Justin's Nut Butter Helps Feed the Hungry

This December, not only can you enjoy the Maple Almond, Honey Peanut and Chocolate Hazelnut flavors of Justin’s delicious nut butter, you can also play your part in our efforts to alleviate hunger. Justin’s will be donating $1 from every jar of nut butter sold at Whole Foods Markets nationwide to Conscious Alliance throughout the month.

The easy squeeze packets of Justin’s organic nut butter can be seen throughout the nation in school lunches, hiker’s pockets and desk drawers as a healthy snack for all ages. Justin’s has been one of the main sponsors of Conscious Alliance for the last several years now and has donated thousands of pounds of nut butter, funds, and employee time to help Pine Ridge Reservation

Earlier this year, employees of Justin’s accompanied the Conscious Alliance Team to Pine Ridge Reservation. Conscious Alliance member Jenny said, “It really meant a lot to have the Justin’s crew accompany us to the reservation and have a chance to meet some of the people in the community. They have been one of the biggest supporters of our efforts, and now they are able put faces on some of the people that are in need on Pine Ridge who benefit from their donations.” Conscious Alliance and Justin’s spent their time on Pine Ridge working together to help distribute food and other needed resources. “Our recent visit to Pine Ridge has permanently changed my life,” said founder and CEO of Justin’s Nut Butter, Justin Gold.

Whole Foods Market has also played a key role in expanding both Conscious Alliance and Justin’s. In addition to Justin’s donations, Whole Foods has donated more than 500,000 pounds of food to Conscious Alliance and has provided nearly 8,000 full holiday meals to Native American reservations across the United States.

"We are thrilled to work with both Justin's and Conscious Alliance to spread awareness to our shoppers and to our Team Members," said Errol Schweizer, Senior Global Grocery Coordinator for Whole Foods Market.

By purchasing a jar of Justin’s Nut Butter this December, you are contributing to the Conscious Alliance mission of distributing food and resources to the communities most in need.

Our Holiday Meal Drive

This past week, in the spirit of the holidays, Conscious Alliance took a trip up to South Dakota and Montana to deliver several thousand meals. Three Conscious Alliance members—Jenny, Justin, and Jesse—drove a 24-foot truck filled with food to the Pine Ridge and Lame Deer Reservations. The truck was filled with canned vegetables, soups, pasta and pasta sauce, canned fruit, beans, tuna, oatmeal, and a 13-pound turkey for each family.

On Pine Ridge Reservation, Conscious Alliance established an emergency food storage facility in 2005. This food storage provides residents with much needed healthy food throughout the year. During most visits, the food is delivered directly to this emergency food facility. However, while delivering food to Lame Deer Reservation, which is a much smaller community than Pine Ridge, our Conscious Alliance Team actually went around to many community members' homes to distribute food, being able to directly interact with more residents. While presenting the food to families Jenny was “sometimes surprised by how many individuals comprise a household on the reservation. Many homes consist of multiple generations or several families. The average family home with 2 or 3 bedrooms often has 9 or more people living in it.”

During this trip up north, Justin celebrated his birthday by accepting an invitation to participate in a sweat lodge ceremony with the Conscious Alliance team. “It was an incredible honor to take part in the sweat and joined by such amazing people. The ceremony helped strengthen my relationship with all involved. Our partners on Lame Deer and those who work with Conscious Alliance are truly my extended family. The night ended with a huge chocolate chip cookie cake! What an incredible way to start a new chapter in life.”

My involvement with Conscious Alliance

My involvement with Conscious Alliance also began with a service learning writing class at the University of Colorado. The class focused on hunger in America in addition to community involvement. During this class, I got the opportunity to work with Justin Levy, the Conscious Alliance Service-Learning Director, to raise money for Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in addition to learning about the mission of Conscious Alliance.

Throughout the semester I, along with two other students, learned a great deal about this incredible nonprofit and their efforts. The initial information that I was given about Pine Ridge had me in awe. I was completely shocked by the statistics and the state of Pine Ridge. Particularly, I was astonished to learn about the incredibly high suicide rate and about the large number of people whom live below the national poverty levels. I felt completely ignorant to what is going on right here in the United States.

The three of us examined one problem in particular at Pine Ridge. Throughout the school year, each child is provided two government-subsidized meals per day. With summer approaching, families would have to provide an extra ten meals a week per child. Due to their lack of resources, many families struggle to make ends meet, which leads to children going unfed. In order to help fight this particular issue, we decided to create a letter to send to our families and friends to inform them of the problem. We explained the conditions on Pine Ridge and that there is more strain on the food supply during the summer months when children are out of school and asked them for monetary donations in order to help. From our letters alone we earned over $500.

