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Education Through Music: Give the Gift of Music

25 Nov
2013

Education through Music2014 UPDATE: THIS OPPORTUNITY HAS PASSED

Education Through Music just announced a new partnership with Grain Audio to support music education in inner-city schools, with a plan of action that looks to the future of arts education in NYC. Just in time for the holidays, the two are teaming up to offer a special gift any music lover would be happy to add to their wishlist: the Grain Audio HANDHeld PWS. For each wireless speaker sold to an ETM supporter, Grain Audio will make a contribution of $68 to Education Through Music; so whenever someone purchases a gift for a loved one (or themselves) they are also giving the gift of music to a child in need!

To order the Grain Audio HANDheld wireless speaker in support of Education Through Music, visit: http://www.grainaudio.com/ETM or http://www.etmonline.org/store (*Only the PWS speakers sold through this page will qualify and count towards the charitable donations*)

In addition to the holiday gift that keeps on giving music, GrainAudio will provide audio equipment support to ETM partner schools and host several special events in 2014 to help raise funds for ETM.  Grain Audio will also provide additional marketing support to help increase ETM’s reach and exposure to new audiences and supporters.

“We are honored to be partnering with ETM. The incredible work they are doing touching children’s lives through music is both inspiring and result oriented,” said Mitch Wenger, President of Grain Audio. “They have a real impact and are truly doing incredible work. Grain Audio is thrilled to be partnering with this amazing organization.”

ABOUT EDUCATION THROUGH MUSIC
Education Through Music (ETM) partners with inner-city schools to provide all students with music as a core subject, and to create school communities that value the arts. ETM’s mission is to promote the use of music in schools as a means of enhancing students’ academic performance and general development. The ETM model currently serves 15,000 students in 28 inner-city schools in New York City, and our model reaches another 5,000 children through the work of our licensed affiliate organization in Los Angeles. For more information, please visit http://www.ETMonline.org.
ABOUT GRAIN AUDIO
Headquartered in New York, Grain Audio was founded by a four-person team with backgrounds in acoustics, design, architecture and marketing, united by their love of music and their desire to hear it the way the artist intended. Recognizing its obligation to users to give back via social and environmental initiatives, Grain Audio employs eco-friendly practices and materials (including FSC-certified wood) that minimize the company’s carbon footprint.

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Sunday Night Soul

5 Sep

EXPVOL

2013

Unless you’ve been living under a rock in Midtown, you’ve heard of SoulCycle: the extremely intense yet gratifying workout that features energy-infused music sets, inspiring instructors, and a whole lot of peddling. Whether you’re already a SoulCycle fanatic or looking to finally get on a bike and see what all the fuss it about, this is the perfect opportunity for you:  Join me on September 15th at a charity ride to benefit God’s Love We Deliver.

Friends and supporters of God’s Love We Deliver will get together for 45 minutes of fun, love and sweat! Hosted by God’s Love at SoulCycle in SoHo, 100% of the event proceeds will benefit the God’s Love We Deliver Expansion Campaign!

And that’s not all: Miss USA Erin Brady and Miss Teen USA Cassidy Wolf will be joining in the evening’s bike ride so buy a bike and you can ride alongside them!

Bikes can be reserved at a number of tiered levels and there’s only 53 available, so grab yours before they’re all gone. Tickets can be purchased on the GLWD website.

For any questions or concerns regarding Sunday Night Soul for God’s Love, please contact Nick at 917-280-5778 or McKenzie at 202-679-5544.

logoGod’s Love We Deliver is the tri-state area’s leading provider of nutritious, individually-tailored meals to people who are too sick to shop or cook for themselves. 

God’s Love We Deliver is a non-sectarian organization, providing meals with the strong belief of “food as medicine.”  To that end, we employ a team of registered dietitians who individually tailor meals to each client’s specific medical requirements.  God’s Love provides all services by employing a small but dedicated professional staff and with the critical assistance of nearly 8,000 volunteers annually.

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ioby Goes Guerrilla

15 Apr

On my way to work yesterday I spotted a sign near Penn Station that caught my eye. I recognized the logo immediately and knew it belonged to my friends at ioby (‘in our backyards’), so I forced my way back against the morning rush of commuter foot traffic to get a better look. The sign said “with ioby I could be..” with the blank filled in to say “a Farmer’s Market!” 

After doing some online digging and calling Erin Barnes, one of the co-founders of ioby (much easier than digging), I found out that this sign was part of a guerrilla effort carried out by ioby supporters, with the intention of encouraging people to ‘reimagine’ spaces they see in their communities, and that ioby can help those ideas become realities. Erin explained that “ioby is a move out of the environmental movement’s NIMBY past. ioby is all about saying, ‘This is my neighborhood and I want positive change right here. I’ve got an idea and I’m going to make it happen with my neighbors.”

The Reimagine signs were placed all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens (and maybe the Bronx and SI, but I couldn’t recognize the other boroughs in pictures). Each sign had it’s own message; some people imagined spaces could be community vineyards, murals, rooftop gardens, and more. You can check out all of the reimagined spaces on ioby’s Facebook page.

Sadly, this particular sign was already taken down by this morning, but it was cool while it lasted. As someone who works in advertising, I really appreciate the appropriateness of a grassroots marketing effort by a grassroots organization; getting creative, getting dirty, and going guerrilla.

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ioby connects donors and volunteers to environmental projects in their neighborhoods to inspire new environmental knowledge and action in New York City. If you’ve got an idea about making your ‘backyard’ community a better place and want to make it happen, check out the ioby website to see how they can help.

