“We’ve had such a public outpouring of food donations,” Kelly Russum, president, KC’s 23 1/2 Hour Plumbing Inc., says. “We donate all of the food to Martha’s Village & Kitchen and they help to distribute to those people in need. However, we always need more. The more the public gets involved, the more food we have to help those people right in our own backyard.”

Jimmica Guess, Community Relations Manager for the Mission Advancement Team at Martha’s Village & Kitchen, explains that the food boxes are used for distribution through the emergency services department.

“There are many people at the poverty level in the community who will need assistance with food from time to time. We provide them with enough food for three to four days for whatever number of people they have in their family,” Guess says. “They can receive one box every 60 days.”

Products in the food boxes include items such as canned meats, soups, grains, cereal and peanut butter.

KC’s makes it easy for people to donate. They can stop into their office, or even give food to a driver who is in their area. Additionally, monetary donations are also accepted and KC’s will purchase food with the money.

“I’ve been lucky enough to build and sustain a successful business in this community,” Russum says. “Now, it’s time to give back to the community that has made it possible. Everyone needs helps every now and again and it’s our goal to see that they get it.”

Food drives take place year round and after each ton is collected, it is boxed and donated.

About KC’s 23 1/2 Hour Plumbing, Inc.:

In business for 30 years, KC’s 23 1/2 Hour Plumbing, Inc. is a full-service Palm Springs plumbing contractor that services and installs complete plumbing systems. The company provides 24-hour emergency service, seven days per week.

Its motto says it all: “We’re the good guys your friends told you about.”

For more information, visit: www.Kcs23.com .

About Martha’s Village & Kitchen:

Martha’s Village & Kitchen, a partner of Father Joe’s Villages, was founded in 1990 and is the largest provider of comprehensive homeless services in Riverside County. In addition to continuum of care services, it also provides services to the community through emergency services such as food boxes, clothing vouchers, infant supplies, utility, transportation and rent assistance and a daily public meal.

For more information, visit: www.mvk.org .

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

Bookstand Publishing’s President, Andy Baldwin, reminds budding authors that any author can achieve the same success: “Bookstand Publishing helped ‘We Can Do’ become a successful book. We can help any author publish a book and show them the tools to make their book successful.”

Baldwin offers authors the same tools that Moshe Kai used to become a success. One of these tools is a free book that is available to anyone who is interested in the process of self-publishing: “Moshe Kai used our paperback book, ‘The Self-Publishing Checklist: How to Prepare Your Manuscript for Publication and Promote Your Book,’ to prepare his book for publication. Any potential author can also request a FREE copy of this book at http://www.bookstandpublishing.com/pod4/ .”

Armed with a great story and “The Self-Publishing Checklist,” Moshe Kai’s book became a huge success. It is stories such as this that remind authors that today there are options, and that self-publishing is not a pursuit of vanity; rather, it is a way to unfetter authors from traditional publishers, keep their royalties, control the creative process every step of the way, and forge their own success that is in line with their vision, not the vision of the publisher.

About Bookstand Publishing:

Since 1996, Bookstand Publishing – http://www.bookstandpublishing.com – has been providing authors with the tools to publish and market their books at affordable rates. Bookstand Publishing takes a book from manuscript all the way to published book, allowing authors to maintain complete control over the process, and approve their book before anything goes to print so that their final book will appear exactly the way that they want it to. As a Print-on-Demand publisher, Bookstand prints the books as the orders come in to ensure that authors only purchase exactly what they need. They also ensure that books are available through the major book wholesalers, and offer a variety of marketing and publicity services to help promote the final product.

About Moshe Kai Cavalin:

Moshe Kai Cavalin’s story is a remarkable one. At the age of 8, he enrolled in college; at the age of 11, he earned his first of two Associate of Arts degrees from East Los Angeles Community College; now, at the age of 14, as he prepares to graduate from UCLA, he wrote and published his first book, “We Can Do.”

About “We Can Do”:

Moshe Kai Cavalin’s inspirational story asserts that he is not a genius, but rather, that every youngster can, with good planning, a strong heart, hard work, and a resilient mind, can succeed beyond all expectations.

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

“Swimmers do not carry pens unlike other land based athletes, so it is difficult to network with other swimmers,” states Hollander. “As an avid swimmer, I realized there was no single place where I could: meet other swimmers, be educated on swimming topics, watch swimming videos, obtain workout sets, exchange ideas, find relevant information, and also shop for swimming gear and products. I created that network – Lane Mates – the place where Swimming, Networking and Shopping Meet!”

