kicking horse coffee

Good morning! Have you had your coffee yet? We have...and it's good. And it's good for the world, too! In fact, we love this coffee so much, we get a monthly shipment of Kicking Horse Coffee.

Kicking Horse's mission is to stimulate the planet with the ultimate wake-up call. That'll come in handy on a Monday morning.

All Kicking Horse coffee is 100% certified fair trade and 100% certified organic. Organic coffee is better for the environment, better for everyone’s health, and provides a better standard of living for the farmer. Kicking Horse is committed to sustainability, and they strive to make positive social and environmental impacts on the planet. They're also heavily involved in their community, both locally and throughout British Columbia. They support nature groups, local food banks, festivals, and a bunch of other charitable and sports related events in their community.

Now, a word about the coffee. My favorite so far is the Three Sisters blend - medium, warm, and nutty. Deeelicious. They have 16 other different blends of 100% fair trade organic coffee. Shop online and use their handy charts to choose your favorite flavor from Light (Bold) to Dark (Extreme Bold) and choose from different taste profiles based on aroma, acidity, body, and flavour. Kicking Horse also sells tea, chocolate, and mugs & stuff. You can shop for everything on their website, and some products are also available in stores and at online retailers like Amazon.

Kicking Horse Coffee is a great way to kick off your week and do something good for the world!

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we give books

We love to read. Lurve. We think reading is absolutely essential not only for a good education, but for a great imagination. Books teach, but they also transport and transform. This awesome organization has combined two of our favorite things - books and giving.

We Give Books is a new digital initiative that enables anyone with internet access to put books in the hands of children who don't have them, simply by reading online. Read a book. Give a book. Here's how it works:

On the We Give Books website, choose the charity you want to support. These are great non-profit organizations serving young people across the globe. This month, for example, you can donate books to Read for Central America, Todos a Leer, Room to Read, and Out of the Blocks.

Then choose the books you want to read from the growing library of great children's books. All of the books available for online reading are children's picture books appropriate for children through age ten. There is a mix of fiction and nonfiction, a range of authors, and an equal balance between read-alouds and books for independent readers. They add new books every month, and have special seasonal offerings.

For each book you read online, We Give Books will donate a book to the literacy group you chose. You can also change the organization you want to support with each book, if you want. What a great tool for reading with your kids and for teaching them about charity at the same time!

The more you read, the more they give. It's that easy!

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welcome to goodiegoodie!

We are so excited to officially re-launch "allison's favorite give-ings" as...

Our mission remains the same...to make it easy to do good. We will suggest charities that we love, and we'll guide you to make ethical shopping choices. Our ultimate goal is to get you to make one donation in lieu of a gift or to buy one socially responsible product for someone in your life. Hopefully when you see how easy it is and the good that you can do, giving and shopping ethically will become a habit and, eventually, a passion. We're gonna' change what it means to be a goodiegoodie!

We also value discussion and suggestions, so if you have a charity or a brand that you love and want us to feature on goodiegoodie, we'd love to hear from you. There are a frillion ways to contact us, so go for it. And while you are at it, follow us on Twitter and Facebook for regular updates and share share share! Thank you! You're gorgeous! We love you!

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moral eyes

I learned about today's featured company from the fabulous website, Shop With Meaning. In the spirit of full disclosure I will tell you that I am the Social Media Manager for the aforementioned fabulous site. If you like my blog I promise that you will love Shop With Meaning site, too. But today, we are focusing on an awesome one for one eyewear company called Moral Eyes.

Moral Eyes believes that everyone has the right to see clearly. They sell awesome reading glasses and sunglasses, and for every pair that they sell they donate a pair of new reading glasses to someone in need. To do this, they've partnered with New Eyes for the Needy, a non-profit organization that collects and distributes glasses to those less fortunate. Now you get to look adorable, see better, and also transform lives. Win win win.

A little more about New Eyes for the Needy. They are a non-profit organization that has brought improved vision and hope for a better future to more than 7 million people in the US and around the world. If you don't need glasses but want to help improve the vision of a person in need, you can make a direct donation.

You can also help by recycling your old glasses! Between my husband and I, we must have a village's worth of old glasses taking up valuable drawer space. We should donate our old eyeglasses (in good condition) to New Eyes and they will send them to medical missions and international charitable organizations for distribution to the poor in developing nations. You can ship your old glasses directly to New Eyes, or, if you're in the NYC area, drop them off at one of their Recycling Collection Locations.

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