Boobs4Food in Hawaii Aug2009

As Boobs4Food embarks on a mid-year vacation to Hawaii, our favorite detox’n'grub locale for rest and relaxation, we’re honoring volunteerism as our mid-year passion in progress theme. In honor of last month, April, being National Volunteer Month, and our return to Hawaii to vacation and to volunteer again, our upcoming trip this week is a reminder on the importance of helping out communities in small ways that matter.

Passion in Progress is big on many things: food, music, art and travel, but one of our biggest passions in volunteering. We are constantly reminded of the words one of our nation’s leaders shared, “Loving your country shouldn’t just mean watching fireworks on the 4th of July”. We started Boobs4Food a little less than a year ago and traveled to Hawaii then for vacation but to also volunteer while on our break because we felt grateful for the lives we are able to live and we had a strong desire to pay it forward.

Boobs4Food participated in Kidney Walk SF 2010 in May. Photo courtesy of Miguel Escobedo

What drives us to volunteer is the feeling of fulfillment and empowerment in knowing we can help our communities in small ways. We’ve realized that those in our generation aren’t held back from volunteering or from giving back not because they aren’t willing, but that they haven’t had the access to opportunities to do so or they don’t want to do it all alone.  Whether it’s pitching in to fight hunger through giving your time or supporting a Kidney or Cancer Walk or even mentoring an neighborhood adolescent – all of these efforts are wanted, needed and appreciated to build better and stronger communities on a local and global level.

Dinner service @ The Midnight Mission in LA's Skid Row

On our upcoming trip to Hawaii in a couple days, we’ll be meeting up with our new friends at non-profit organization, Hands In Helping Out, to learn more about how they’ve successfully built an organization promoting the importance of volunteering in local communities because they realized there was a societal and personal need and desire to take on something they were passionate about: volunteering. We’ll also be meeting up with Hawaii Charity, a philanthropic social concierge serving results-oriented organizations, to learn more about how local communities in Hawaii are helping each other throughout the island.

This summer, whether you’re on summer break, on vacation or on a weekend, think about finding a cause or organization to donate your time to in building a better and stronger community as a gesture of loving your country and community beyond watching fireworks on the the Fourth of July.

-Jess

Follow HawaiiCharity on Twitter here: http://www.twitter.com/hawaiicharity

Follow HIHO on Twitter here: www.twitter.com/hihovolunteer

Read more about HIHO.org : Hands In Helping feature in the Honolulu Examiner

Volunteer at Hawaii Food Bank: www.hawaiifoodbank.org

Please join Team Boobs4Food as we support one of our founding members Cassandra Gee at the National Kidney Foundation Walk SF on Saturday May 8, 2010 10:00am – 12:30pm. Dogs, Kids, Strollers, Friends of Friends are all welcome!

National Kidney Foundation

The National Kidney Foundation’s Kidney Walk is a non-competitive, fundraising walk focusing on education and prevention of kidney and urinary tract diseases, and highlighting the need for organ donation. The Kidney Walk presents an occasion for dialysis patients, organ transplant recipients, donor families, living donors, the medical and business communities, and the general public to celebrate life and create lasting community advocacy and long-term support for the Foundation’s mission.

Fight Kidney Disease

The NKF’s Kidney Walks are designed to help people understand the need for early detection of kidney disease. Over 355,000 Americans rely on a dialysis machine to keep them alive, and nearly 82,000 are on the waiting list for a lifesaving kidney transplant. Recent studies indicate that kidney disease is on the rise and as many as 26 million Americans have chronic kidney disease (CKD). Because symptoms may not appear until the kidneys are actually failing, many people do not take steps to protect the health of their kidneys.

FAST FACTS

• Chronic kidney disease affects 26 million Americans and millions more are at risk

• Kidney disease is common, harmful and treatable

• Risk factors include high blood pressure, diabetes and family history

• Early detection can slow the progression of kidney disease

• Once kidneys fail, patients need dialysis or a transplant to survive

• over 104,000 people are waiting for an organ transplant

Support Team Mama Says!

Follow @CassandraGee on Twitter

This is an exciting opportunity for us to work together to help people understand the need for early detection of kidney disease. In addition to raising funds for research and help for patients and their families, the Kidney Walk is a great way to bring the community together!