The benefits to Lane Mate members are plentiful. It’s:
* the place where we can promote interest in swimming for exercise, sport, etc.;
* a single source where swimmers of all levels can communicate;
* a shopping site with cool swimming products as well as other lifestyle merchandise;
* full of relevant and timely information from blogs, newsletters and links;
* provides valuable daily coupons;
* presents exclusive coupons and discounts – available only to Lane Mates clients.

With online shopping up over 12 percent in 2011 – this trend clearly reflects that people are slowly starting to view the economy as be more positive, more people are taking advantage of the online retail world. Vendors continue to offer free shipping to meet the needs of the shopping consumers. “We needed a single source to obtain valuable coupons and discounts for athletes,” states Hollander.

Most of all, we are the online resource for people to communicate about their passion – swimming. You can discuss competitive-edge strategies and techniques, dry land exercise, new and innovative products on the market, social events, etc. Lane Mates is here to increase your network of fellow swimmers.

Join today and reap the benefits of being a Lane Mate. Visit: http://www.lanemates.com .

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

Colonel Pryor will head ALFI as its CEO. Also joining the ALFI team will be Major General Robert H. Scales (U.S. Army, Retired) who is serving as the Chair of ALFI’s Board of Directors.

“America’s Soldiers, Marines and Special Operations forces have carried the greatest burden in all of our contemporary wars. Since World War II, land forces have comprised only five percent of the entire Armed Forces, but have suffered more than eighty percent of military fatalities. Yet in spite of this horrific down payment in blood, this nation still fails to provide our ground forces with the support these brave men and women require to enable them to win our wars at the lowest possible cost in human life and human suffering. ALFI is dedicated to the proposition that America’s historic neglect of our land forces must not be allowed to persist,” Pryor said.

“As all who have gone before them, our service members are willing to give their today’s for our children’s tomorrows. We as Americans owe them the best of everything. ALFI is dedicated to advocating on behalf of these service men and women for the best possible training, preparation, equipment, supplies, support, and medical care during their tours of duty, and for the best possible support in their re-integration into civilian life. ALFI’s mission is to be the voice of America’s ground forces and veterans.”

ALFI will be an agent of change at all levels of America’s defense community. ALFI’s goal is to ensure that every member of America’s land forces – starting from their recruitment and continuing through to their transition to civilian life and beyond – will have the best that this country can provide them. ALFI’s programs and activities include a comprehensive advocacy effort that will affect military and national security policy at the highest levels of government; educating military and defense stakeholders as well as the general public; and facilitating the provision of the highest quality services for both land forces and veterans.

For more information visit: http://www.alfinstitute.org .

American Land Forces Institute is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Address: American Land Forces Institute (ALFI), 170 PR 1731, Mico, TX 78056.

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

According to World Mind Network Co-Director Sarah Mendel, many of the students were attendees at events sponsored by HSMBB (The Harvard Society for Mind, Brain, and Behavior). Other participants include Dr. Javier Ogembo of the Harvard Medical School and Irina Higgins of the Oxford Foundation for Theoretical Neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence.

Texting, tweeting, Facebooking, microblogging, online video and cell phone apps are not new to students. What is new is the efficient use of all their capabilities in combination to reach important aims in a few hours which the traditional brick-and-mortar academic world would take months or years to accomplish.

The key is the creation of protocols which serve as formulae for easily setting up Internet based projects which achieve well-defined goals, are infinitely replicable, grow by themselves through social networks, and enable each student to carve out a Web niche which serves as the Internet’s focal point for the student’s chosen issue. In practice, this means that each student is experimenting with making their work more public, and yet more personal, at the same time.

Says WMN advisor Wolfram Ruisdael “The Cloud of knowledge, creativity, innovation, and even wisdom represented by the Internet is now incomprehensibly vast. Its power to solve both traditional and new human problems is almost infinite, but until now Humanity has not really demanded the efficient use of it to refine theories instantly, generate new ideas, build communities, and get innovative thinking from where it originates to where it is needed. Students, because of their familiarity with these technologies, are the natural creators of the new change-making networks.”

Other student participants have come from Duke, Caltech, Rutgers, the Ecole Polytechnique in France, Beijing and Tsinghua Universities in China, the University of Delhi, the Federal University of Parana in Brazil, and the University of Witwatersrand.

Crucial to many of the new protocols are programs like Apple’s Siri artificial intelligence app for the iPhone 4s, Facebook’s Timeline, Google+, Pinterest, and msnNOW.

A typical protocol is this one for Disaster Relief, which the network used during the 20ll Fukushima earthquake and tsunami in Japan, as well as more recent floods in Thailand and the Philippines:

1. Create a landing page on Google sites with RSS feeds of latest news, including links to on-site organizations which need help;
2. Use search engines to find and rank current Twitter trackers for affected area;
3. Do the same for Facebook post monitors;
4. Do the same for SMS (texting) monitors;
5. Collate trackers on a Bing map so that rescuers can be connected with victims in real time;
6. publicize site with online press releases.

