How does Fair Trade chocolate limit child exploitation?
Maybe it's some subliminal resentment of the Earth's recent rattling under my family in the middle of the night, but Earth Day snuck (my apologies to British readers, but we just don't use sneaked here) up on me entirely.
Anyway, we all still love the Earth even if it has been waking me up in terror this week.
In honor of Earth Day, I'll reuse and recycle some of our favorite hacks:
We would love to have 300 friends (about half our current subscribers) join us in supporting this great cause. If you're interested in participating, you can set up your own team member page and have donations made on your behalf. Did I mention that your contributions are tax deductible in the U.S.?
What better way to tell the Big Mama you love her (especially as she can grow her own flowers)?
We're on the cusp of another gigantic choco-holiday: Valentine's. As child slavery and other despicable labor practices plague the chocolate industry- I ask that you avoid the purchase of commodities (non-Fair Trade) chocolates. (See our November post explaining the issue in more detail.)
Here at Baby Toolkit central, we're celebrating with homemade sugar cookies and cupcakes. We're even having a decorating party with friends on the 13th. That gives us a bonus party!
But chocolate abstention isn't necessary. There's a third path: Certified Fair Trade chocolate. Fair Trade costs noticeably more out of our wallets, but it doesn't deprive children of homes, education, families, food, safety, freedom, love, and, well, childhood. In essence, non-FT chocolate is heavily subsidized at the expense of kids and communities in Africa. Fair Trade Certification confirms that the labeled product is produced in a manner that is legal and just.
So, if you want to invest in a better future for chocolate, Africa, and the world buy Fair Trade.
***
My brother and I were discussing fiction the other day, and he said "The people in fiction are the only ones who give me hope for the future."
Well, not to be a total sap, the real people on these fabulous interwebs play a similar role for me.
When Jim and I gave up chocolate in 2001, we encountered universal resistance. People would say "Why resist? You alone can't change this." And when we said, "So, join us..." they gave us incredulous looks like we were proposing splitting the atom with salad tongs and silly putty.
And I would wonder how our culture could shrug off CHILD SLAVERY (is there much more odious?). People in fiction were looking pretty amazing by comparison.
But you, Internet, brought me new hope. Here are some friends who've also quit commodities chocolate:
Chief Family Officer- a great finance-conscious family blog. Her comments have already inspired others causing a truly awesome ripple effect.
Z Recommends- Jeremiah would appreciate a few more FT chocolate suppliers in his piece of Texas
Beyond mod*mom's awesome contest- how else can I get Fair Trade products. Some churches have Fair Trade chocolate & coffee partnership programs: Lutheran (inter-synod via Lutheran World Relief), United Church of Christ, and Catholic. Not all congregations are aware of these programs... yet (you can change this).
Happy Valentine's, everyone! ***Baby Toolkit is the independent, unsolicited opinion of some random geek parents. We're definitely not experts at this. We have no relationships with any of the chocolate companies represented within this post. Baby Toolkit, (c) 2008.
One of Jim's and my favorite holiday traditions is Buy Nothing Day. In the late 90s we started reading Adbusters, and something about BND really captured our imagination. It's subversive and creative. MTV won't even air Buy Nothing Day's paid ads. (See them below if you're curious what kind of thinking offends the people who make Jackass and the Osbournes)
We're looking forward to a relaxing day of friends, food, and games. For me, that's way better than any doorbuster deal.
A laptop with ears? Well, yes... Designed for kids? Right AGAIN! And also an instrument of global change.
The XO laptop is a marvel of energy efficiency, durability, and innovative software. It is designed for the One Laptop Per Child initiative in developing nations.
And for one more week (as part of a two week program) you can Give One and Get One. For $399 ($200 of which is tax deductible) you can send a laptop to a child in a developing nation and one to the Canadian or American home of you choice. These are sweet laptops, but their real appeal is their dedication to social justice.
In a week (on Nov. 26) the XO will no longer be available in the US or Canada for purchase except in massive quantities, so don't wait to decide. T-Mobile is throwing in a year of complimentary Hot Spot WiFi access (retail value $350) for everyone who GOGOs.
To the utter astonishment of friends and relatives, Jim and I quit chocolate cold turkey in 2001. We were chocoholics of the first degree. When I cleaned out the kitchen for all our chocolate we found over 14 pounds- not counting things containing cocoa.
At first I thought I would lose my mind. One night someone walked past me in a Circuit City smelling of Butterfinger bar and my consuming envy made me want to tackle them and bounce their head off the floor a few dozen times. I'm not a violent person, so this bizarre desire definitely meant I had momentarily relocated to downtown, central Crazy. Chocolate was to me comfort, reward, and love. My beloved grandmother used to keep chocolate bars stashed for the grandkids, so it's hard not to associate a Nestle Crunch with the pure joy of visiting grandma. My grandma loved kids, all kids- so much that she dedicated her life to schools and orphanages in Africa. I'm sure she had similar treats for the kids there.
As a result of my grandparents' work, I always had a heightened sense of Africa. My mom never said "Eat your dinner, there are starving children in Africa." Instead I overheard conversations about war, coups, government closure of schools and orphanages, poverty, famine, police that show up in the middle of the night, imprisonment, execution, and families that had become kin to ours fleeing their nation through dangerous means both legal and illegal. I have always felt thankful not to have been born there, and I deeply respected my grandparents' courage to work in such a dangerous place.
After a few months of research, the evidence mounted- and it became apparent that the American chocolate industry was not interested in reform. Bob Dole was hired as a lobbyist for the Chocolate Manufacturers Association as they quashed Congressional energies to mandate slavery-free labeling. Instead of agreeing to voluntary labeling, they offered a alternate plan in which they would monitor cocoa farms and work for reform. Their compromise, the Harkin-Engel protocol was accepted and immediately forgotten. To date, the chocolate industry has not even attempted to meet their own plan. They don't really care about anything beyond their bottom line and big chocolate is banking that the American consumers won't care about the lives of foreign children either.
So Jim and I quit eating chocolate. Honestly, even something so delicious starts to taste like fetid poo when it's produced by companies willingly complicit in child slavery. It seemed to me like every chocolate bar I bought undid my grandparents' efforts to help children in Africa.
On the whole, our friends and family didn't respond well to this decision. Some mocked us for caring too much, others went out of their way to find chocolate industry PR to reassure us, and one close family member broke my heart by saying "Well, what else would those kids do? It probably keeps them out of trouble."
So, we turned our boycott into something secret. Just an "I don't eat chocolate" response. I was tired of arguing with everyone and hearing things that disappointed me. People would ask why and Jim and I started giving dodgy answers. I clearly lack my grandparents' courage.
A recent article in Melbourne's The Age newspaper on chocolate slavery nudged my sheepish social consciousness. Jim sent me links surrounding Tony's Chocolonley (a Dutch man who turned himself in to the police for knowingly buying goods obtained through a crime).
Now I won't ask you to stop eating chocolate on my word alone please Google "chocolate slavery BBC" for a reputable international source. I am asking that everyone at least bypass gift chocolates this holiday season. Do you really want to feed you children the product of child exploitation? Fair-trade certified chocolate is okay, but everything else- according to the Salvation Army's anti-slavery unit probably contains beans harvested by slaves (thanks to the workings of the commodities market).
Sorry about the soapbox, but I really needed to say something about this issue that's been buried or misrepresented in the American media. I'm just having trouble believing that I live in a country where people are willing to have children suffer and even die for cheap luxury goods.
If you're considering boycotting gift chocolates, we'd love to hear about it... *We don't drink coffee.
***This post is the independent, unsolicited opinion of Baby Toolkit. Photo: Baby Toolkit, (c) 2007. All rights reserved.
Seriously, the credit card industry has legislative advantages and intents that most of us would never guess.
In college when frat boys hocking credit cards would yell to my husband "Free t-shirt!" He would raise one fist in the air and yell back, "Credit is the oppressor of the middle class."
Truer words were never spoken.
There's a phenomenal Maxed Out documentary too, but it is much better when viewed after completing the book than before reading it. Look at your local library for this book and documentary. If they don't already own these materials, request them for acquisition so your entire community can benefit from this information as well.
We tip our hats to author/filmmaker James Scurlock and our newly discovered hero Elizabeth Warren for their sincere attempts to inform and protect low and middle income families.
A few years ago, I read Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder's excellent biography of Dr. Paul Farmer. The book (like Farmer's life) reminds me of the immense power of a determined individual.
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