Saturday 14 January 2017

Charity Miles! Move With Purpose. Earn Money For Charity.

Every Mile Matters! If you’re the type of person who likes to make difference, then we’ve got something for you...http://www.charitymiles.org


















MOVE WITH PURPOSE
SUPPORT GREAT CHARITIES
KA-CHING! ($$$)
THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS
We’re grateful to be sponsored by forward-thinking brands like Humana, Johnson & Johnson, and Chobani! And we hope you will be too. We can’t do this without their support!
Get moving with Charity Miles every day. Walk your dog, grab a coffee, go for a run, bike around the neighborhood, shovel some snow. You’ll help earn money for charity and feel great all day!   Choose from over thirty world-class charities! All of our partners are leaders in their fields.So far, we've earned over $2M for charity!! This Challenge Term (ending May 31, 2017), we’ll pay out our sponsorship pool (currently $500,000) to our charity partners in proportion to the Charity Miles done for each. For more information, please see our Terms of Service.

Even Small Amounts of Physical Activity Can Make People Happier


Exercise has long been regarded as a natural mood booster that can release physical tension, relieve stress and produce endorphins. But the benefits of exercise aren’t always enough motivation for people to work out regularly.
As it turns out, starting slow with just small amounts of exercise or physical activity has more benefits than you might think.
A recent UK study found that even minimal amounts of physical activity can have a mood-boosting effect, regardless of how happy a person is already — and even if it’s not technically considered “exercise.”
In the largest ever smartphone-based study to explore the link between physical activity and happiness, researchers examined data collected from over 10,000 participants. These individuals used an Android tracking app to passively track their physical activity via smartphone accelerometers. The app also prompted participants to report their mood levels at two different times throughout the day.
Data from physical activity could be tracked in real-time, which helped take out the self-reporting problem that comes with trying to remember all the movement an individual actually did that day — whether it was a short walk through the parking lot, or a strenuous weight session at the gym.
The only self-reported component included the mood and emotional data, which participants submitted by using a four-quadrant positive/negative grid within the app.
By analyzing this information, the researchers found that even slight physical activity — such as walking around casually — was enough to help increase participants’ mood states, regardless of their baseline happiness level. Overall, however, happy people tended to be more active.
The researchers note that while previous research has looked at the relationship between exercise and happiness with mixed results, most of those studies involved small sample sizes and relied on self-reported physical activity data collected only at specific time periods.
The activity data from this particular study, which was passively tracked throughout the day, could provide averages for each day and participant, which gave researchers the ability to see higher emotional states on days of higher physical activity.
So even if you can’t afford a gym membership or find the time in your busy schedule to work out at home, you may at least be able to get some mood-boosting effects just by focusing on moving your body more throughout the day — wherever you may be.
You could simply try to do a few exercises at your desk during breaks at work, incorporate some office-friendly yoga poses into your day or consider making your walking more effective as you wander around indoors and outdoors.
Making these types of movement a regular habit will bring about physical health benefits too. Take any chance you get to move a little! It really does add up, and these strategies may well serve as the starting point for a more official exercise habit.
Photo Credit: Thinkstock











Tuesday 10 January 2017

Dr. Maya Angelou: "Be a Rainbow in Someone Else's Cloud" | Oprah's Maste...



https://youtu.be/VCHh1zbo_Pw

"Be a rainbow in someone else's cloud"



Dr. Maya Angelou may be gone, but her legacy lives on. She has been immortalized on a U.S. postage stamp, and now, her iconic autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is being re-released, complete with a foreword by her “daughter-friend” Oprah Winfrey. The re-release ensures that her vast wisdom will live on, touching millions of lives and countless generations to come.
  • “I am a Woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal Women, that’s me.”
  • “One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.”
  • “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
  • “The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
  • “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”
  • “Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.”
  • “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a b—-. You’ve got to go out and kick a–.”
  • “You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies. You may tread me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.”
  • “Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
  • “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
  • “I believe that each of us comes from the creator trailing wisps of glory.”
  • “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
This article originally appeared on Essence.com.

Monday 9 January 2017

Take a photo, make a difference with Donate a Photo


CURRENTLY AVAILABLE IN US, UK, CANADA AND JAPAN ONLY

Introducing Donate a Photo, the free app from Johnson & Johnson that turns your photos into a way to do good. For every photo you share through Donate a Photo, Johnson & Johnson donates $1 to a cause you want to help—which does things like fix up a public park, get medicine for an infant, or help kids play sports safely. Get the app and start helping here: http://www.donateaphoto.com


Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. will donate $1 for each eligible photo uploaded. Each available cause has its own start and end dates and minimum and maximum donation amounts. See complete details for each cause at http://www.donateaphoto.com. Only the first photo uploaded in any day by an individual will trigger a donation up until the program ends or the maximum contribution amount for the program is reached.