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Eating for a Cause at Boqueria

24 Mar
2011

This past Sunday was the eighth annual Time Out For Hunger event, where over 160 restaurants in New York City participated in giving 10% of their day’s proceeds to the Food Bank For NYC. Presented with Time Out New York, the Food Bank enlisted some of the best restaurants this city has to offer, from Lure Fishbar to the Russian Tea Room, all of the BLT spots and more. I had a hard time choosing, but wound up heading to Boqueria for an amazing brunch with my family. Since I could never snag a table on any prior attempts, just getting a seat was reason enough for celebration.

Boqueria, named after Barcelona’s world famous and spectacular market, claims it offers New Yorkers “the chance to dine as they would in Barcelona’s famed tapas bars without ever leaving town.” I’ve never been to Spain, but if it’s anything like Boqueria in the Flatiron district, sign me up. The vibe is relaxed and communal, with high tables and chairs allowing diners and staff to be at eye-level, which strangely feels like you’re just chit-chatting with a friend while also ordering food. Genius.

There were six of us, and even though the Brunch menu looked amazing, we opted to stick with the tapas y raciones menu so that we could taste (and eat) as much as possible. The first bite to arrive at the table were the bunuelos de bacalao, which are salt-cod fritters with citrus aioli; the fritters were crispy and delicious, and the sauce was put aside on the table for all future dipping. Next up were the dates stuffed with almonds and Valdeon (a type of cheese similar to blue cheese), wrapped in bacon. These were small enough to pop in your mouth and exploded with amazing flavor after crunching through the salty bacon: sweet, savory, it was all there. Other highlights from the meal included the sauteed wild mushrooms with manchego cheese (salteado de setas), chorizo frittatas, and the grilled baby squid (txipirones) with garlic and parsley crispy potatoes.

My favorite pick of the afternoon were the blistered shishito peppers with sea salt (pimientos de padron); blackened to perfection, these little Japanese peppers were unassuming, simple, and fresh. They are typically mild, but a few can sneak in (on our plate, 3) that are very spicy, so we took the liberty to play ‘fiery pepper roulette’ with the table; I lost twice, but really, I won! I left Boqueria pleasantly full and happy, knowing that the amazing meal we just had would be contributing to the programs at the Food Bank.

For every $1 donated to the Food Bank For New York City, 5 meals can be provided to New Yorkers in need. Last year, Time Out For Hunger raised close to 300,000 meals in one day. The final tally hasn’t been completed yet for 2011, but Boqueria alone raised about $1,900- that’s 9,500 meals!

 

For more information about Time Out for Hunger 2012, visit the Food Bank for NYC website.

Boqueria has two locations- 53 West 19th Street in the Flatiron District, and 171 Spring Street in Soho. To see their menu and contact information, visit their website at www.boquerianyc.com

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Pando Projects: Service for the New Millennial

18 Feb
2011

I recently came across the website WhatGives?!, which is dedicated to spreading the good word about volunteerism, organizations, and causes, using social media to help raise awareness and funds for nonprofits. It’s teeming with useful information I love to read about and is now on the top of my bookmark list. More importantly (and relevant to this article), is that I read about Pando Projects for the first time. A new start-up based in New York City, it’s mission and platform immediately caught my attention and I needed to know more. Enter: Milena Arciszewski. Ask and you shall receive; I was able to get on the phone with Milena and learn more about Pando, and confirm that she is, in fact, as cool and candid as the voice she writes with on her site and blog.

Pando Projects is a nonprofit that “empowers people to step up as leaders and develop new, local solutions to the problems in their communities.” The Pando platform that was created will allow project leaders to create personal sites for their local causes to raise money, manage volunteers, organize events, and share their experience and results. As projects are completed, the leaders will become mentors to 5 more up-and-coming Pando Project leaders; with Pando as the catalyst, this is sure to become a chain reaction for change and create a true social network for good.

Though Pando Projects accepts applications from anyone over 18 years old, their primary demographic is Millennials: us young people born between 1980 and 1994. This includes Milena herself, who told me that our generation has big ambitions to change the world but we’re bored with what’s out there. Millennials don’t necessarily want the traditional volunteer experience, they want to create their own project and make change happen on their own terms. This is sure to harness the passionate energy of millennials not only to start their own projects, but also to donate to local projects to which they feel most connected. When I asked Milena about whether Pando Projects would serve mainly as an online platform or something that connects people in real life, she said that “Our platform definitely encourages off-line action. The idea is that we give Millennials the encouragement and tools they need to start amazing initiatives in their own communities.  But then they come home and share their experience on their website and then distribute the update through Facebook, email, and Twitter.  It’s offline action that’s documented through social media.”

I love the concept of Pando Projects, and I’m really happy that Milena chose New York City as her base of operations. In such a big city it’s easy for a lot of smaller, local community issues to go unnoticed and unfixed. Pando Projects is ready to empower New York’s ambitious Millennials to step up and fix the problems they see in their own backyards. I can’t wait to watch how this progresses as projects are successfully completed and the network of NYC do-gooders begins to grow through the mentorship program.

The pilot has officially begun- check out the inaugural projects by visiting http://pilot.pandoprojects.org. You can sign up to volunteer or make a donation on the individual project page you’re most passionate about (or more than one-they’re all pretty interesting!).

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And if you’re wondering why it’s called the “Pando Project”: Pando is the name of the largest aspen forest in the U.S. whose trees are all connected with one root system. <<insert ‘The More Your Know’ jingle here>>

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