Green Options

Meet Tavi, a fashionable teenager from Chicago and founder of Clothing with a Cause.

She shares: “clothing is one of my main passions and I’ve decided to combine it with my concern for the genocide in Darfur for my Bat Mitzvah Tzedakah service project.”

Over the summer for her charity project Tavi posted stylish fashion textiles sold with all profits going towards STAND. STAND is an amazing American student organization helping to end the current genocide in Darfur.

Whenever you combine two of girls’ favorite treats, chocolate and jewelry, it’s bound to be a successful fundraiser. With this in mind, Relief Beads and Compartes Chocolatier have partnered to raise awareness and money to aid refugees in Darfur. Relief Beads, a grassroots campaign, is selling handcrafted bracelets made from sand in Ghana, Africa. Each purchase helps to fund Relief International’s medical clinics for women and children, educational programs for students and counseling for victims of violent acts.

But to make this good cause even better, Compartes Chocolatier has created an African Collection of chocolates to pair with each Relief Beads bracelet. The collection is made up of authentic African ingredients like cardamom, coconut, Grains of Paradise, caramelized plantains and so much more. You can buy a 5 piece set for $20 or 10 piece set for $30. I know this is more than what we usually pay for chocolate treats, but each purchase can give one child food for a week or life-giving heat on cold nights. Get your special Compartes gift packages online or at their boutique in Los Angeles!

I know many people (including myself) think the United Nations recognized “world’s worst humanitarian crisis” occurring in Darfur is far greater than their contributions. We’ve all seen the devastation featured on the nightly news, newspaper articles and television commercials. And wanted to do something but didn’t know where to start. Well, Relief Beads, a grassroots campaign, is giving us an opportunity to make a difference in the lives of more than 2.5 million refugees that were tragically separated from their families because of genocide , violence and disease.

They are selling handcrafted, original bracelets made from sand in Ghana, Africa to further support the humanitarian efforts of Relief International, an independent, non-profit organization providing necessary medical care, counseling and educational courses to thousands of women and children in Darfur. Relief International’s programs are essential to the recovery of this war-torn country.

This week, world leaders of the G8 Club and their colleagues from the regional blocs of Asia, Africa and Latin America, are gathered in Hokkaido, Japan for yet another round of talks in which climate change will ultimately feature.

Apart from parading their own theoretic short and long term goals and how best to approach this growing problem while clouding their own best national interests, making concessions for climate change may prove harder than committing to curb global carbon pollution.

As the main players at the Hokkaido summit, were the G8 Club, and China, Brazil and India, to pose and think about climate change issues as possible recipe for wars, the plight of the millions of victims of the conflict in Darfur, Sudan would connect with their jostling for the best breathing space.

There has been talk recently of boycotting the 2008 Beijing Olympics for any number of valid reasons. Whether it is for the freedom of Tibet, the atrocities in Darfur, or China’s environmental policies.

However, what would be achieved by boycotting the Olympics? Is China going to step back and say, “Whoa… the United States is right. We are all messed up and need to change.” Probably not.

And who are we to tell another country that they aren’t perfect? If the Olympics were here, who would be boycotting our games?

As a child I was led to believe that the Olympics were a coming together of different cultures and nations for the sake of sport and international cooperation. And in fact that WAS part of the basis for reinventing the Olympics in the first place. As the father of modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin once said,

“May joy and good fellowship reign, and in this manner, may the Olympic torch pursue its way through ages, increasing friendly understanding among nations, for the good of a humanity always more enthusiastic, more courageous and more pure.”

Of course, I grew up and found that most of my dreams and fantasies taught to me by society were pure poppycock. But do all of our childhood misconceptions about the world have to be disproved? I mean, Santa Claus is a given, but what about the concept of peace on earth and goodwill towards man?

OBI President Bill Horan demonstrates a solar ovenMost of us in the developed world don't think a lot about the source of fuel we use for cooking: unless there's a power outage, we can turn a knob or press a button, and we've got the heat we need. If we've got a gas stovetop, we don't even need the electricity! We know, of course, that people in

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The oceans and atmosphere are warming, and now the global warming blame game is also heating up. Inuit in Shishmaref are seeking damages for the climate change that has forced them from their 4,000-year-old community. And 12 states recently prevailed in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that states carbon dioxide is a pollutant that can be regulated by the U.S. EPA.

In the past week alone, we've seen the U.N. point

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Texas AG Greg Abbot: he may be wrong, but he may be right.In a rush to push through well-intentioned and headline-grabbing divestment legislation targeting the multinationals that aid the genocidal regime in Sudan, politicians may be doing more damage to the movement than good.

Evidence of this backlash surfaced last week. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott issued a statement that requiring divestment on

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Photo: AFP/Jim WatsonState legislatures all across the country, including my home state of Texas, are considering bills that would force state-sponsored investment funds to divest from companies profiting from business with the genocidal regime in Darfur.

If successful, pension funds representing teachers, police, firefighters, and other government employees would have to dump billions of dollars in equity in the offending companies. Presumably, the tidal wave of supply in unwanted stock

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