San Francisco based company I AM. recently launched with Soulwears, a line of Yoga bags & straps made of  back-strap woven textiles: the traditional craft of Maya women in Guatemala. I AM.’s mission is to develop commercial solutions to social problems.

The idea: conscious consumption can unite the world, empower consumers & artisans simultaneously and alleviate poverty.  Soulwears yoga products are reinvigorating an otherwise abandoned market for backstrap woven textiles, which were replaced long ago with cheap, machine made fabrics. Practicing this craft allows Maya mothers to stay home with their families, while making a sustainable income.

I AM.’s commitment extends beyond providing well-paying jobs, as the company donates half of all profits to infrastructure projects in their weavers’ communities. 

With 1 week left – and $27,000 still needed in an ambitious Kickstarter campaign, I AM. seeks the support of the mindful community.  Visit the I AM. Kickstarter page to learn more about the project, and pre-order socially responsible yoga products.

ReadyMade is a book – but not just that. It’s a DIY bible that grew up reading popular science as a kid, and now has a collegial 50’s garage tinkerer sensibility.  It launches with fiery trails. It soars. When it falls, it brushes itself off and starts over. It is the Captain of Creativity. Resistance is futile. This book is 100% hope.

Shoshana Berger came up with the idea for ReadyMade Magazine in 2000.  At a time when no one was launching a magazine with less than $5 million to invest, she decided to take a more DIY approach.  After all, that’s what they would be writing about, creating things yourself instead of buying them.  For two years, she and her partner, Grace Hawthorne, worked on a small budget, starting from scratch and learning the intricacies of the magazine business as they went. They did everything themselves – from conceiving and proofing every document that went out the door, to taking out the trash. Three years and many interns later, they were able to start paying themselves, and were the official editors of a widely regarded magazine.

So first - the story. Yes! The story, who can i be without the story? A man in the wilderness sitting squatted in padmasana meditating about the self... Of course the story, once you succeeded, transforms into the path. The story is the funny thing we get to remember. The story is what puts bunions in the feet of our ego. The story, once expressed, is ether released into reality, and whoever gets to witness (if they are well enrolled) can help you reach the greatest goal. 

The Slow Money gathering aims to fix the economy from the ground up, one small food enterprise at a time.  At a time when the big business in town is a struggling stock market, disgraced investment bankers, and a market overrun with poisonous factory-farm produce – the Slow Money Gathering is bringing to bear a new kind of investing.  They call it natural capital, farmer capital, social capital, local capital, nurture capital & cheese capital (why not?).

In the last two years, the gathering has hosted more than 1000 people form 24 states, and more than $4.25 million dollars have been invested in 16 of the presenting small food enterprises.  The event has also given rise to local chapters, who have begun investing around the country.

My name is Andrew, I’m a brand new employee at Cafe Gratitude’s central office, and I want to share some inspiration with you. What inspires me is compassionate food--food that’s kind to the soil it’s planted in, the people who prepare it, and the hungry bodies that make it part of them. This inspiration has lead me to work with Cafe Gratitude, and also with another organization re-imagining good food, and one I’ll talk about today: the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive, or CoFED, which empowers college students to launch food cooperatives.

What both these organizations have in common is that they empower people to transform their lives, with compassionate food as a catalyst. We like to call the Cafe a school of transformation disguised as a restaurant, because our core mission isn’t to sell you food - our aim is to give you tools to shape your life how you want it to be. Part of actively taking control of your life involves loving yourself, and a key part of loving yourself is feeding yourself really awesome food. So when you decide that you’re worthy of nourishing your body, mind and soul with meals that are kind to the Earth and her animal and human inhabitants - meals that make you feel and function great - you’re taking the first step on the journey of self-transformation.

