By Rolland Smith, on February 23rd, 2012
Bravo to CNN and its Heroes project. I have often wondered what happens to the hotel or motel bar of soap I leave behind after a nights stay.
I read this story on the CNN website and I think it’s important to share with you. Perhaps if we call encourage our favorite hotel chains to participate we can help save more lives.
(CNN) – What happens to the bar of soap you barely used the last time you checked into a hotel room? Most certainly it’s gone to waste at the end of each day.
This was a shocking revelation for Ugandan humanitarian and social entrepreneur Derreck Kayongo during his first stay in a U.S. hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 1990s.
“When i checked into the hotel, there were 3 bars of soap – there was body soap, hand soap and face soap and that did not include the shampoos – and so for me that was a new experience, I was thinking to my self, “why do they have soap for every part of their bodies?” Kayongo recalls. “Now, my goodness, why would you throw away such a resource?”
The striking realization stayed with Kayongo, a Ugandan native who spent much of his childhood as a refugee in Kenya, and prompted him years later to create the Global Soap Project. The non-profit organization reprocesses used soaps from hotels around the United States and turns them into new bars for impoverished nations such as Uganda, Kenya, Haiti and Swaziland.
Kayongo says an estimated 2.6 million bars of soap are discarded every day from hotels in the United States — collecting such an enormous amount of soap, he notes, can help poor countries fight disease and combat child mortality by improving access to basic sanitation.
“We have more than two million kids that die every year to lower respiratory diseases like diarrhea,” says Kayongo. “If you are able to put a bar of soap in every child’s hand, you are able to reduce infectious diseases like diarrhea and things like typhoid and cholera by 40%.
“So the intervention became immediate for me and that’s when I thought we have a solution for kids in Africa, Latin America, Asia that die every year.”
Based in Atlanta, Kayongo started the Global Soap Project in 2009 by going door to door, pitching his lifesaving idea to local hotels. So far, some 300 hotels across the United States have joined Kayongo’s cause, enabling him and his team to reprocess thousands of soap bars and ship them to 18 developing countries.
The recycled soap is only released for shipment once a sample is tested for pathogens and deemed safe by a third-party laboratory. The Global Soap Project then works with partner organizations to ship and distribute the soap directly to people who need it for free.
By Rolland Smith, on February 22nd, 2012
“Saying that the Girl Scouts is a “radicalized organization” that promotes “homosexual lifestyles” and is aligned with honorary president Michelle Obama’s “pro-abortion” viewpoint, an Indiana state legislator has told his fellow Republicans he can’t support a proclamation honoring the organization’s 100th anniversary.
And now, Fort Wayne Rep. Bob Morris‘ position and the letter he sent other legislators has gone “viral,” the local Journal Gazette reports.
The proclamation, as the newspapers says, “applauded the group ‘for the strong positive influence it has had on the American woman.’ ”
But Morris, saying he “did a small amount of web-based research,” claims to have found that the Girl Scouts has “a close strategic affiliation with Planned Parenthood.” He makes that assertion even as he concedes “you will not find evidence of this on the [Girl Scouts'] website — in fact, the websites of these two organizations explicitly deny funding Planned Parenthood.”
All in all, according to Morris, the Girl Scouts is an organization that’s “been subverted in the name of liberal progressive politics and the destruction of traditional American family values.”"
The preceding story is from the NPR website.
I am astonished in this day and age that an allegedly intelligent man could think this way.
I am fearful that this kind of thinking permeates the conservative movement in America and degrades the positive aspects of conservative thinking into a one-track, one-issue homophobic, anti abortion viewpoint.
What has happened to us? Did not conservatives learn from the 1964 election debacle that extremism is the hemlock of the conservative movement?
By Rolland Smith, on February 21st, 2012
I’ve been trying to figure out why the British Television series Downton Abby is such a hit.
I have it now, but first this background.
I am not a big television watcher and have not been for several years; the whys are not important at least not for this post.
On several recent visits with my grand children they and my sons have talked about how wonderful this series is and that they watch it every week. They all enthusiastically recommend it and they say one must watch it sequentially from the beginning.
On their enthusiasm and recommendation I have done so now for the first season episodes. It’s wonderful.
What this series has over any American produced series besides good writing and great acting is a constant generational component. Viewers get tired of just pretty women and handsome guys with a predictable goofy plot or gratuitous violence.
Viewers like substance, real content that relates to the universal emotions and empathy in all of us, rich, poor, white, black, old or young and in the case of Downton Abby, aristocrat and commoner.
The series has characters from every generation and that makes it real. I can’t wait now to watch the second season.
