City of Boston's Roll It Forward

Think. If you have a bike that's been sitting in your garage that no one in your family uses, a bike you have been meaning to get rid of or a bike on it's way from the dump-- now's the perfect opportunity to donate your bike to a good cause! Don't have it take up space or end up in a landfill-- donate & help your community.

The City of Boston has a Roll It Forward! Campaign going on. This project seeks to make cycling a more accessible transportation for low-income communities. The overall goal of the campaign is to collect, repair, & distribute 1,000 bikes to Boston's neighborhood by spring 2012.

Every bike recipient will be fitted with a helmet & be educated on proper bike safety. Bikes are needed for Boston residents of all ages, not just kids, so donate your bike today! Donate your old bike through December 10th at the following locations.

What do you think about this project? What do you enjoy most about having a bike and how do you believe families will benefit from the City of Boston's Roll Forward Campaign?

Love animals? Cool ways to volunteer with them in Boston!

Check out these cool ways to volunteer with animals in Boston. The one thing that I have learned from volunteering to work with animals in the past is to BE PATIENT. These organizations are inundated with applications because these volunteer positions are so popular and some of the volunteer positions require an orientation session or several training seminars. It's all worth it though because you get to help animals!

Volunteer at the New England Aquarium. My friend, Mary-Kate, volunteers at the New England Aquarium and she loves it! Volunteers do all sorts of things, like even scuba-dive in the tanks to help clean rocks and take care of the sea creatures.

Become a Museum of Science Butterfly Garden Volunteer. Volunteers in the Museum of Science Butterfly Garden (which if you have not been to the Museum of Science, I highly recommend you check out! It's a really cool place with tons of awesome exhibits.) answer questions on butterfly identification after receiving training. This helps educate and teach people about butterflies in Boston. Pretty cool.

Animal Rescue League of Boston. Volunteers at Animal Rescue League of Boston volunteer with direct animal care, animal socialization and general administrative support. No matter what your volunteer position if you volunteer with Animal Rescue League of Boston, you will be touching the lives of animals-- whether directly or indirectly.

MSPCA Boston Adoption Center cares for over 6,000 animals annually and are available 365 days a year. The organization relies on volunteers for everything from cat cuddling to cage cleaning. 


Why do you love working with animals? Have you volunteered with these organizations or organizations like this? Tell me about your experience.

Plaid Friday

Remember a few posts back when I raved about Black Friday? Well, I mean it's still pretty cool-- but check out this new initiative: Plaid Friday. While I admit might take a while to get off the ground, Plaid Friday has great potential to help out a lot of local businesses out during this popular shopping day.

Instead of rushing to huge shopping malls and larger commercial stores, take a new approach to Black Friday: appreciate the city you live in by shopping at the rich variety of locally owned stores and restaurants. This is good because not only do you get to avoid the Black Friday mall mob rush (which, I do understand does have it's thrills) and you get to help out local businesses who rely on locals keep thriving.

If you are concerned shopping local won't be as good for the economy, then think about this: Even if you spend less this season, you are creating more jobs in your local town by shifting more of your shopping to locally-owned businesses. This is because, as Laury Hammel and Stacy Mitchell's article "Regional business leaders On Black Friday, "go local" instead" says:

Because unlike online retailers and big chains, local businesses depend on one another for certain goals and services (like accounting, Printing, and so on) so a larger share of what you spend at local stores is re-spent elsewhere in the community, supporting a variety of local jobs.

I found it interesting that “several studies have…found that locally owned businesses creates about 3x as much economic activity and more jobs in the New England region than spending that same dollar at a chain store.”

The idea behind “Plaid Friday” started in Oakland, California. But there’s ways to help in Boston and throughout New England at local stores:

In Greater Boston, for example, under the theme “Think Local, Thank Local” members of Cambridge Local First are donating a percentage of their sales during the week, starting on Plaid Friday to a local nonprofit, Food for Free.

All and all, I think this is a great idea. What are your thoughts? Do you believe it will catch on? Will you support local stores this Friday?