IMAGE: JOHN-MORGAN

Sometimes (often) these celebrations include a yummy rummy eggnog or a Bailey’s enhanced coffee. (Even a candy cane shooter or two – if you met my family, you’d understand.) However, with all the increased merriment, you need to be smart. Plan a safe ride home. Here’s how:

Have a designated driver.

Before heading to your friend’s annual holiday kegger, make a smart choice and choose a designated driver before you leave.

MADD Canada (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) hosts their Project Red Ribbon awareness campaign every holiday season. Tie a red ribbon to your car, keychain, purse or backpack to show your commitment to sober driving.

You can purchase your red ribbon through the MADD Canada web site or at Chapters. This year, MADD Canada is also offering a text donation option for supporters of Project Red Ribbon. You can text “ribbon” to 45678 to donate $10 to MADD Canada and receive a special red ribbon pin.

Call Rudolph.

If you mess up and have a few too many (and can’t bear to leave your ’94 Impala behind), give Operation Red Nose a call. Friendly volunteers donning antlers and red noses will drive you and your car home, free of charge. Donations are collected towards local non-profits. Call 1 (877) 604-6673 for a ride or (604) 604-6673 for more information.

IMAGE: OPERATION RED NOSE

I have volunteered for Operation Red Nose and it is truly one of the most festive and fulfilling things you can do this month. (It’s also a great way to have an awkward run-in with your high school crush.) Certain regions in Metro Vancouver still need volunteers, so if you are interested, fill out an online application via www.operationrednose.com before heading down to the police station to complete a criminal record check.

Dial a cab.

Call #TAXI (8294) to find the closest one.

Transit.

Translink has buses, trains and boats at the ready this December. Extra buses and trains are scheduled to accommodate revellers, and don’t forget, transit service is free of charge after 5 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. Use Trip Planner to plan your voyage home.

Plan safe parties.

If you are the gracious host, help out by serving fun virgin drinks for your designated drivers. Remind your guests of these safe ways to get home and if all else fails, offer your couch for the night and let them sleep it off.

Be merry and stay safe this holiday! Cheers.

(Feature image by Conanil.)

Non-perishable food items are urgently needed at Covenant House, a safe house for youth who have often fled physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse, been forced from their homes or been aged out of foster care. Covenant House provides food, shelter, clothing and counselling to the estimated 500-1,000 street youth in Vancouver.

Food:
Beans & sauce, pork & beans
Beans, tinned or dried
Canned meals (i.e. Chef Boyardee/stew/ravioli)
Cereal
Cheese whiz
Cookies/Crackers
Fish (canned)
Fruit (canned)
Hamburger Helper
Jams/Peanut butter
Ketchup
Kraft dinner
Meat (canned – Ham, Turkey)
Milk (in tetra packs or powder)
Oatmeal
Pasta (especially macaroni)
Rice
Tomatoes (canned)
Pasta sauces
Tuna
Veggies (canned‚ mushrooms, carrots, peas, potato)
Ice tea mix
Juice (mix/canned/tetra)

MattressRecycling.ca – western Canada’s first and largest mattress recycling depot - will waive their residential pick-up fee ($62.50 + HST) on used mattresses in exchange for an any-sized bag of food at the time of collection.

“Basically we want people to give what they can and, in exchange, we’ll take away their old mattress,” said CEO Fabio Scaldaferri.

Mattresses must be ready for collection at the front door and certain conditions apply. Arrange your pick up during the Covenant House Food Drive by calling 604-973-0183 or emailing info@mattressrecycling.ca to book your donation!

IMAGE: PAN PACIFIC VANCOUVER

The 24^th annual Pan Pacific Vancouver Christmas Wish Breakfast will take place Wednesday, December 7^th from 6AM to 9AM ( at 300 – 999 Canada Place). Presented by Pan Pacific Vancouver, Global BC and JackFM, the Christmas Wish Breakfast is one of Canada’s largest toy drives. In 2010, 27, 000 toys and over $25,000 in cash donations benefited the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau.