Please consider walking with us too! With your help, we will be able to make a difference in chronic kidney disease!

To join our team, please visit:

Team Mama Says! Facebook Event Page

The Official National Kidney Foundation Walk Team Mama Says! Page

Thank you from both of my kidneys and the bottom of my heart.

-Cassie & Ace

DDL Roundhouse w/ Special Guest League510

When: Saturday February 20,2010 5:00pm

Where: Element Lounge, 1028 Geary Blvd. San Francisco, CA

Why: Boobs4Food SF’s Canned Food Drive benefiting SF’s Chinatown Community Development Center

"From LA to the Bay: DDL Roundhouse x Boobs4Food"

More Info:

DDLRoundhouse

League510

Chinatown Community Development Center

Element Lounge

Boobs4Food SF: Bake Sale for Haiti

Armed with a couple ideas, inspiration from our friends over at MO2H, a big appetite and a whole lot of commitment to give back to communities by fighting hunger, Boobs4Food would like to thank YOU for your continued support along this crazy ride. In the last 7 months we’ve grown accustomed to wearing hairnets, working in cold kitchens and serving the community with plenty of smiles and gratitude. We ended 2009 with two Happy Hour Food Drives in San Francisco and Los Angeles to support the SF Food Bank and LA Regional Food Bank. These mixers gave all of us a chance to get to know you, our supporters & new friends, in a social setting and share why we love what we do in bringing together food and a worthy cause.

B4F LA: Midnight Mission

Only 4 weeks into 2010, and we’ve already gained quite the momentum with over a hundred new Twitter followers in two weeks, a growing base of new supporters with each monthly event across California (and around the world), made the hairnet the must have accessory of 2010 and we’ve been participating in community events to help the disaster relief efforts in Haiti.

January included Boobs4Food’s @LifeWithAWhisk aka Patricia Chen, baking up her homemade Semolina Olive Oil Cake for the Bake Sale for Haiti, organized by Saimin Nosrat, which raised over $22,000 from three locations around the Bay Area (Pizzaiolo in OAK, Gioia in Berkeley & Bi-Rite Market in SF). The proceeds from the bake sale went to nonprofit medical aid organization Partners in Health. In Los Angeles, Patricia also whipped up her Pear Pistachio Brown Butter Cake for the Cookies Without Border Bake Sale, organized by the team behind No Cookie Left Behind. The LA bake sale raised more than $5000 for Doctors Without Borders and their Haiti relief efforts.

Cookies Without Borders Bake Sale (Photo Courtesy of LAist.com)

Boobs4Food also volunteered our time at The Midnight Mission in Skid Row of Downtown Los Angeles for their dinner service and at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco for lunch service as we witnessed how many people in our communities depend on community resources such as Midnight Mission and Glide Memorial Church to stay alive and warm in the winter.

We have much to look forward to in 2010 as the events don’t stop here and our commitment to fight hunger continues. Our upcoming schedule includes February’s event this Saturday 2/6/2010 at Project Open Hand as we volunteer in the kitchen and grocery center in an effort to provide “meals with love” to people living with serious illness and seniors across the Bay Area. On Saturday 2/20/2010, our first benefit concert food drive will take place at Element Lounge with long time B4F supporters (and volunteers) DDL Roundhouse taking the stage and collecting food for the Chinatown Community Development Center. March will conclude with lunch service with the Chinatown Community Development Center as we help out at their monthly “Super Sunday” gathering with over 300 seniors and 100 families that reside in the Ping Yuen Housing Project. We’ll be serving up lunch, helping their educational program for the day and distributing food to the community.

More info on Los Angeles events will be posted soon and we are looking to launch our first event in NYC this March. Stay tuned for more info by following us on Twitter @Boobs4Food.

2010 has barely begun and we look forward to having you join us as we bring together passion for food and passion to fight hunger, one meal at a time!

Thank you for believing in us and making your community a priority by fighting hunger with Boobs4Food.

- Team Boobs4Food

In our world, food is synonymous with love. Food is how we primarily express our affection, our compassion and our passion. We not only love to eat, but we also get around to reading quite a bit and we are lovers of knowledge between the covers…the hardcovers. We love subjects that are meaningful and one particular book has truly inspired us: Tim Sanders’ Love Is The Killer App.

