Get on the Bus! - 30 recommended organizations include: Foods Not Bombs, Reef Relief, and Mothers and Others for a Livable Planet

Vegetarian Times, Nov, 2000 by Mark Harris

These 30 organizations are proof that we can change the world--one cause at a time

amid the daily quotient of misery that spreads across the morning paper and fills the radio airways on the commute home, it's easy to lose sight of this good news: that so many individuals are working for, and bringing about, a kinder, greener, less hungry and more ethical planet. Thanks to the tireless efforts of countless organizations and volunteers, food finds the hungry, doctors the sick, homebuilders the homeless. And every day these campaigners for a better world are out there fighting the good fight to keep genetically engineered foods off grocery store shelves, chainsaws out of rain forests and safe and healthy foods in our refrigerators.

You've read about some of these groups over the years in Vegetarian Times. But at the launch of a new millennium, we felt it was high time to more loudly trumpet a fanfare for some of these champions of social consciousness. In the process, we hope to inspire you to support them--or better yet, join them. Obviously, this is a highly subjective list: From thousands, we've selected a mere 30. Because of space constraints, every group selected represents a score of deserving others. Yet there was some method to our madness: We've chosen groups based on the amazing, creative and vital work they're undertaking to make our world a better place and the success they've achieved in doing so. Since we are Vegetarian Times, we did give priority to groups that promote a healthy, vegetarian diet. We also gave preference to groups laboring on behalf of animal rights, the environment and human rights. To top it off, all share not-for-profits status.

The best of the bunch? It's impossible to say. We have, however, pulled out a number of lesser-known organizations and profiled them in a special category we've dubbed "10 to Watch." With small staffs and even smaller budgets, they're doing the work of many and with truly astounding results. Five other worthy groups earned an honorable mention. Finally, we've highlighted 15 respected organizations that belong in anybody's Hall of Fame. Bottom line: Every single one deserves your support. So contact those that strike a chord, send a check if you'd like or volunteer your time--to pick up litter at your local beach, write a letter to your representative in Congress, mix up some batter for a person in need. These small acts add up to a world of difference.

10 to Watch

Food Not Bombs

P.O. Box 32075
Kansas City, MO 64171
(800) 884-1136
Email: foodnotbombs@earthlink.net
Web site: www.foodnotbombs.net
Founders: Keith McHenry, C.T. Butler
and others

In makeshift kitchens in more than 175 cities around the globe, a small band of vegetarian activists are concocting a solution to world hunger. Their main ingredient? Recovered food.

These foodies with a mission are volunteers with Food Not Bombs (FNB). For 20 years they've been following this winning recipe for feeding the hungry: collect past-date but still-good food from local supermarkets, restaurants and natural food stores, whip them into veggie dishes and deliver the healthy fare to people who need it most, free of charge. Since 1988, FNB has been cooking nutritious meals for residents of housing projects and shelters, as well as homeless squatters.

Food Not Bombers feed social activists too. You'll see the volunteers laboring over camp stoves at rallies, picket lines, peace camps and marches or cooking up meals to fuel the peaceful protesters who speak out for a cleaner environment, more humane treatment of animals and less poverty. These vegetarians are campaigning for a better world where money flows to producing food, not bombs. Proof that where there's food, there's a way.

Reef Relief

201 William St., P.O. Box 430
Key West, FL 33041
(305) 294-3100
Email: reef@bellsouth.net
Web site: www.reefrelief.org
Founder: Craig Quirolo

For more than 200 million years, coral reefs have thrived, protecting shorelines, providing shelter to a quarter of all fish species and offering one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet. Today they're in trouble. Thirty percent of reefs worldwide are damaged, and at the present rate, 70 percent will disappear in the next 40 years.

Since 1986, Reef Relief has been laboring to preserve and restore this precious resource. You may recognize the organization as the sponsor of the annual Reef Awareness Week, a seven-day media and educational extravaganza designed to raise our consciousness about the Fate of the reefs. But mostly this small nonprofit group works far from the public eye, conducting valuable photographic surveys of coral reefs and supplying its data to leading reef scientists, or operating a "nursery" to repair damaged coral. One of its biggest projects to date has been the installation of mooring buoys in prime coral territory. These bobbing hitching posts give boats a place to park without dropping anchor--and thereby damaging nearby coral in the process.

The group has actively worked the political front to, among other things, successfully enact a ban on phosphate detergents (that eventually wind up in our water supply) and upgrade standards for sewage treatment in the Florida Keys, both of which are implicated in the decline of coral.