Bring an unwrapped toy or cash donation on December 7^th and you will also receive a hot buffet breakfast at the adjacent Café Pacifica Restaurant. Each year, they serve up eggs, sausages and other delicious treats to those who battle the alarm clock and swing by the Christmas Wish Breakfast. We hear the giant pile of donated toys almost reaches the ceiling! (Talk about my childhood dream.) Please keep in mind that since it is teenagers that are most in need of toys, the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau asks you to not bring any stuffed animals.

IMAGE: PAN PACIFIC VANCOUVER

Holiday cheer will be in full swing with Global BC and JackFM broadcasting live on location.

Think back on the best Christmas gift you received as a child. (Mine was a particularly awesome Easy Bake Oven.) Doesn’t every child deserve to feel that joy? Drop by the Pan Pacific Vancouver Christmas Wish Breakfast on December 7^th with an unwrapped gift and enjoy a delicious breakfast – it will make all the difference to a child on Christmas Day.

To make an online cash donation to the Lower Mainland Christmas Bureau: click here.

For more details leading up to the event, follow Pan Pacific Vancouver on Facebook and Twitter (#PanXmasWish).

Image Courtesy of Vancouver Christmas Market

As I was born and raised in Switzerland, close to the German and Austrian border so within close proximity of Christmas Market Central, I consider myself a bit of an expert on the topic of Christmas markets. Over the past twenty something years I’ve visited so many of them I couldn’t even recall them all if I wanted to. Highlights are the diamond ornaments covered Christmas tree in the Zurich main train station (it is, after all, Zurich), the time my friends and I took the train to Paris just to visit the market for the day and the year I was hired to sell products –outside, in -20°.Only Gluehwein, hot mulled wine, kept me from freezing. What is left now are the sweet memories of pretty lights, yummy comfort foods, and many unique finds I gave to loved ones over the years.

Image Courtesy of Vancouver Christmas Market

The Vancouver Christmas Market has all that and more. It runs outdoors from November 24^th to Christmas Eve at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Park in downtown Vancouver each day from 11am to 9pm. The market features 45 traditional wooden booths selling on of a kind gifts and traditional German and Swiss foods, such as Bratwurst, Raclette, or Brataepfel (suffed baked apples, a very common and tasty Christmas dessert at my house).

General admission is $5, and only $2 from 11 am to 4 pm Mondays to Fridays. Anyone under 12 costs a toonie and anyone under 7 is free!

Visit www.vancouverchristmasmarket.com for more information. We’ll see you there!

Atin Afrika (which translates to ‘Child of Africa’) advocates the rights in society and the extension of equal rights to needy children who live as orphans and homeless on the streets as a result of 23 years of conflict in Uganda.  From working with children who were abducted at a young age to those who were dependant on the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps, AAF is working to reintegrate and support this lost generation back into today’s society in Lira, Uganda, through providing them with care and social attention.  The work being done in Lira aims to provide services that these kids need such as psychosocial and counselling services, and focuses also on education and literacy.  Also, sharing life and personal growth skills, AAF is building a generation full of hope and inspiration, engaged in achieving their goals and living a better life.

Locally, through associations in Vancouver and a member of the AAF team, you can get your community involved in partnering with homeless youth organizations to assist in raising local attention to and understanding of a global epidemic.  Through the Kids4Kids program, whether it be a car wash, a bake sale, or a fundraising drive, by pairing your team, group or organization with a group of homeless youth, you will be living out the initiative of the AAF, right here, at home in Vancouver.  And, your generosity and commitment to that group of youth will inspire them to grow into global citizens who then give back to their communities.  To support education and literacy , you can ‘Read a Book for Africa’ – the creation of a reading program initative in schools to inspire youth readers and to get their communities rallied around their personal and global goal of bringing educational opportunites to these Ugandan youth.

Keen to learn more? – check out the Atin Afrika Foundation online: atinafrika.org

Check out their contact information if you want to learn more about volunteering or donating:

For information regarding volunteering contact volunteer@atinafrika.org
For information regarding child sponsorship contact info@atinafrika.org
For information regarding fundraising contact chelsea@atinafrika.org
For any other inquiries contact us at info@atinafrika.org

It all started with a t-shirt.

When Vancouverite Yael Cohen’s mother was diagnosed with cancer, she made her a t-shirt with the phrase “F Cancer”. While the idea may be shocking to some, the shirts resonated with her mother and other cancer patients. They made a statement – “Yes, I have cancer – but no, I won’t go down without one hell of a fight.”