Our aspiration as a company is to care for the world, one person at a time. Our YouTube channel provides you an unprecedented look behind the scenes at Johnson & Johnson, spotlighting the people, stories and causes that inspire us to care. 

Subscribe to JNJ on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/subscription_c...
J&J on Google Plus: http://plus.google.com/+JNJ
J&J on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jnj
JNJ Cares on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jnjcares
Our News Center: http://www.jnj.com/our-news-center















For every photo you share through the Donate a Photo app, Johnson & Johnson gives US$1 to a cause you care about.

Pick a Cause

There’s so much good to choose from. Explore the causes we’ve curated with trusted non-profits and find something that speaks to you.

Pick a Photo

Any photo. You can donate one photo per day, every day of the year. Pets. Selfies. (Pet selfies?) Yes. Because every photo counts.

Share on the App

Share your photo in the app and Johnson & Johnson gives US$1 to your cause. Then share it on social to get your friends in on the good.



Saturday 7 January 2017

Syrian Crisis : Charity Navigator

Syrian Crisis : Charity Navigator: Find out which charities are providing humanitarian aid to the ever-increasing number of Syrians affected by the civil war.

Background
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reports that with over half the population forced out of their homes, the nearly six-year Syrian conflict is the largest displacement crisis in the world. Currently, there are 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian aid. Of those, 4.9 million are trapped in hard-to-reach areas and more than half of those are children. More specifically, the UNOCHA says that 411,000 children are living in besieged locations without adequate access to food, water, or healthcare.

Current Crisis
In the government’s efforts to retake the city of Aleppo, hundreds of people have been killed and tens of thousands more displaced after bombing has left entire neighborhoods in ruins. But there is some hope as efforts to evacuate civilians finally got underway in mid-December 2016.

How to Help
The Syrians impacted by the ongoing, bloody civil war depend upon humanitarian aid for food, clothing and shelter. The highly-rated charities listed here are providing these services and more (such as medical assistance and schooling for children). Be sure to consider what it is that you want your donation to accomplish and to find a charity offering that specific type of aid. To do that, simply click on the charity’s name and view its rating page (where you can learn about its Financial Health, Accountability & Transparency). Once you are satisfied with its rating, then you can go to the charity’s website (we link to each charity’s site from its ratings page) to learn more specifically about the type of assistance the charity is providing in relation to the Syrian crisis.



Learn about the criteria used to create this featured list of charities.



This list was last updated on 1/5/17.



Monday 2 January 2017

Climate change-Children of the Earth



Help reduce CO2 emissions and fight global warming! Plant trees for free by simply clicking on the link. Reduce carbon emissions and fight global warming. http://ecologyfund.com
/
Plant a tree with a 50 second view of this eco friendly ad. https://youtu.be/5MV0gqN7fbA

www.bubblytree.com


http://caretoclick.com/?referral_id=4506-ce0b6ca7f4507de855135e7882afc57d
http://therainforestsite.greatergood.com/
http://www.care2.com/click-to-donate/rainforest/
http://www.care2.com/click-to-donate/global-warming/

When You Plant It Forward, You Change Lives.
https://info.ecosia.org/what
http://cannecy.free.fr/iforest/en/
http://www.landcareniagara.com/index.php
http://www.answer4earth.com/index.php
http://www.klimatbalans.se/klicka.html
http://www.diewaldseite.de/

When you choose the activity you want to support and click the "Donate" button, Brother will make a donation of one yen (about one cent USD) per click on your behalf.
http://www.brotherearth.com/en/top.html
 https://naturarvet.se/ Click on the icon next to the counter to preserve the forest in Scandanavia

Shop at tentree and like them on social media
https://www.facebook.com/tentree/

Like Boxed water on social media and when you post a picture of their water with the hashtag they will plant 2 trees for you. 
https://www.facebook.com/BoxedWater/

Now available in USA and Canada BetterPlanetPaper, with every purchase or referral of toilet paper or toilet roll they plant a tree! Eco Friendly paper for you!
https://www.betterplanetpaper.com/