My best friend Melissa let me borrow the book a few years back and needless to say, I can’t even remember if I ever returned it to her. I can’t even remember if I returned it to her mostly because I have since purchased multiple copies to give out to strangers, clients and friends I feel could benefit from the brilliance of former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo! and NY Times’ bestselling author Tim Sanders’ book. Love Is The Killer App has served as a true inspiration and motivator behind the existence of Boobs4Food given its message that to succeed in business or life, one has to share their knowledge, their network of relationships and their compassion – or any mix of the three.

Tim Sanders' Love Is The Killer App (image courtesy of Amazon.com)

Love Is the Killer App starts with the definition of love from Milton Mayeroff’s book “On Caring” — “Love is the selfless promotion of the growth of another” — and then applies this definition to business — “the act of intelligently and sensibly sharing your intangibles [your knowledge, network and compassion] with your bizpartners”. Reading these definitions alone hit me to the bone on what it means to be of value and an asset to those around me and how we’ve established Boobs4Food to do the same – to intelligently and sensibly, with moderation, share our knowledge, network, compassion and even passion with all that are interested. Whether we’re sharing what’s great to eat, what organization to donate our time to, what restaurants to visits or suggestions on anything – this is how we see and live love.

As we continue organizing events which support local, domestic and international hunger-related causes, we look to bring together friends, strangers, food enthusiasts and colleagues to absorb each others networks and strength – in hopes or bringing more awareness to causes we care about and stirring up more passion for various purposes that give all of our lives more meaning – both individually and as a community.

Love is indeed, our killer app and this entry won’t be the last of inpiration driven by Tim Sanders.

Please check the book out!

Buy the book: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Killer-App-Business-Influence/dp/060960922X

Read more about Tim Sanders: www.SanderSays.com

Follow Tim: http://twitter.com/sanderssays

- Jess

The funny backstory is that Passion in Progress was semi-inspired by *drumroll* – a casual reference to the popular fitness equipment, Perfect Push-Ups while on Twitter. My dear blogger and twitter friend @michellewoo had mentioned in her Twitter that she was doing push-ups. Here’s how the tweet-versation went:

@aldenmills: Keep up the gr8 feedback!! Thx:@uscjessc
@aldenmills: HOOYAH if you are correct! RT @uscjessc @michellewoo Using Perfect Pushups. I hear every guys has a set! LOL!

passion + purpose + persistent action = success.

passion + purpose + persistent action = success

Everyday, so many of us cruise along in our semi ho-hum lives letting our lives dictate what we do instead of us controlling the life we live. We’re all guilty of it at some point. Passion In Progress is going to be a mini-escape and/or a blog of inspiration for some of the best of what life has to offer – and maybe, PiP will help unleash a bit of your innerbeast and unlock some of your percolating passion, purpose and action that will truly make all of our lives even greater! We’re saying no to “half-@$$ness” and yes to passion in progress! What is your passion!? Sound off!

Hooyah!

Come back and visit again soon as this is still a work in progress!

It’s practically impossible to ever have a full conversation with me without me dropping in such acronyms as OSB (Operation: Sexy Beast), SOY (Summer of Yes), FOF (Fall of Fun), WOW (Winter of Weeee!), TOYL (Time of Your Life) – just to name a few, or five in this case. My love for acronyms is what actually helped start the launch of Boobs4Food ( aka B4F). Well, now there’s another acronym to join Jess’ World: PiP – Passion in Progress.

Jess exhibits Passion In Progress, even when striking a poker face pose at LudoBites.

Passion in Progress is built on the 3-words within the name that we here at Boobs4Food are and have been learning to live by. Given our blessed life, we’ve realized that we’re doing the world a diservice if we aren’t sharing what we love – whether food, music, destination, recipes, ideas, wisdom, to help others, etc.  You name it, we want to learn about it! What you’ll find here at PiP will be a mix of everything we’re passionate about and our commentary to go along with it.

The existence of Passion in Progress is to be a constant touchstone to the world and to ourselves – to find a passion, share the passion and to keep the passion alive because passion breeds connection. In the end, everyone benefits when all of us are sharing the best version of ourselves.

“Don’t wait for blessing, be a blessing”

- Jess