Soon after, Yael had the idea to sell the shirts to raise money for a cancer charity – however, her concern over the lack of transparency about where the money would be going if she were to donate it to a cancer charity, and the discovery of a shocking statistic compelled Yael to take a different approach.

When Yael found out that over 90% of cancers are curable if caught in stage one, she decided she needed to change the way people think about cancer and promote early detection of the disease. Hence, the FCancer organization was born.

Image courtesy of FCancer - one of the many early cancer detection cheat sheets available on their website

Unlike many cancer charities, FCancer is not about funding cancer research. Rather its focuses its efforts on an equally important initiative: promoting awareness around early detection. By educating Generation Y on how to stay healthy and what warning signs to watch out for, FCancer is helping people catch the disease in the earliest possible stage, when it is most curable.

We’ve all been touched by cancer, whether it be through a family member or a friend, but we shouldn’t wait to talk about it until someone has it. With the help of FCancer, we can be proactive when it comes to detecting the disease to help ensure the best possible outcome, and encourage people to actively look for the disease instead of just finding it when they go to the doctor.

Get educated and become an early detection ambassador by talking to your friends and family about early warning signs of cancer.

Like FCancer on Facebook and follow them on Twitter to stay up to date on healthy lifestyle and early cancer detection tips.

Vancouver musician Randy Ponzio, a consumate activist and artist, passed away this weekend under suspicious circumstances. After Ponzio went missing Tuesday evening, a city-wide search and continent wide social media frenzy ensued. Unfortunately, the end result was tragic, and his body was found in a rooming house on the Downtown Eastside Sunday morning.

Ponzio was a dedicated father of three, who spent all his free time encouraging the Vancouver community to get involved – be it by handmaking and distributing sandwiches to the homeless, providing hours of donated performance time to various causes, or just making a video song about someone he knew and sending it to them on their birthday. He spent years of his younger life overseas, working for a number of charity organizations and was a brother to anyone in need.

This shaped his message of Love, Peace, Foundation and Family that was a constant theme of his music. From busking on the street to opening for Ziggy Marley at the Commodore, Randy’s career was on a steady climb up. He had recently won the Shore 104 Song Search with his anthemic track For the People and was working on his new album when he passed away.

I had the pleasure of recording my album with him over 4 months last summer, and a lifelong friendship was inevitable. He continues to be a light in my life, even in passing. He was one of my best friends and the city, not just the music community, has lost a genuine soul who cared deeply for every person he interacted with.

There will be a candlelight Celebration of Life tonight, Nov 21st, at 6pm on Granville and Georgia. Live music, stories and lots of dancing are guaranteed. Please bring a candle or tea light, and all flowers will be donated to Flowers for Food. We have raised more than half of the $10,000 Goal for his three children, and if Randy has touched your life in anyway, please donate here.

Take care of yourselves and each other.

Kelsey

Most Canadians are fortunate enough to have access to glasses, contact lenses and laser vision correction. Even those of us with perfect vision have the luxury of wearing glasses for the purpose of making a fashion statement! Unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone.

Globally, 560 million people suffer from poor vision and a large portion of these individuals do not have the means to access affordable eye care. However, Clearly Contacts, a Vancouver-based vision-care company has set out to change this with their philanthropic initiative, the Change the View Project.

Change the View Project is a charity aimed at improving people’s lives by providing them with proper vision care and eyeglasses. Because they believe that everyone has a right to clear vision, Clearly Contacts uses a 1-for-1 model and will donate a pair of glasses to an individual in need when any pair of participating designer glasses are purchased.

This past Spring, the Change the View project travelled to a remote community in Panama to test the vision of 3000 individuals and donated over 4500 pairs of glasses. More recently, they focused their efforts on the local community, providing free vision testing and glasses to people living in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (see video below).