Get paid to camp!
https://www.facebook.com/maderaoutdoor
Every hammock purchased plants 2 trees in Africa!!
www.freecharitysupport.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/edenreforestationprojects/
Modern-Day Plague
Deforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year.
The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation.
Forests are cut down for many reasons, but most of them are related to money or to people’s need to provide for their families.The biggest driver of deforestation is agriculture. Farmers cut forests to provide more room for planting crops or grazing livestock. Often many small farmers will each clear a few acres to feed their families by cutting down trees and burning them in a process known as “slash and burn” agriculture.
Logging operations, which provide the world’s wood and paper products, also cut countless trees each year. Loggers, some of them acting illegally, also build roads to access more and more remote forests—which leads to further deforestation. Forests are also cut as a result of growing urban sprawl.
Not all deforestation is intentional. Some is caused by a combination of human and natural factors like wildfires and subsequent overgrazing, which may prevent the growth of young trees.
Deforestation has many negative effects on the environment. The most dramatic impact is a loss of habitat for millions of species. Seventy percent of Earth’s land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes.
Deforestation also drives climate change. Forest soils are moist, but without protection from sun-blocking tree cover they quickly dry out. Trees also help perpetuate the water cycle by returning water vapor back into the atmosphere. Without trees to fill these roles, many former forest lands can quickly become barren deserts.
Removing trees deprives the forest of portions of its canopy, which blocks the sun’s rays during the day and holds in heat at night. This disruption leads to more extreme temperatures swings that can be harmful to plants and animals.
Trees also play a critical role in absorbing the greenhouse gases that fuel global warming. Fewer forests means larger amounts of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere—and increased speed and severity of global warming.
The quickest solution to deforestation would be to simply stop cutting down trees. Though deforestation rates have slowed a bit in recent years, financial realities make this unlikely to occur.
A more workable solution is to carefully manage forest resources by eliminating clear-cutting to make sure that forest environments remain intact. The cutting that does occur should be balanced by the planting of enough young trees to replace the older ones felled in any given forest. The number of new tree plantations is growing each year, but their total still equals a tiny fraction of the Earth’s forested land.

#EcoFriendly #GreenLiving #green #grow #growtrees #trees #plant #planttrees #deforestration #forests #ecology #forestration #ClimateChange #botany #environment #EnvironmentalScientist #SaveThePlanet #ReduceCO2 #MakeADifference
#changelives #letsgetplanting #SaveEarth #natureheals #ourplanet #treehuggers #treelovers

About Social Plastic & The Plastic Bank




Understanding Ocean Plastics Is Key To Keeping Our Oceans Healthy

Ocean plastic is found in nearly every corner of our seas; from the most remote beaches to the arctic ice. An estimated 4.7 to 12.7 million metric tonnes of plastic enter our oceans annually. If we take the mid-point that’s about 17,637,000,000 pounds of plastic every year, or enough to fill 5 grocery bags for every single foot of coastline in the world. If that alone weren’t bad enough, here’s a snapshot of what that means:
  • There are an estimated 5.25 TRILLION pieces of plastic in the ocean.
  • By 2050 we could have more plastic than fish in our oceans.
  • At least 1 million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals die each year because of plastic pollution.
  • Toxic chemicals accumulate in ocean plastic (sometimes concentrating at 1 million times higher than the water around it) and end up in our food chain.
The common understanding is that there are huge ‘garbage islands’ floating in the middle of the ocean – but that’s not quite true. These floating garbage patches aren’t always visible from the air — or even from a passing boat — since most of the plastic is floating just beneath the surface, and most of the pieces are smaller than 1 centimeter in diameter. Over time, the plastic bits get broken down into ever smaller pieces as they get battered by waves and degraded by the sun.

So how does all this plastic find it’s way out to the middle of the ocean? As it turns out, about 80 percent of ocean plastic gets there from the land.  Most of our plastic garbage does end up in landfills, where it takes thousands of years to degrade. A small fraction gets recycled – in the United States, the rate is only about 9 percent.
However, many developing countries don’t have the infrastructure to deal with solid waste, so plastic is pushed into the ocean-bound waterways rather than collected to be brought to landfills. Plastic leaks from garbage dumps, gets blown out by the wind, flows down storm drains and is carried out to sea by rivers and waterways.
How do we start finding solutions? As it turns out, plastic is very valuable and there’s a real business solution to the ocean plastic problem. Between $80 and $120 billion dollars is lost to the economy each year when we dispose of plastic packaging.
You can get reveal value in plastic by asking a brand to use Social Plastic® on Twitter or supporting brands who use Social Plastic® – like these high-end sunglasses made from the plastic we collect in Haiti.
Social Plastic® is sold to impact-driven brands to transfer the value of the plastic into the hands of the people who collect it.  By making plastic waste a currency, it becomes too valuable to end up in ocean-bound rivers and waterways.

From Plastic into usable fuel

http://themindunleashed.com/2017/01/trash-gold-company-plans-turn-plastic-ocean-trash-usable-fuel.html

http://plasticbank.org/


What can we all do to help keep our oceans clean?

  • Keep the beaches clean – We know you’re taking your trash home with you; so why not pick up a few pieces while you’re there?
  • Reuse and recycle – Try to avoid packaging whenever you can. Carry a reusable water bottle and grocery bag then recycle whatever you can.
  • Use your buying power to create change -&nbsp: One of the most effective ways to prevent plastic waste is making sure your purchasing decisions reduce the amount of new plastic being created.

Recycled plastic prevents the need to manufacture new material, but Social Plastic keeps plastic out of the ocean.

Social Plastic is collected in vulnerable coastal communities throughout the world. It creates income for the people who need it most and they make sure that pollution doesn’t end up in the ocean.


You can GATHER TOGETHER with us by donating to the cause, proving the demand on Facebook, or asking a brand to use Social Plastic® on Twitter.