Similar protocols exist for cloud-based research projects, cultural preservation programs, Fair Trade social enterprises, crowd-sourced experiments, worldwide philosophical discussions, knowledge matrices, artistic collaborations, and environmental improvement projects. Each can be created in a few hours, and further streamlining is an ongoing process.

Among other programs, students have participated in projects which

- Aid Stanford physicists in predicting sunspot cycles;

- Created the world’s largest collection of pre-1900 archival French audio recordings and preserved them with iTunes and Windows Media files;

- Explore the new PS3 video game ‘Journey’ as an art therapy tool

- Advised legislators in Nepal who are re-framing the national constitution;

- Built the world’s largest online crowd-sourced environmental investigation which discovered several causes for a sudden fish die-off in Taal Lake in the Philippines, and suggested treatments which were successfully implemented.

For more information go to http://Facebook.com/HarvardWorldMindNetwork – or http://networkingprojects.org – or write to worldmindnetwork@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

It is targeted to students, young adults and people of all ages whose lives are in an important stage of transition and encourages readers to choose, openly and proactively – to accept responsibility for every area of their lives through their decision making, actions and societal involvement.

“Our Whole Life Is Our Whole Responsibility” emphasizes to its readers that they need to make a strong commitment to examine and cultivate good character, responsible ethics and high integrity in order to make productive contributions to their lives.

Readers are also challenged to be open to expanding their knowledge base beyond what they “know” by adding to their own life experiences instead of blindly accepting untested and unexamined information that they receive each day.

For instance, in chapter 13, author Michael G. Kamau writes: “I have found that many people struggle to find their place in life because of a damaged sense of entitlement that was taught to them in the home while they were children.”

“This book teaches us that we must undergo a fundamental, paradigm shift in our thinking about our personal, family and human survival – we must be willing to accept full responsibility for every area of our lives and stop the blame,” says Michael G. Kamau, author.

“Our Whole Life is Our Whole Responsibility” demonstrates how people need to be the final authority when it comes to their health, wellness, education, spiritual empowerment, character development and career pioneering.

One reader reports, “This book takes away all excuses to improving our life. It is encouraging, entertaining and practical. I wish someone had taught me this information 20 years ago. I honestly believe that anyone can make their own life better at any age. This book gives lots of examples of that.”

The book is 217 pages and is available as a hard cover or e-book.

For more information, visit: www.LifeEnergyPublishing.com .

About the Author:

Prior to writing “Our Whole Life is Our Whole responsibility,” Kamau labeled himself as a classic underachiever throughout his youth due to many of the topic areas that are addressed in his book.

Kamau has a BA in Journalism and Business Management from Central State University is a former tutor, life coach, mentor, college Instructor of Humanities, public speaker, seminar leader, guest columnist and current business owner in the Cincinnati, Ohio area.

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

Founded in 1853 by Ann Pamela Cunningham, the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association is the oldest national historic preservation organization in the United States. Under Ms. Cunningham’s leadership, the Association sought to raise $200,000 in a national appeal to save Washington’s home. Five years later, the Association purchased Mount Vernon from Washington’s great-grandnephew and began to restore it. In 1860, the Association finally opened the estate to the public, and it has remained open as a monument to President Washington ever since.

Today, approximately one million people visit Mount Vernon each year. The mansion, now restored with many of its original furnishings, is open for tours. Guests are free to roam the gardens and grounds, where a variety of original buildings still stand. At the pioneer farm site, as well as at the working blacksmith shop, distillery, and gristmill, visitors to Mount Vernon can get a better sense of Washington’s life as a farmer by seeing important components of his estate operating much as they were when Washington died in 1799. On a hillside overlooking the Potomac, President Washington is buried with his wife Martha and several other family members.

“We appreciate very much that the Gingrich Foundation has set an example for others to follow,” said James C. Rees, president of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. “Because we don’t receive any government support, we depend upon the generosity of a wide range of patriotic Americans.”

“The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association has preserved one of America’s historical treasures for more than 150 years,” said Callista Gingrich, president of the Gingrich Foundation. “The Association’s work has helped generations of Americans better understand the Father of Our Country.”

The Mount Vernon Ladies Association cares for President Washington’s home and estate without the use of public funds.

The Gingrich Foundation is a domestic non-profit corporation founded by Callista and Newt Gingrich to support charitable purposes.

Support the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association today: http://www.mountvernon.org/shop/donation-mount-vernon .