How can you help?
By 2020, the Change the View Project hopes to donate over 2 million pairs of glasses to individuals in need, both near and far. If you are interested in partnering up with Change the View Project to find eyeglasses to bring on a health mission abroad, or even to help individuals closer to home please contact info@changetheview.org.

http://www.youtube.com/user/clearlycontacts#p/u/0/N7yvPX8kWlw

Photo credit: koratmember

The Canucks for Kids Fund and Canuck Place are two examples of programs that the Canucks Hockey Club is involved with that impacts youth experience in Vancouver.  Both very unique, yet interrelated.

A community initiative  of the Vancouver Canucks, The Canucks for Kids Fund ‘dedicates resources to assist charities who support children’s heath and wellness, foster the development of grassroots hockey, and facilitate and encourage education in British Columbia’.  Thorugh fund raisers on and off the ice, the members of the Canucks team, business who work as ‘partner sponsors’ and Vancouver’s own Canucks Fans work together to raise both money and awareness around the Canucks for Kids Fund.  The outcome of this: the ability for the fund to donate $4.4 million dollars to 20 very deserving grent recipients (organizations and charities) who live and breathe solely for the betterment of childhood experiences (2010/2011 season statistics).

Within thost grant recipients, and a constant part of the Canucks for Kids Fund initiatives, is Canuck Place.  This home serves as more than just a historical mark in Vancouver’s Shaughnessy Heights neighborhood.  It is a home away from home, and an innocative facility dedicated to pediatric palliative care.  And, through generous donations to the Vancouver community, a 50 year lease for $1 from the City of Vancouver, an army of dedicated volunteers, and of course the support of the Canucks for Kids Fund, this home has been funcitoning to support terminally ill children and their families for since the early 1990′s.  The volunteers, both Canucks team members and Vancouver residents make this home function – through maintenance of the property, through to administration, fund raising events and day to day functioning of the facility.  This space is a true example of a group of people coming together to fill a need for Vancouver, and to create space and possibility for children and their familiies to have a different palliative experience.

The Canucks for Kids Fund continues to grow each year, through increased fund raising initiatives, and through more and more  fans and sponser partners getting involved.  Check out the Canucks’ Community site to see what they are up to, and how the fund is impacting local groups and Vancouver’s youth.

To learn more about where the Canucks Place has come from, what they provide, and how you can help, visit their website.

IMAGE: YOUTHCO AIDS SOCIETY

In 1994, a need for this type of organization was clearly identified and the Youth Community Outreach AIDS Society (YouthCO) was formed. Not only do their programs provide education, support, and advocacy for youth between the ages of 15 and 29, but YouthCO is also a social profit agency run by and for youth (on your 30^th birthday, you’re done!). They operate from a harm reduction perspective, which means no judgment and a wealth of information available to youth looking to make safer choices in their lives. Any youth between the ages of 15 and 29 can access YouthCo’s services or get involved as a volunteer.

The YouthCo team provides peer-led education programs in schools, youth centres, Aboriginal communities, and at community events all over the Lower Mainland. In addition, they provide peer-support services for youth impacted by HIV and Hep C. Some of these programs include The Breakfast Club, a hot breakfast served Friday mornings at 9AM for youth living with HIV or Hep C; Family Lunch, a meal for everyone at YouthCO every Tuesday at noon; and a variety of social events for HIV+ gay men, women, and youth.

On Sunday, November 27^th, YouthCO is hosting Brunch With Benefits. Simply eat lunch at any of the participating restaurants listed below and partial proceeds will support YouthCO’s HIV and Hep C prevention, education, and support programs.

IMAGE: YOUTHCO AIDS SOCIETY

MARKET BY JEAN-GEORGES (Flagship Brunch)
Shangri-La Hotel, 1115 Alberni Street
$45 Advance Tickets Include:
Two-Course Brunch, Dessert, Taxes and Tip
Beverages must be purchased separately.

TICKETS now available online:
https://app.etapestry.com/cart/YouthCO/default/category.php?ref=3783.0.82869347

Non-Ticketed Restaurants:

HAWKSWORTH
801 West Georgia Street

TWISTED FORK BISTRO
1147 Granville Street

DEACON’S CORNER
101 Main Street

Additional restaurants will be added as they are confirmed right up until the event, so keep afloat of all the details at www.brunchwithbenefits.com.

If you aren’t able to make brunch, there are still a lot of amazing ways to support YouthCo: volunteer or donate!! Get involved today!