When:
Saturday, May 30th
12:00 to 3:00
Where:
The Grove West
Shrewsbury, NJ
exit 109 off the
Donate and Enter to win
a *new* Beach Cruiser~~~~~
What a great idea! Pedals for Progress is putting unused bikes to good use in the developing world. For many families in developing countries, a bicycle is as important to their well-being as your car is to you. Too often, though, these families don’t have a bike and must walk everywhere. A bike from P4P changes this almost overnight. Instead of walking at three or four miles per hour, someone can pedal a bike at 10 to 15 miles per hour. Destinations that were once hours away are easily within reach. These could be new opportunities for employment, schools, health facilities, markets—just think about all the places you need to get to in the course of a week. With no public transportation and no car, what would you do? Bikes have been sent to Nicaragua, Ghana, Moldova, Sierra Leone and Guatemala to help people take part in their local economy. Over 118, 000 bikes have been donated since 1991.Please donate only 2 wheelers, without rust and no tricycles. Flat tires and in need of some repair are accepted. Pedals for Progress also collects sewing machines, which have been distributed in El Salvador, Uganda and Jamaica, as well. Only sewing machines in working condition are accepted.Pedals for Progress is a nonprofit organization based in High Bridge, N.J., that has collected bikes to send overseas for the past 18 years. David Schweidenback, president of Pedals for Progress, referred to the recycling chain of the bikes as a "transfer of wealth between nations." Learn about the NJ Based non-profit charity, Pedals for Progress, the world's largest recycler of used bicycles. Bikes and donations are tax deductible. It takes $28 to ship one bike overseas, so please include a $10 donation to defray shipping costs.Summer Collection Schedule for bike drives around the state.Review their current partner locationsOrganize a Pedals for Progress Bike Drive in your community.
For many of us, Scholastic's book clubs played an important role in our childhood by providing the opportunity to purchase low-cost, high-quality literature in schools. We remember the excitement of thumbing through the monthly flyers to make our selections and the thrill when our orders arrived.But something has changed. Scholastic's book clubs have become a Trojan horse for marketing toys, trinkets, and electronic media-many of which promote popular brands. A review by Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) of Scholastic's elementary and middle school book clubs found that one-third of the items for sale are either not books or are books packaged with other items such as jewelry and toys.CCFC reviewed every item in Scholastic's 2008 monthly Lucky (for grades 2-3) and Arrow (grades 4-6) book club flyers. Of the items advertised, 14% were not books, including the M&M's Kart Racing Wii videogame; a remote control car; the American Idol event planner; ("Track this season of American Idol"); the Princess Room Alarm ("A princess needs her privacy!"); a wireless controller for the PS2 gaming system; a make-your-own flip flops kit ("hang out at the pool in style"); and the Monopoly® SpongeBob SquarePants™ Edition computer game. An additional 19% of the items were books that were marketed with additional toys, gadgets, or jewelry. For example, the book Get Rich Quick is sold with a dollar-shaped money clip ("to hold all your new cash!"); the Friends 4 Ever Style Pack consists of a book and two lip gloss rings; and Hannah Montana: Seeing Green comes with a guitar pick bracelet.
The opportunity to sell directly to children in schools is not a right. It's a privilege - and an extremely profitable one at that. Last year, Scholastic's book clubs generated $336.7 million in revenue.It's bad enough that so many of the books sold by Scholastic are de-facto promotions for media properties like High School Musical and SpongeBob. But there's no justification for marketing an M&M videogame or lip gloss in elementary schools. Teachers should not be enlisted as sales agents for products that have little or no educational value and compete with books for children's attention and families' limited resources. If Scholastic wants to maintain their unique commercial access to young students, they need to do better.In the past Scholastic listened to the concerns of parents. When 5,000 wrote to them demanding that they stop promoting the highly sexualized Bratz brand in schools, they discontinued their Bratz line. It's time to consider the danger of Scholastic's marketing and promotion practices in schools and voice your concerns. Visit the CCFC website to let Scholastic know it's time to return to selling books - and only books - through their in-school book clubs.
When:
