Julie Norris from The Dandelion Communitea Cafe (dandelioncommunitea.com) does a weekly show called Front Porch Radio on WPRK 91.5 FM every Wednesday at noon. She invited Simple Living Institute to be her guest on the show this week!
I jumped at this opportunity to crow about several EXCITING projects our dynamite nonprofit has in the works right now! And boy it was fun!
Of course Julie knows us so her questions pointed exactly to the information I wanted to share with her audience. I began with our Organic Grower's meetings. I bragged, "When we first started, we had only 10 or so people attending our meetings. But now it has grown to 60 or 70 people attending every month!" I went on to talk about how people are very happy to find help with building and maintaining a garden here in Central Florida, especially if they learned gardening somewhere else that does not share our climate and sandy soil, not to mention the fire ants! During the radio show, a call came in asking about...... you guessed it! WORMS. I was very happy, because people always ask about worms. Worm composting is gaining notoriety with no small thanks to our friends at Our Vital Earth (ourvitalearth.com). I emphasized that not only does our Organic Grower's meeting always have a relevant speaker or a program, but that everyone who attends is a Florida gardener too. The tips and stories about gardening abound at our meetings!
Next I explained a bit about our Central Florida Sustainable Food Project. This is a regional inventory and mapping guide over 6 Central Florida counties encompassing all the community gardens, farms that sell to the public, farmer's markets and businesses that deal in LOCAL food. Once completed it will be up on our website and out in print, free to the public. We intend for it to be interactive, growing and expanding just like the industries it will support! This Local Food project energizes our efforts to strengthen the connections between local food producers and purchasers!
Jack Johnson is coming to town!! His nonprofit, All At Once (allatonce.org) has agreed to match the donations we, Simple Living Institute can collect between now and when his World Tour stops here at the Amway Arena Aug. 24th! Our BIG fund raiser will be held Thursday night Aug. 12th at the Cameo on Colonial Drive featuring a video contest, song contest, silent auction and raffle!
This sensational video contest will reward the winner with 2 tickets to the Jack Johnson concert! Contestants are to submit a 3 minute video that shares your vision of sustainability while highlighting the work we do at Simple living institute. Submission deadline is August 1st. We'll have an open mike style Jack Johnson cover song contest, with that winner also receiving 2 Jack Johnson concert tickets! The silent auction and raffle will make sure there is something for everybody. We are expecting 300 people! Every Simple Living Institute event is kid friendly. This fund raiser will serve as a membership drive as well.
Do you know of a business who'd like to donate something to our silent auction or raffle? Please ask! Have a videographer in the family? Bring us that video! Love Jack Johnson? Come over and strum and sing for us! That's Thursday night August 12th at the Cameo!
I am very grateful for this time to sing out (I didn't really sing!) about all of the impressive events and activities we are involved with at Simple Living Institute. Thank you Julie and Jeremy at Front Porch Radio! A podcast of this broadcast will be available soon on the Dandelion Commuinitea Cafe's website.
Everything we do is done by VOLUNTEERS! We have many opportunities for you to help us in very useful ways. Reach to us to find out how you can enrich your life by participating with us.
Shayla Dougher, Volunteer Coordinator, Simple living Institute
shaylaspeaks@gmail.com
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