By Rolland Smith, on February 20th, 2012
It seems that Rick Santorum is now the arbiter of what people believe. Mr. Santorum suggested that President Obama’s agenda is a phony theology, not based on the bible.
When asked about his statement at a news conference later, Santorum said, if the President says he’s a Christian, he’s a Christian, but he did not back down from the assertion that Obama’s values run against those of Christianity.
This kind of campaign innuendo is absurd. It is destructive, demeaning and inimical to the core truths of our founding declarations.
Leadership is the ability to enthuse, to create, and to accomplish goals for the greater good. Leadership is not pushing one’s individual beliefs and judging another’s spirituality as a political tenant.
Some people strive to be leaders, some are promoted to it, some are elected to it and some have it thrust upon them. True leadership is still based on character and character is the outward quality of one’s inner being.
Character is a visible piece of the heart that others see and feel when we speak. Character does not divide, it unites.
It is fine that Mr. Santorum chooses a public and political arena to show his devout Catholicism; that’s one of our sacred freedoms. To suggest if you do not believe the way he does you are not a Christian is wrong.
I fear Mr. Santorum wants something so badly he will say anything to get it.
By Rolland Smith, on February 17th, 2012
I used to drive to a lot of places in the New York City area, but lately I chose to go by rail. It is an expansive experience.
One time at the train station I stood with a group of commuters looking at a big-lighted board giving train destinations and track numbers.
Not quite knowing what to do since this was my first time going to this destination, I asked a stranger standing next to me where do I get a ticket. He offered a couple of options and volunteered to take me to the ticket vending machine and helped input all the data needed.
Bravo stranger, even though I know not your name, your service to me was a reminder of what all of us must do to help known and unknown neighbors and strangers, not only when asked, but when not asked.
The environment is a predominant observation on my rail sojourns. The window is my seatmate. I see trees in winter storage or fully leafed and growing in the most inhospitable places between track and fence, between rail and stone, between cement and junk. Amazing.
The lesson of the trees is the same as the stranger who helped me beyond the asking.
These trees set an example of service to all humans. They stand not in a place to display their leafy or naked glory. They are tucked behind buildings and sheds and few people ever see them even though they may look at them.
In their growth and growing place they are deformed by the proximity to man’s fences, walls, and concrete surfaces, yet they stand to serve in the simplicity of a symbiotic relationship. Our CO2 for their O2.
What a gift of life.
By Rolland Smith, on February 16th, 2012
History is filled with examples of people, companies, and even nations taking advantage of misfortune and tragedy.
Another example was added to the list over last weekend with the death of music diva Whitney Houston.
Apparently within 30-minutes of the public announcement of Houston’s death Sony Music raised the prices on her Ulltimate Collection album. The price rose by more than 60-percent in the U.K.
Whoever authorized the price increase is probably looking for a new job for shortly after the greedy move the price went back down.
Some fans originally blamed Apple for the price hike on itunes, but Apple automatically raised the price when Sony Music upped the wholesale price of the album.
For Apple it may have been a computer generated hike, but even so it gives the appearance of greed and insensitivity.
I wonder if ever, in our mercantile world, will we ever be satisfied with just a reasonable profit.
By Rolland Smith, on February 15th, 2012
I’ve got a problem with the Catholic Church. I was brought up Catholic. I practiced faithfully for many years, but then I changed as life experience, reason, and rule irrationality mixed with my intellect and cognitive common sense.
I no longer practice the liturgy of my birth, but I embrace a Catholic spirituality in my heart and it includes much of what I was taught in the honing of my faith.
My practice now, however, does not include the centuries old dogma of men nor does it adhere to the dictates of rules that are no longer valid.
Liturgical Rome is not my conscience. My sacred spirit is the only arbitrator of what is right for me.
Having said that you now know where I stand.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at first thought it might be OK for the revised birth control policy offered by President Obama to be accepted. Then they decided it was unacceptable.
They are acting like flip flopping political candidates.
By the way, Viagra is OK and is acceptable within the church, but birth control for women is not.
Some things do not compute.
By Rolland Smith, on February 14th, 2012
Some thoughts on Valentines Day.
Could we possibly be victims of a manufactured holiday, perpetrated by the the greeting card, florists and candy companies?
It would be nice if all the expressions of affection bandied about today were to last more than just today. Imagine having less argument and more communication, more love and less selfishness everyday.
Valentines day wasn’t started by the marketing merchants of hype, they only take advantage of our sentimentality. The early Christian church actually proclaimed this event to counter a pagan festival that had a little too much celebration and debauchery for the ascetic beliefs of that time.
