Here is a last-minute plug for a great event both Laurie and I have supported for years — both as a committee member for 6 years and as attendees.

Taste of the Nation’s 20th year celebration tomorrow night is a fabulous annual fundraiser with the mission of Ending Childhood Hunger.

The Taste of the Nation events promote awareness of Share Our Strength’s efforts to end childhood hunger and raise funds to help ensure that all children have access to the nutritious food they need to learn, grow and thrive. The funds raised through Taste of the Nation support effective community-based programs that feed hungry children and partner with advocates pursuing long-term solutions to the challenge of hunger, both locally and nationally.

The area charities that will benefit from this year’s event are FareStart, Food Lifeline, Solid Ground, The Pike Place Market Foundation and Children’s Alliance. Since 1987, Taste of the Nation events have raised more than $61 million nationwide, including more than $2.5 million from efforts in Seattle alone.
12.6 million children face hunger in the U.S. every day.
In Washington State last year, 1.2 million people went to food banks for help, 40% of them children. Their families are categorized as “working poor,” the result of low wage jobs and our state’s high housing, food and other costs of living. A family of four, deemed food-insecure, has $12 per day for groceries total or roughly $1 per person for each meal.

“An end to childhood hunger in our country is within reach” said Bill Shore, Founder and Executive Director of Share Our Strength. “With all the participants in Taste of the Nation Seattle sharing their strengths we are creating more resources for the greater good of Seattle and our great nation.”

Share Our Strength believes the way to end childhood hunger is to surround every child with nutritious food in the places they live, learn, play and pray. To do so, we work with local organizations to help families help themselves through three important areas: increasing access to the public and private programs that can provide food to those who need it, strengthening the community infrastructure for getting healthy food to children and improving nutrition education.

Tickets start at $75 and can be purchased by calling 1-877-26TASTE or visiting www.strength.org.

We so thoroughly enjoyed this week’s email from The Spacialist (aka Erica Ecker) that we want to feature it here for our readers. Erica’s pearls of wisdom are always delivered with succinct sass ~ we are proud to have her as one of our partner businesses!

Enjoy!

Clutter is not money. Clutter is clutter.
Say you’re going through your closets and every time you go to eliminate something you stop because you’ve just computed that this scarf, this radio, this toaster-oven cost you money and hey, now you deduce you’re throwing out money. Sound familiar? Equating clutter for money limits your ability to get rid of old clutter that is no longer serving you.

Clutter has the potential to be money only when:
· You still have the receipt.
· The “return by date” has not expired.
· You sell it on-line.

I say “potential” because this involves actually doing something about it, not just thinking about doing it and not procrastinating another seven months.

You have already spent the money and no matter how long you hang on to this item, no matter how deep you tuck it into the closet, it’s not going to miraculously turn itself back into money.

The only miracle that’s happening here is you doing yourself a favor and moving it out. Donate it someone else could start using it today!

http://www.thespacialist.com/

This morning NPR’s Wendy Kaufman ran a story on Biznik, a worldwide networking group for independent business owners based here in Seattle. Biznik has been a strong part of Assisted Transitions’ growth in the Northwest since we first joined as members early in 2006 - from business how-to classes, connecting with skilled and ethical service providers (carpet cleaners, electricians, stagers, realtors, etc.), to technical support with the behind-the-scenes needs of our business.

Today we had the pleasure of being part on the NPR story. When Wendy was researching her story, Annie was interviewed as an early Biznik member.
Listen now ~ http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89457921