As I continue to work with Conscious Alliance and learn about their inspiring mission, I become more and more impressed. There are many people, Justin in particular, who give so much time and energy. I find it incredible how Conscious Alliance allows people of all ages to know they can make a difference in the world.

Conscious Alliance Runs Through Our Veins

I've seen Conscious Alliance with my very own two eyes at work here in Athens, GA. The volunteering, motivation, teamwork, art, and family ties created everyday are inspiring. My name is Erin Anglin, I'm originally from El Paso, TX but now I reside in Athens, GA. where the story started. After one year of college I took a year off for self-exploration and landed in Athens, got back into school and went searching for roommates. I knew a couple people, and their ties of friends but they all had leases, so naturally I turned to craigslist.com. I found a lot of unsettling households if you will, but then I came across one add to good to be true; and it was. Cameron (Conscious Alliance, UGA: Athens, GA.) took me in with open arms and didn't question me once regardless of whether I was a stranger or not. Cameron and I fit into a mold that is basically one of the most beneficial symbiotic relationships I have ever seen and soon before long we were inseparable, and her boyfriend (Keegan, Conscious Alliance Creator in UGA of Athens, GA) is one of the most honorable people I have ever met. Everyday Conscious Alliance is spoken of in our household because it simply runs through their veins, they ultimately are saving the world one day at a time through art, volunteering, and creating opportunities. I've met and come to love so many wonderful people like Adrienne (Conscious Alliance, Charleston, SC.) through Conscious Alliance that I continue to meet. Keegan and Cameron both work hard, long days dedicated to Conscious Alliance and I would love to lend a hand. I attend school at Gainesville State College in Watkinsville, GA. just a hop, skip, and a jump down the road from UGA. Here at Gainesville are many eligible and noble people that could spread the Conscious Alliance network. Like me, I know various people that are creative beyond imagination that could contribute to the beautiful creation of Conscious Alliance. Cheers to Conscious Alliance and to the art that feeds.

Written by Erin Anglin
Gainesville State College

Conscious Allinace and service learning in university classrooms

I began working with Conscious Alliance last semester through a service learning writing class at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The class was called Hunger in America and Abroad and I learned about how hunger affects not only people abroad but right in our backyard as well. The media doesn’t talk about hunger issues facing Americans, let alone Native Americans People here are experiencing hunger that mirrors the conditions of the third world in a first world nation. I was shocked to learn about all of the hunger issues going on in the world and the statistics that relate to it. Through this service learning class we not only learned about all of these issues, but also explored them first hand by working with community partners. I was put into a group who worked with Conscious Alliance. Throughout the semester we learned about what Conscious Alliance does and how important their work is. My group made a video about hunger facts that affect individuals and families in the U.S., Colorado, and on Native American reservations. This project really opened my eyes to the numbers involved with hunger issues I was learning about in class. As the semester progressed I became more drawn to the work that Conscious Alliance does.

The way Conscious Alliance uses art and music to spread awareness of their cause is amazing and it is something that I didn’t want to stop being a part of. At the end of the semester, my class put on a symposium titled “The Skinny on Hunger”. We presented information on hunger issues abroad and in the U.S., in rural and urban settings, and in elderly and youth populations. At the end of our presentation Floyd and Natalie Hand from the Pine Ridge Indian reservation spoke. This was a truly empowering experience. Until that point I had heard about the people on the reservation, learned statistics, and gotten a glimpse at what Conscious Alliance does to help people living on the reservations, but actually meeting Floyd and Natalie was unforgettable. I knew at the end of their presentation that this organization was something I definitely wanted to continue to be a part of. I am now interning with Conscious Alliance and am so honored to be able to continue working with them. I am really enjoying being more involved with their organization and look forward to the opportunity to get to meet more people from the reservation and hear their stories. Everyone on the reservation has a story to tell, and Conscious Alliance is working to get those stories heard. I think Conscious Alliance is going to continue growing and make a difference in more and more people’s lives. I am excited about new projects we are working on and hope that everyone else is too!

Written By Kelly Pauken

Looking out for one another

I worked with a national park ranger for a time in Oregon. I watched her play this game with children called the web of life. The children would form a circle around the park ranger; she represented the sun and would be holding the end piece of string to the ball of yarn. She would pass the ball to a kid and each child would hold on to a piece of the string and pass the ball on to another and so forth until a web was formed in the circle. Each child represented an organism in our ecosystem, a plant or animal or person. In the final part of the game, the strings get cut one by one to show that when something in our ecosystem is damaged it affects the health and vitality of other organisms.