This year, the California Label GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) Campaign is committed to proposing legislation to ensure that all GMO foods sold are labelled as containing GMOs. Currently, food distributors are not required to label their food as containing GMOs. Cafe Gratitude is a stand for the labeling and regulation of GMOs, the use of which pose untold threats to the health of our community and planet.
Why does this matter? If you are not currently aware of the social, economic, ecological, and health dangers posed by GMOs, check out the video of Vandana Shiva, Ph.D. below.  She is a philosopher, environmental activist, and ecofeminist, who is regarded as an authority on the global implications of GMO crops.

What can you do?  Take action today by:
- Spreading the word in your social network, website, or neighborhood: Click Here to Share
- Visit LabelGMOs.org/pledge to pledge to collect signatures to help us meet our goal.
- Donate to help this grass-roots campaign succeed!
- Learn how to avoid GMOs when you shop, by going to a local California farmer's market, or by checking out the Center for Food Safety's Non-GMO shopper's guide.
Thank you for sharing your inspiration with us, and for helping us to create this world as a safe, healthy, just place for future generations.

When we describe the United States, “sustainable” is not usually the first word that comes to mind. Our nation is the leading contributor to global warming, and high material consumption has long been taken for granted. But in little pockets across this country, people are forming communities that embrace environmental sustainability as a way of life. And not only environmental sustainability, but social sustainability too. We’re starting to learn that in order to form communities that can endure and thrive, we must not only manage our ecological resources wisely, but also our personal and emotional resources. We must learn to care for and understand each other if we are to form truly sustainable communities.

This Saturday, an exciting new film, Within Reach, enjoys its world premiere in Berkeley. The film chronicles a young couple’s 19-month bicycle journey across the U.S. in their search for what they call “sustainable communities.” They visited 100 communities that seek to live sustainably, exploring not only how these communities interact with the Earth, but also how they practice commerce, how they raise children, and how they build a cohesive social structure. The communities visited are diverse: they range from an electricity-free “radically simplistic” farmstead in Missouri, to a household of Buddhists in Wisconsin (who flourish while spending only $40 each per month on food), to the urban, creative Berkeley Student Housing Co-ops right in our backyard. Not all visits were harmonious—on the outskirts of Austin, Texas, the filmmakers were chased out of a secluded squatter community by an unstable man—but overall, the directors Ryan and Mandy discovered that living in loving harmony was a common thread amongst these communities, which not only brought them together but also sustains them.

At Café Gratitude, we attempt to cultivate a loving, supported community--a socially-sustainable community!—that is also nourished in an environmentally sustainable way. After all, shouldn’t the two go hand-in-hand? More importantly, can they exist without each other? For when we learn to love each other, the people around us, we learn that we can extend this love to future generations as well by protecting our environment. And when we take care of our planet, we nourish all her people. Achieving a sustainable nation may still be a long-term goal, but we can start right now in our own communities.

Every day new products hit the shelves of stores that can do more, better, faster, and smaller.  I'm sure you or someone you know owns a laptop, a smart phone, or a ipad (the mico-powerhouses of modern computing).  Not only do we have access to a world of information in the palms of our hands, we also have access to more mundane technological masterpieces: fridge magnets that play digital videos, ant farms that project moving images of the ants onto the ceiling, and laptop fans to keep your laptop cool as you stream video while playing solitaire.
In our modern experience of high-tech saturation (both necessary and superfluous), I would like to serve up the technological equivalent of some down-home cookin’. I present to you three low-tech, high-impact appropriate and responsible technologies that are transforming the lives of regular people worldwide.

Solar Bottle Lights: In the town of San Pedro, just outside of Manila in the Philippines, a local transformation is occurring.  Men salvage used plastic bottles, fill them with water, and cast light into dark places. Huh?  That's right.  In an area where most buildings are made of corrugated steel, most families have had to rely on expensive electrical lights to see in their homes during the day.  Not any more.  At the price of $1 per installation, many families are opting to let the sunshine in, using plastic water bottles filled with water to create solar ceiling lights.  Not only is this diverting waste from landfills, it is also creating green job alternatives for people ready to embrace this new technology.

Hi Everyone,