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

In days gone by, a clan was a community or tribe of families and trusted others living in close proximity, able to be self-sufficient and self-sustaining to the needs of the clan, as best they could. Today, our families and friends can live in the farthest reaches of the world. We are dependent on communications technology, lawyers, doctors, insurance policies and state laws designed to protect us. When medical emergencies happen, doctors, insurance companies, lawyers and family will need immediate information. Not being prepared for a family medical emergency can cause fear, guilt and severe mental anguish when we don’t have the information organized for ourselves or those we will be responsible for. By taking a few simple steps now, you will revive the clan connection in modern terms.

ClanGistics.com co-founders Terrie and Jon Hull created the product through their personal experiences with family medical emergencies.

Jon Hull explains: “With the ClanGistics Planning System(TM), users can have immediate access to a family member’s information to alert medical workers of important things like allergies, medications and doses, as well as insurance, legal and financial information. We have also included a family contact portion so users can call family members and business contacts to alert them and create a plan of action. For users who have aging parents living elsewhere in the country or abroad, this is an invaluable tool. Access to a parents’ emergency information in case of sickness or injury could be one of the most important things you have.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau 2011, 1 in 13 adults, age 44-64 and 1 in 10 adults, age 65 and over, were treated in a hospital for an injury. Also, 64 percent of people unable to care for themselves live with a family member.

Jon Hull added, “Specifically, we want everyone to organize the vital personal information they need to have at their fingertips, and to offer additional resources for those who find themselves as a family member caregiver. Our motivation to this cause comes from our experience of being swept into the responsibility of becoming the caretakers for an elderly family member after a horrible car accident and the subsequent events which changed our lives forever.”

Each individual system can be edited anytime, printed for home files, and any future system upgrades will be added for free. There are no monthly fees and users will receive a free monthly e-newsletter and free annual e-reminder to make any updates needed. Multiple systems can be purchased at special value rates.

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

In 1982, both the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were in need of significant restoration when President Ronald Reagan asked Lee Iacocca, Chairman of the Chrysler Corporation, to lead a fundraising effort dedicated to their preservation.

For three decades, the Foundation has worked together with the National Park Service to restore the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Renovations to the Statue of Liberty have included rebuilding its interior structural support as well as the installation of a Statue of Liberty Museum in the statue’s base. At Ellis Island, the Foundation created the Ellis Island Immigration Museum as well as theaters, libraries, exhibits, and an oral history recording studio. The museum has helped educate more than 40 million visitors since it opened in 1990, and its American Family Immigration History Center allows online visitors to search archives of passenger records and ships’ manifests.

“You can’t know who you are unless you know where you came from,” said Stephen A. Briganti, Foundation President. “At ellisisland.org, we help you begin your journey of discovery into your past.”

“The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island are at the heart of what it means to be an American,” said Callista Gingrich, President of the Gingrich Foundation. “The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation has been working for 30 years to save important pieces of our history for future generations.”

To date, the Foundation has raised over $600 million. Its support continues to come from the private sector and from the generosity of individual Americans.

The Gingrich Foundation is a domestic non-profit corporation founded by Callista and Newt Gingrich to support charitable purposes.

Support the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation today: https://www.ellisisland.org/membership/donation.asp .

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.

On January 16, twelve travelers are going to Vietnam and Cambodia for an Eco Volunteer trip. Days will be spent both seeing the sites, and donating supplies, teaching English, and staying and eating at facilities that are helping the many people in need. The final two days culminate in a village stay where guests put the finishing touches on a bridge that the group sponsored. This footbridge will allow children to get the education and nourishment from a local nonprofit school that has been inaccessible during monsoon season.

In addition to this project, Destination Earth will be providing a variety of local and international adventure tours into 2012 and beyond. This includes adventures into South America, and shorter Northern California adventure tours as well.

Company president Jud Yaski says, “It’s about time that there is an opportunity for individuals to both take an exciting trip and help the planet at the same time.”

As well as group tours, Destination Earth will be offering these adventures as both Team Building exercises for companies, and as corporate incentive travel, allowing companies to both provide a benefit to their staff and contribute to their social responsibility goals.

The company’s model is to offer intimate adventures with no more than 15 people per trip, allowing the groups to maneuver easily through the varied locals that their trips take them. All trips are designed to not only highlight the “must sees” of an area, but also take guests off the beaten path, to unique environments they would never encounter on their own.

About Destination Earth, Inc.:

The company is the brainchild of Veteran Event producer and world traveler, Jud Yaski. He has partnered with successful adventure travel founder Steve Juba, combining their combined quarter of a century in hospitality to create the ultimate travel experience: Destination Earth.

For more information on the next adventure, or to design a custom adventure with meaning, visit www.destination-earth.org or call 650-533-5487.

Copyright © 2012 Neotrope® News Network – all rights reserved.