CRUSH HUNGER

Here’s a little video we just put together called...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:34:07 -0400

Here’s a little video we just put together called “Gardeners Have the Power.” As our successful White House Kitchen Garden campaign showed, we can pretty much do anything we set our mind to when we join together, so let’s join together to help our gardening friends around the world improve food security in their countries. KGI’s entry in America’s Giving Challenge offers an excellent opportunity for raising the funds (up to $50,000!) needed to help gardeners and gardening projects around the world. To win, we need to generate the most number of donations between now and November 6th. Please donate early and often, up to once a day. We’re making good progress, but need YOUR help today. Thanks.

Experts Worry as Hunger Grows

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:09:00 -0400

Experts Worry as Hunger Grows:

From today’s New York Times. Our cause - helping people to feed themselves - couldn’t be more urgent. Please donate $10 today.

Contest update: from 1827th place to 27th!

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:51:00 -0400

Hello gardeners. Yesterday, you added a generous heap of aged compost to our bid to win America’s Giving Challenge and our entry is growing vigorously. In the span of three days, we’ve moved from 1827th place (i.e. dead last) into 27th place as of this morning. We need to keep building momentum if we are to have a shot at the $50,000 prize. Please $10 donate today and as often as you can between now and Nov 6th. We’re going to need all the gardeners we can gather to win this grant for the gardening cause. Thanks.

KGI: helping gardeners (little ones) in El Salvador

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:41:00 -0400

Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI) is working through its members and partners to plant school gardens around the world. The Centro Escolar Los Gramales (The Gramales Scholastic Center) of Morazan, El Salvador is just one school we have helped.

Aiming to add vegetables to the traditional community diet of beans, rice and tortillas, the school started a kitchen garden with tomatoes, peppers and pipian, a type of squash. After witnessing the great success of their organic garden, many local parents are now beginning to compost and garden with their children at home. That is the power of school gardens: that what happens at school doesn’t stay at school, but is passed on to and shared with family members to the benefit of the larger community.

That also happens to be the power of our “Crush Hunger” campaign. After donating, please share it with your friends and family so that we can win the America’s Giving Challenge and help more schools around the world to plant healthy gardens. Thanks.

Photo finish ahead - we need your $10 donation by 3pm today

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:53:21 -0400

We’re pushing hard to finish in second place today in the America’s Giving Challenge daily challenge (the Cause that can generate the most donations in a 24 hour period) and need another 20 $10 donations in the next 2 hours to make it happen. A second place finish would help us win a $500 grant from the Case Foundation. $500 can go a long way to plant vegetable gardens in the developing world.

If you haven’t donated today, please do so now:

The last shall be first?

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:26:48 -0400

We had ourselves a ~~big~~ HUGE day yesterday in the giving challenge. We ended the day Sunday in 685th place and woke up this morning to see that we were in 68th place in the overall standings and third place in the daily standings! We need to keep pushing hard though. If we can move into second place in the daily standings, we can secure a bonus grant of $500 from the Case Foundation. Please make your donation by 3pm (Eastern) today. Thanks!

KGI: working to improve food security in Kenya

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:15:04 -0400

According to a new report issues by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Kenya’s hunger rating has moved from “serious” to “alarming” in the past year. KGI is working with organic gardeners and small-holder farmers in Kenya to teach organic techniques and dig new school gardens that will allow them to become more food secure as the country’s attempts tries to limp through some of the worst droughts it has seen in many years.

End of day tally

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:47:30 -0400

We started the day tied for 1827th place - dead last - and finished in 685th. The crushing has just begun.

High altitude hunger

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 10:26:20 -0400

Kitchen Gardeners International (KGI) is helping many people and groups around the world and we’ll be using the CrushHunger blog to share some of their stories. One of the groups we supported with a minigrant is Gargy Shiksha Sadan near Kathmandu, Nepal. In this cold region with mainly yak farming and little fertile land, most of the people suffer from malnutrition. The Gargy Shiksha Sadan kitchen garden program was launched to improve the health of the community. The two women shown are working in their new cauliflower field. Your donation to KGI between now and November 6th will help us leverage a $50,000 grant from the Case Foundation which we’ll use to help more groups to become more self-reliant in their food production. You can make this grant happen by donating as little as $10 and encouraging your friends to do the same. Thanks.

"…And thorough work, again, renders sufficient, the smallest quantity of ground to each man...."

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 09:44:33 -0400

“…And thorough work, again, renders sufficient, the smallest quantity of ground to each man. And this again, conforms to what must occur in a world less inclined to wars, and more devoted to the arts of peace, than heretofore. Population must increase rapidly — more rapidly than in former times — and ere long the most valuable of all arts, will be the art of deriving a comfortable subsistence from the smallest area of soil. No community whose every member possesses this art, can ever be the victim of oppression of any of its forms. Such community will be alike independent of crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings….”

- Abraham Lincoln, speaking at the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, 1859

Some of you might be asking: “Why is KGI appealing to...

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:33:00 -0400

Some of you might be asking: “Why is KGI appealing to Gary Vaynerchuk to help crush hunger and win the America’s Giving Challenge?” The answer is for the same reason that we appealed to the Obamas to plant a kitchen garden at the White House: LEVERAGE. We knew that if we could help convince the First Family of the United States to start a garden, we would be leveraging a huge communications platform, 1 million times larger and more powerful than our own. That campaign, like this one, was an act of faith and based on the belief that we could rally good people around a good cause using social networking. In the end, we got over 110,000 people involved and made the headlines of every major newspaper in the US and several abroad. You can watch the whole story of our campaign above. But before you do that, please donate to our cause and help us win the America’s Giving Challenge and win $50,000 to help plant healthy, new gardens where they’re needed most in the world. We need hundreds of people making $10 donations (or several of them) between now and Nov. 6. Thanks!

Day 2: Vee is for Vegetables?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:22:41 -0400

It’s Day 2 of our quest to go from last place to first in the America’s Giving Challenge. There’s no sign of Gary yet, but we know he’s out there ready and raring to tackle a new online challenge.

Talking about tackling big challenges, did you know that 40% of the nation’s produce came from gardens during WWII? Kitchen Gardeners International is working with people and partners in 100 countries to plant new gardens. Please donate to our cause and help us leverage a $50,000 grant. Thanks!

"For the first time in history, more than one billion people are undernourished worldwide. This is..."

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:39:59 -0400

““For the first time in history, more than one billion people are undernourished worldwide. This is about 100 million more than last year and it means that one in every six persons suffers from hunger every day.””

- Jacques Diouf
Director-General
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Day: 1 We’ve launched our bid to win America’s...

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:33:00 -0400

Day: 1 We’ve launched our bid to win America’s Giving Challenge with little more than a hope, a prayer, and a $9 url. We start the competition as the ultimate underdog: a small nonprofit with one part-time staff member & tied for 1700th place, last place. It’s all up from here!

Our goal is to raise more donations than any other nonprofit, thereby leveraging a grant of $50,000 from the Case Foundation. We’ll use that grant to expand our programs and help more people around the world to crush hunger and food insecurity by growing their own food.

This video, my first vlog ever, is a friendly challenge to online whiz, Gary Vaynerchuk, to help crush hunger and win the competition by collecting the most donations between now and 3pm EST November 6th.

Donate here!