Phunk Phenomenon, a professional hip hop dance crew based from Everett, Massachusetts, held their 2nd annual competition “Prelude” on April 2, 2011. A portion of the proceeds from ticket sales and dancer entry fees will be donated to Jared’s Foundation, a foundation working to raise money to find a cure for Sanfilippo disease.The group’s co-founder’s son, Jared, was diagnosed with the incurable disease. Jared is missing an important enzyme the body uses to break down a sugar called heparin sulfate. The lack of this enzyme will cause the brain to have a sugar build up resulting in much damage to the body and eventually leading to death. There is no treatment for Sanfilipo disease and most children with the disease do not make it to their adult years.
Phunk raises awareness by wearing shirts and sweatshirts that read “Hip Hop for Hope” at their performances. The recent competition was held in Jared’s honor. The team also recently made it on to MTV’s America’s Next Best Dance Crew, where they will continue to promote the Jared Foundation and bring his story to the public while representing dancers in the Boston area. Jared’s story can be found on www.jaredsfight.org, as well as other information pertaining to the cause. Donations can also be made at the site. Phunk Phenomenon is made up of 5 crews ranging in ages 6 to adult. You can learn more about the team at www.phunkphenomenon.com
Puma shoes has partnered with the Fuse Project to design a nifty bag with cardboard sheet framework, a move which will waste 65% less cardboard than a regular, old fashioned shoe box and prove once again that small changes make a huge difference.
One child dies every 45 seconds from malaria, a disease easily transmitted from an infected mosquito through a bite. Malaria is a preventable, treatable disease but still kills over 1 million people annually, and is the leading killer of children if Africa.
Five years ago, Rick Reilly’s column in Sports Illustrated challenged readers to donate $10 for a life-saving anti-malaria bed net. This sparked the campaign Nothing But Nets. The $10 donation covers the cost of the bed net, distribution and educating the recipients on how to use and care for it.
Nothing But Nets is a global, grassroots campaign to raise awareness and funding to combat malaria. They work with an extensive group of partners, like The Measles Initiative, the American Red Cross, WHO and UNICEF, to name a few. They use a system to determine which countries get nets, and you can view an interactive map of Africa to see where they have been delivered and where they are going.
Since the campaign started, the malaria death rate has dropped for children. At $10 a net, they encourage everyone to get involved, from church groups to school classrooms. They believe that together we can make the world a better place.
This summer fellow Suffolk alumni Gregory and NESAD alumni Bianca rode across the country for Autism. They took the Atlantic Coast Route from Boston to Richmond, VA, where they then took the Trans-America trail that took them to Colorado. After that they used the maps from the Western Express Route to get from Pueblo, CO to San Francisco, CA.
The trip was not only for a great cause, but it was also the ride of their lives. They said that recently graduating college was like taking off the blinders after four years, and just letting go. Even though they had a few set backs, (Greg breaking his collarbone, then later snapping his derailleur on his custom bicycle and forced to go singlespeed) they made it. They dipped their wheels in the Atlantic on July 1st, and again in the Pacific in San Franscisco, on September 17th.
Not only did they raise $4,881 for Autism, they also had an experience of a lifetime. You can check out their blog archive for some wonderful photos and their close to daily updates
Many children in developing countries grow up barefoot. Whether at play, doing chores or going to school, without shoes these children are at risk of soil-transmitted diseases, injuries, and could possibly miss out on a better education (shoes are in schools mandatory dress code).
While visiting Argentina in 2006, Blake Mycoskie realized that going barefoot was only one of the on going struggles that children in developing countries face, but he at least had a solution to this problem; TOMS shoes. With every pair of shoes Mycoskie’s company sells, he gives away pair of shoes to a child in need; One for One. As of September 2010, TOMS has given over one million pairs of new shoes through Giving Partners around the world. They are currently donating to 24 countries.
TOMS’ Giving Partners are made up of NGOs, charities, and non-profits already established and working in the countries in which TOMS gives. Their expertise guides TOMS to give new shoes responsibly, making sure there aren’t adverse socioeconomic effects, and to ensure that sustainable giving is possible. Giving shoes to the same children on a regular basis is the idea upon which TOMS was started, and is what truly improves the lives of children and their communities.
You can purchase a pair of TOMS shoes online at www.toms.com and be confident that while you’re enjoying your brand new pair of TOMS shoes that a child is enjoying theirs too thanks to you!
What if there was an unexpected solution to ending poverty for not only 600 million adolescent girls, but also the entire world? Well, there is. And it’s called The Girl Effect.
The Girl Effect is a movement, a conversation, and a call to action. Young girls living in developing nations are often illiterate, isolated, married off and pregnant before the age of 18, are most vulnerable to HIV, and are stuck in a perpetual cycle of poverty. The Girl Effect is a campaign aimed at giving adolescent girls the simple chance to receive proper health care, an education, safety, a sense of community and mentors. When these young girls have the opportunity to thrive, they are more likely to pay it forward in their communities. Generation after generation, the world becomes a better place!
The organization encourages us to spread the word about The Girl Effect and/or to donate. Donations are made through GlobalGiving. This not-for-profit foundation lists numerous well-defined projects spanning the globe from Latin America, India and Bangladesh, to Africa. Individuals can either make a blanket donation or they may select the project in which they’d like their gift to benefit. If you would simply like to spread the word about The Girl Effect, you can find several ways to do so at thegirleffect.org.
Starbucks and MIT are currently working to solve the Starbucks Cup Dilemma – eighty percent of drinks walk out of Starbucks’s stores; an astonishing 3 billion of the nation’s 200 billion-plus paper cups are Starbucks cups, and they are thrown into dumps each year. A new cup is needed, and a new in-store experience to support it. Students in our Designing the Greater Good class are researching, brainstorming, developing new customer journey scenarios, sourcing new materials, and designing new cup designs to help inform the conversation. Students will be blogging about the design process here, check back with them soon.
We were excited to see sweetriot on our Virgin Airway flight. Yum! Virgin America has an innovative and fresh way to order on all flights. Guests on all of Virgin America flights now have a new range of healthy, fresh menu options.
Virgin America is the only U.S. airline to offer a “food button,” allowing guests the freedom and convenience to order whatever they want to eat or drink during a flight either with a touch of the video touch-screen at every seat or through the hand-held remote control in every armrest.
“As the only California-based airline, it is part of our company DNA to provide guests with a changing array of upscale menu options that reflect the vibrant food culture of our home state,” said Virgin America’s Senior Vice President of People and In-Flight Services, Frances Fiorillo. “Our innovative seatback menu system has been one of the most popular features with guests since we launched in August 2007. We’ve found that guests really enjoy the ease and convenience of not having to wait for the trolley, and they want more food options, so we’re pleased to unveil this new, expanded menu.”
We are currently finalizing the designs to produce with our Sappi Ideas that Matter Grant for The Breakaway Foundation. Here is a sneak peek at one of our funded projects, notecards that are going to help us spread nationwide education of sudden cardiac arrest in athletes so our communities can be better prepared for crisis management, on and off the field. Thank you to Tufts Medical Center, HCMA, and to Sappi for making this effort possible.
We’re honored that artists from all over the country have teamed up to create original pieces for our annual poster calendar, which helps fund The Ucal McKenzie Breakaway Foundation. The Breakaway Foundation brings soccer and nutrition + heart health education to Boston’s youth year-round. Art pages of the poster calendars are perforated so they can be easily removed and used as posters. Check it out here.
Our studio has begun working on our 2012 poster calendar, which will include work by Heads of State, Design Army, Day 19, 2×4, and more… stay tuned!