Think about the different cultures of people connected in that web of string. What happens when these connections are severed? We only have to look at the history of the human race to answer this question, look at our wars and catastrophes, hunger and poverty issues, and genocide. Ultimately, we are all connected: we all hold a piece of that string. There is someone else on the other side of the string you hold, it’s necessary to treat your piece with love and compassion. Let’s create a strong, lasting, and healthy web of the human race. Let’s look out for one another; people are helping others all the time without regard to being young or old, rich or poor. I was reading a blog from Autumn Twobulls whose blog is called “Bringing Awareness for Pine Ridge Reservation“. In one of her postings (http://lakotawinyan.blogspot.com/), Autumn talks about the importance of giving back as she passes this belief and lifestyle down to her children through example. Her and her kids cut wood by hand for heating homes of others and they deliver care packages to families who live out in the country. Two things that resonated in this story is that Autumn and her family do not have much money themselves but still find ways to contribute. The other is something Autumn’s son said about the work he is doing “it makes me feel like a real warrior to help those in need.”

I encourage people to become warriors, get inspired and find ways to help others; hold up your part of the web. Giving is a lifestyle, do it often as it will not go unnoticed. These are the thoughts that are on my mind as I begin to work with Conscious Alliance for the next several months.

There is a Lakota Sioux prayer called Mitakuye Oyasin which translates to “all my relations“. The last couple lines say: You are all my relations, my relatives, without whom I would not live. We are in the circle of life together, co-existing, co-dependent, co-creating our destiny. One, not more important than the other. One nation evolving from the other and yet each dependent upon the one above and the one below. All of us a part of the Great Mystery.

For the most part I think all races of people believe we are co-dependent, sometimes we forget this from time to time (including myself) and we just need a little guidance to set us on our way again.

By Tracy Kosinski

Outbreak Spiritual Run Celebrates History of Northern Cheyenne

Conscious Alliance would like to honor and highlight some of the work groups outside of our organization are doing on the various reservations with which we work. This week we are looking at Yellow Bird, Inc., a native run non-profit that provides programming designed to preserve traditional lifestyles and languages, support social change that empowers native communities, protect mother earth, promote healthy lifestyles, and create cultural understanding and integrity. Each year, Yellow Bird, Inc. sponsors the Fort Robinson Outbreak Spiritual Run, an activity that allows Northern Cheyenne to reconnect with their history. Read about the Outbreak Spiritual Run here: http://bit.ly/4AkDZ6 .

Yellow Bird, Inc. works to provide a variety of programming that empowers youth through native cultural programming. They promote healthy lifestyles that focus on healing the mind, body, and spirit. The cultural programming provided by Yellow Bird, Inc includes 3 step empowerment programs, traditional culture camps and sacred sites visits, native horsemanship classes, and memorial runs that celebrate the Northern Cheyenne’s history. To learn more about Yellow Bird, Inc. visit them at www.yellowbirdinc.com

Conscious Alliance Helps in Haiti

The terrible tragedy in Haiti has left the people living there homeless and hungry. Conscious Alliance is partnering with Christian Rapid Response (CRR) and American Rainbow Rapid Response (ARRR) to provide relief to the people in Haiti. Our partners have experience with effective disaster relief and will be able to deploy over 90% of your donation directly on the ground in the disaster areas. CDR is planning on delivering goods by boat, bypassing Port-Au-Prince and delivering services to outlying areas where refugee populations are gathering and relief services can be more effectively provided.

We are collecting soap, tooth brushes and tooth paste, disinfectant of any kind, basic food items such as rice, beans, coffee, salt, sugar, and supplemental items such as batteries, flashlights, tents and warm weather clothing.

If you have anything you can donate please contact Justin Levy at levy@consciousalliance.org. Cash donations are also desperately needed. To make a donation please visit http://www.consciousalliance.org/. Your donations are invaluable to the people we serve.

State of Emergency on Pine Ridge

With much of the United States’ focus on Haiti, we forget that there are people in our own country who are also in need of assistance. Over the past two months, two states of emergency have been declared on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe. In December, a state of emergency was declared by the tribe after three teen suicides in the last three weeks of November were added to 96 attempted or completed suicides between October 1, 2008 and August 1, 2009.

In January, another state of emergency was declared after a winter blizzard left a large portion of the reservation completely inaccessible. Exacerbated by extreme weather conditions, many of those living on Pine Ridge do not have the income or means to fill their propane tanks or purchase groceries. There are two sources of heat on Pine Ridge: wood stoves and propane. Propane tanks are now depleted, and there is only one provider of propane on the Reservation. The minimum order requirement per delivery is $125.00 per tank. Delivery can only be made to remote villages when enough homes can meet this minimum. When minimums are not met, deliveries are not made and people are left to freeze inside their homes.

Conscious Alliance has set a goal of $30,000 to be split between their efforts in Haiti and the ongoing struggle experienced by those living on Pine Ridge. Please go to https://www.consciousalliance.org/donate.php to find out how you can assist us in our efforts.