Sweet Jun 7
In mid-May, 30 Sweet volunteeristas converged on At the Crossroads to prep supplies for San Francisco’s homeless youth. Some of us made greeting cards, candy packs and safe injection kits. Others folded and organized clothing or washed messenger bags.
At the Crossroads is the brainchild of Rob Gitin, who wants to inspire homeless youth to dream big dreams and support them while they reach for them. A big part of that is building trust. At the Crossroads isn’t about telling people what do. It’s about helping them overcome obstacles and achieve their goals. It’s really an incredible program with a huge success rate. Watch a short documentary about their work. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Live Sweet Voluntour 2010, Shannon Wentworth
Shannon Wentworth Mar 28
Like Chicken Little, since the late-80s I’ve been running around telling people, “The sky is falling.” When I saw “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006, it was a profound visualization of that very thing. Watching polar bears drown, I felt powerless. The problem was so big. What could one little chicken do? It was overwhelming.
I hate feeling powerless. It pisses me off. If we’re going to solve these huge global problems, we need to feel empowered, inspired and energized. That’s how Sweet co-founder Jen Rainin and I struck upon the idea for Sweet. We asked ourselves: How can we make solving these problems fun? How can we get more people involved? Voila! Let’s travel the world and do simple community service projects where we can see a difference in a few hours. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Live Sweet Voluntour 2010, Shannon Wentworth, volunteer
Sweet Mar 28
Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little. — Edmund Burke
Live Sweet is about putting our passions and good ideas into action in our communities. It’s about bringing the Sweet community together between trips to celebrate our lives. On our November 2009 Caribbean cruise, we changed hearts and minds in Belize, Mexico and Honduras by being ourselves and letting people know us as individuals while in the safety of community. Live Sweet is about doing that in our own backyards, where it seems like every other day there’s a new referendum on our human rights. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: live sweet, mission
Sweet Jan 31
Starting with our wetlands restoration project in New Orleans, Sweeties gave back in every port.
New Orleans: Sweeties planted 600 new grasses in a marsh devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
Costa Maya, Mexico: 150 Sweeties pulled over 200 giant bags of garbage from Uvero Beach in a 45-minute contest. We pulled a sink, a television, vacuum cleaner parts and tons of other oddities one should never see in the ocean. We found trash from Greece, China and many parts in between. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Jen Rainin, Shannon Wentworth, Sweet Caribbean Cruise, video, voluntourism
Sweet Jan 31
On Tuesday, a 7.1 earthquake left Haiti devastated, particularly the capital of Port-au-Prince. The quake left collapsed buildings, the dead stacked on city streets, thousands of homeless and people digging through the rubble with their barehands in search of loved ones. While there is no official death toll, it’s expected to be in the hundreds of thousands.
Our friends at Rainbow World Fund have been supporting ongoing projects in Haiti since 2004 by improving nutrition and working to make drinking water safe. Read the rest of this entry »
Sweet Jan 31
Another fab TV news segment about Sweet’s work at the children’s hospital ward in Belize City, Belize, during our Sweet Caribbean Cruise, the largest CarbonFree™ cruise ever. Whoo hoo! We got them to say “lesbian” on Belize TV.
Tags: Jen Rainin, Shannon Wentworth, Sweet Caribbean Cruise, video, voluntourism
Sweet Jan 31
In Belize, Sweet guests brightened a children’s hospital ward in partnership with the local organization Lifeline and donated a 1,000 books and school supplies to a new storytime corner at a local school. In a country where homosexuality is illegal, Sweet advanced the conversation and made a lot of new friends along the way. Mmm, mmm. Let’s hear it for our articulate Sweeties. Y’all rock!
Tags: Jen Rainin, Shannon Wentworth, Sweet Caribbean Cruise, sweet ripples, video, voluntourism