Why the church leaders chose Valentine to be their champion of love, no one knows for sure.
Historically it may be a strange choice. The Valentine, who became the saint and surrogate iconic lover for this day was actually beheaded for his beliefs and became a martyr.
Maybe it is appropriate to name the day after him…people do tend to loose their heads when in love.
By Rolland Smith, on February 13th, 2012
The uproar and passionate controversy over the Obama administration’s healthcare requirement for all employers to provide birth control to their employees including those institutions owned and operated by the Catholic Church was a needless confrontation.
Somebody didn’t think it through. Much of the contentious and political banter could have been avoided.
The compromise solution offered by President Obama on Friday may not be enough for some although a number of former, non-clergy critics of the original requirement, have signed off on the compromise.
Conservatives and big government haters will use the faux pas as political fodder all the way to November. It is another selected issue that takes talk time away from more important considerations like the economy and jobs and reducing debt.
Perhaps all government proposals ought to follow the rules of the Iroquois Nation. Many of our founding fathers thought they were on the right track and studied their governing process.
Only women could declare war.
Only women could elect a chief
Only women could depose a chief.
And for every important decision the elders would meet in council to discuss the ramifications and consequence of any decision they might make seven generations ahead.
Can you imagine how that would boggle Washington?
By Rolland Smith, on February 10th, 2012
The story headline in the New York Times yesterday was, “Youths are watching, but less often on TV.”
The story suggests that viewers 12 to 34 are spending less time in front of the television set and more time watching the same programs, but on the internet, mobile phones and other non television video outlets.
I fear that lazy watching of just video by the young requires less intellect and effort than reading and therein is their diminishment.
If we just watch we are un-informed. If we just listen we are un-informed and if we just read we are un-informed. To me it is the combination of all three that allows the mind to understand the complexities of life and find creative solutions to the seemingly unsolvable.
The past as it is embodies in the memory and experience of older generations is the repository of process and reading is one of its graces.
Listening is another grace as is eloquence and elegance. They are all cloaked in the gown of experience, but in the sharing of these two graces, the elders, the seniors, must be the evidence of them by example. Eloquence must be learned through the ear and elegance through the eye.
The young will always need the elder for context. The tribal story-tellers of the past have proven that.
Creativity needs all of the graces and all participants from the youngest to the oldest. It is then that the seasoned clay of imagination brings a youthful idea into form where it can be glazed by experience.
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A Bar of Soap
Bravo to CNN and its Heroes project. I have often wondered what happens to the hotel or motel bar of soap I leave behind after a nights stay.
I read this story on the CNN website and I think it’s important to share with you. Perhaps if we call encourage our favorite hotel chains to participate we can help save more lives.
(CNN) – What happens to the bar of soap you barely used the last time you checked into a hotel room? Most certainly it’s gone to waste at the end of each day.
This was a shocking revelation for Ugandan humanitarian and social entrepreneur Derreck Kayongo during his first stay in a U.S. hotel in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the early 1990s.
“When i checked into the hotel, there were 3 bars of soap – there was body soap, hand soap and face soap and that did not include the shampoos – and so for me that was a new experience, I was thinking to my self, “why do they have soap for every part of their bodies?” Kayongo recalls. “Now, my goodness, why would you throw away such a resource?”
The striking realization stayed with Kayongo, a Ugandan native who spent much of his childhood as a refugee in Kenya, and prompted him years later to create the Global Soap Project. The non-profit organization reprocesses used soaps from hotels around the United States and turns them into new bars for impoverished nations such as Uganda, Kenya, Haiti and Swaziland.
Kayongo says an estimated 2.6 million bars of soap are discarded every day from hotels in the United States — collecting such an enormous amount of soap, he notes, can help poor countries fight disease and combat child mortality by improving access to basic sanitation.
“We have more than two million kids that die every year to lower respiratory diseases like diarrhea,” says Kayongo. “If you are able to put a bar of soap in every child’s hand, you are able to reduce infectious diseases like diarrhea and things like typhoid and cholera by 40%.
“So the intervention became immediate for me and that’s when I thought we have a solution for kids in Africa, Latin America, Asia that die every year.”
Based in Atlanta, Kayongo started the Global Soap Project in 2009 by going door to door, pitching his lifesaving idea to local hotels. So far, some 300 hotels across the United States have joined Kayongo’s cause, enabling him and his team to reprocess thousands of soap bars and ship them to 18 developing countries.
The recycled soap is only released for shipment once a sample is tested for pathogens and deemed safe by a third-party laboratory. The Global Soap Project then works with partner organizations to ship and distribute the soap directly to people who need it for free.