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Rediscover Your Heart awardees
Rediscover Your Heart Awards of $2,500 were given to 12 inspiring and aspiring individuals and groups in New York City with creative, innovative and heartfelt projects. The chosen projects were selected for being empowering and replicable, and for contributing towards a more functional and peaceful society by improving the community or the lives of people living in it.

The Awards were offered by The Fred Foundation, in collaboration with the Global Youth Action Network and Chat the Planet. Please read this blog to learn more about the awardees, and the progress they are making on their individual projects!

To learn more about the awards, the book and the author, please visit the Rediscover Your Heart website.





SwEeTbLiSs27   SwEeTbLiSs27 Linda's TIGblog
Linda's profile

Focus on your ability!
Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

No matter where we go; either visiting local schools or interviewing a family in need, we tried our best to cheer people on so they can be the best they can be. Chair Advocates is a youth venture located in New York advocating on behalf of people with wide range of physical disabilities. This venture came about when a group of high school and college students saw the need for funding of adaptive equipments or assistive technology in their community. The underlying problem was twofold; many students is either not using an equipment which they should be using or they are using the wrong equipment for their type of disability. Chair Advocates address these problems by offering financial assistance to low income individuals with disabilities and their families and work closely with specialists like occupational therapists and physical therapists to make sure the right equipments are purchased. Asides from approving equipment requests and catering to the needs of individuals with physical disabilities, Chair Advocates is actively involved in promoting disability rights in the New York community and internationally in Kenya.

Chair Advocates first and ongoing project was called Young Wheelers In Need (YWIN) with a focus on teens with physical impairment who are wheelchair-bound ranges from ages 12 to 21. The objective of this project is to raise awareness about available adaptive equipments to promote independence among teens in our community. All YWIN participants are encouraged to advocate for themselves and ask for accommodations whenever needed so they can reach their full potential in school or in the workplace. Other services CA provides include peer mentoring, Starscope newsletter and latest assistive technology updates. So far, Chair Advocates have made many wishes come true by funding for mobility equipments, special assistive aids and adaptive assistive technologies.

On an international scale, Chair Advocates is currently working with AADD (a nonprofit organization in Kenya) on a project called Path To Independence. As a result AADD is able to better serve individuals with disability in Kenya. CA is planning to contribute over a thousand dollars to purchase adaptive equipments for more than 30 PTI members.

As a nonprofit youth venture, we are committed to our cause and look forward to our future years of serving, informing, defending, and inspiring people with physical disability.

For more information regarding Chair Advocates organization and its advocacy projects, please visit our website www.chairadvocates.org.


March 29, 2009 | 7:55 PM Comments  0 comments

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Reciprocity   Reciprocity Reciprocity Foundation's TIGblog
Reciprocity Foundation's profile

GREEN FASHION by homeless designers!

What if someday being decked from head to toe in the latest trends and carrying around a copy of Vogue could send a message to the world that you are green, sustainable, sweatshop free and committed to helping your community?

Fashion gets criticized for being superficial, but people like Lauren Hope Silverstein see the potential it has to be anything but.

Silverstein, who designs for a leading fashion house, recently met with Reciprocity Foundation's students to discuss green fashion and design.

The general feeling in the room was that while we all want to give back and carefully use our precious natural resources, nobody wants to sacrifice on style, and nobody has to.

For young, homeless designers, this conversation was particularly important. Having experienced so much difficulty, these youth know that in order to feel good about their contributions, they want their work to tell their stories and help others.

The reassurance that designing the perfect pair of jeans has the possibility to send a positive message of awareness and change, and keep the planet healthy, further inspired these already motivated young adults.

Reciprocity has been offering training in green and socially responsible start-ups since 2004, long before the trend truly took off, but as Terry Swack of Sustainable Minds pointed out "the challenge is the lack of accessible, easy to use information that design teams can integrate into their processes to design greener products."

Reciprocity is helping to bridge that gap, and by asking practical questions, Reciprocity students are pushing industry professionals to articulate just how we can all work together to make this trend the standard.

Silverstein, for example, is offering students guidance on portfolios, and recently led a Reciprocity project that resulted in the creation of a chic, eye-catching, green, organic, sweatshop-free tote bag, sales of which benefit programming for homeless youth. Now that is one multi-tasking accessory!

For more information check: www.reciprocityfoundation.org

March 26, 2009 | 10:31 PM Comments  0 comments

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Reciprocity   Reciprocity Reciprocity Foundation's TIGblog
Reciprocity Foundation's profile

Design Your Future!

In 2004, Adam Bucko and Taz Tagore made their vision of social change a reality by creating The Reciprocity Foundation. An award winning nonprofit that specializes in helping homeless and low-income youth permanently exit the social service sector and start sustainable careers, Reciprocity’s innovative curriculum gives youth spiritual, psychological, professional, and educational guidance. Perhaps most importantly, Reciprocity embodies the idea of giving back. By placing special focus on careers in the Creative, Green, and Social Entrepreneurship sectors, the entire Reciprocity community, from students, to employees, to volunteers and corporate leaders, works to embody the idea that in order to be successful, one must work for the betterment of both oneself and one’s community.
Reciprocity awakens individual talents, thereby establishing meaningful relationships and a base that will allow each student to re-enter society from a place of strength, passion, and compassion. Experiential learning is a keystone of Reciprocity, with industry leaders providing both guidance and connections.
Reciprocity’s unique methods of working with homeless and low income youth have been widely featured in the press, reaching over 20 million people with the message that it is possible to transform homeless and lower-income youth into creative leaders and change makers (ABC News, CBS News/Logo, Reuters, CW's America's Next Top Model, New York Times, NY Daily News, Metropolis Magazine, Print Magazine, Yoga+ Magazine, and Gay City News). Reciprocity graduates have landed jobs and internships at major Fortune 500 companies (Martha Stewart Omni media, Chaps Ralph Lauren/Warnaco, Young and Rubicam and America's Next Top Model) and have gained admissions to such leading colleges as Parsons/New School University, Fashion Institute of Technology, Babson College, and City University of New York.












March 22, 2009 | 9:27 PM Comments  0 comments

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geimanj   geimanj Jeremiah Geiman's TIGblog
Jeremiah Geiman's profile

Street Chat
Related to country: United States


We are currently immersed in the planning of our interactive installation, a conversation on the streets of New York called Street Chat. We are waiting for better weather to bring a critical mass of folks back out onto the streets and are aiming to release Street Chat to New York City in early summer, 2009.

In the meantime, we are researching ways to ensure our project welcomes the public and brainstorming the perfect questions to include on our list to give to participants. We've been focusing on the design of the platform for conversation, emphasizing a piece which is both functional and inviting as well as aesthetically pleasing.

Although it may seem as if Street Chat relies heavily on chance by asking the public to take part, we are working to ensure every detail of the project is scrutinized so it will inspire two strangers to feel the freedom to open their hearts to one another.

The second part of our project is a film created from the footage of the street installation. Our goal is to edit the footage ourselves, allowing us to have more creative control over the final film and construct a more authentic record of our project in line with our original vision. Therefore, as part of our preparation we have been honing our video editing skills and acquiring the necessary equipment to do this work.

Look for Street Chat in early summer 2009 on the streets of NYC!

March 1, 2009 | 12:41 PM Comments  0 comments

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This Group TIGBlog is owned by: Vidar Ekehaug.

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