Published Work Archives - Page 14 of 23

60 Seconds With…Eve Ensler

January 22, 2025January 1, 2008

Contribute

Contribute • January/February 2008

In the 10 years since the debut of her still-controversial play, The Vagina Monologues, playwright Eve Ensler’s V-Day campaign to halt violence against women and girls has gone global, raising $50 million to support anti-violence organizations at home and abroad, from India to Asia and the Middle East. This year, a tenth-anniversary run of the play is being performed in 1,200 cities worldwide. CONTRIBUTE’s Tracie McMillan caught up with Ensler recently to talk about her decade of activism and her take on the changing landscape of philanthropic giving.

Putting the Cart Before the Market

January 22, 2025December 24, 2007

City Limits

City Limits Weekly • Dec. 24, 2007

Bushwick – > City officials last week announced that they would be boosting the number of street food permits by 1,500, with a healthy catch: The new food carts will have to sell fruits and vegetables in neighborhoods where residents consume them at low rates.

Going by the name “Green Carts,” the project is being backed by the city’s Food Policy Task Force, Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Permits will be good year-round, and could be available as early as summer 2008, with 500 going to the Bronx and Brooklyn each, and the remainder divvied up between the other boroughs. Carts would be required to sell only unprocessed fruits and vegetables, or pre-packaged fresh produce that is already peeled or cut.

If You Give the Poor Fresh Vegetables, Will They Eat Them?

January 22, 2025December 6, 2007

The Huffington Post

HuffingtonPost.com • Dec. 6, 2007

A brighter note sounded in the obesity epidemic battles this week: Federal Women, Infants and Children vouchers are being overhauled to include fresh fruits and vegetables. But does that mean folks will drop the white bread and American cheese for greens?

In a word: Yes.

State Labor Chief Pledges Help for Domestic Workers

January 22, 2025November 12, 2007

City Limits

City Limits Weekly • Nov. 12, 2007

New York State Labor Commissioner Patricia Smith came out in support of the proposed Domestic Worker Rights Bill now making its way through the state legislature at a forum last week on unregulated work in New York City.

The current incarnation of the bill, first introduced in 2004, requires private employers of domestic help such as nannies and housekeepers to pay wages starting at $14 an hour; provide health insurance; offer paid vacation, overtime and sick days; and provide severance packages.

Pay Gap

January 22, 2025November 6, 2007

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Contribute • November/December 2007

Helping the homeless has never been considered a luxurious calling, but for Ralph Nunez, it’s been surprisingly remunerative. As head of Homes for the Homeless, a Manhattan-based social services nonprofit, Nunez brings home $352,381 a year, one-third of it for part-time work for the organization’s policy arm and an additional $53,598 in benefits. There’s also ready access to a company vehicle and an apartment atop one of the group’s homeless shelters in the gentrifying neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen.

Supermarkets Won’t Solve Obesity, But Bodegas Might

January 22, 2025November 6, 2007

The Huffington Post

HuffingtonPost.com • Nov. 6, 2007

The lack of healthy food in our nation’s poorest communities is finally making it into public discussion, but there’s a tricky hurdle we’ve yet to get around: How to fix it. The most obvious solution–bring in food stores like supermarkets, which are correlated with people eating more fruits and vegetables–is a bureaucratic nightmare. “Food deserts,” typically located in poor urban areas, usually come with limited building sites, hefty regulations and market realities that differ dramatically from the suburbs where supermarkets perfected their business model.

The Donor Drain

January 22, 2025November 1, 2007

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Contribute • November/December 2007

Anne Senft spends her work days raising money for the National Wildlife Federation. It’s not an easy job, and lately, it’s gotten harder. According to Senft, the Reston, Va.-based charity has been losing some 300,000 donors each year — nearly one-third of its nearly one million members.

For most of the early 2000s, Senft says, the group was only able to replace most of the donors who walked out the door. “We pretty much broke even,” she says. Late last year, though, the nonprofit had to make a tough decision: spend more money to make money, or risk falling behind. The Wildlife Federation ended up spending some $2 million more on fundraising than the previous year, according to its tax return, sending out 20 million donor letters and nearly as many e-mails.

Special Report: Charity Accountability

January 22, 2025November 1, 2007

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Contribute • November/December 2007

Created to alleviate poverty, the nonprofit Miami-Dade Empowerment Trust seemed for nearly a decade to be taking aim at South Florida’s most impoverished neighborhoods by creating new business opportunities and jobs.

As it happened, the organization also had been busy creating wealth for some of its own. The taxpayer-supported agency had lavished money on insider deals, lost money on failed loans, and spent hundreds of thousands on celebrity entertainers. Just one wasteful expense involved a tab of more than $87,000 to fly hip-hop star Sean “Diddy” Combs from New Jersey to Miami on a charted Gulfstream jet. Diddy’s antipoverty mission for the nonprofit? Hosting an MTV awards ceremony.

Q&A: Labor of Lovins

January 22, 2025October 1, 2007

Plenty

Plenty • October/November 2007

Amory Lovins might not be a household name, but the ideas he’s put forth for the past 30 years have affected virtually every household in America. Increasing energy efficiency, supporting small and local power generation from renewable sources, and building smart rather than big are just a few of the concepts he’s promoted. Lovins started when he was 29, using the energy crisis of the late ’70s to reach President Carter’s ear. This year, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the nonprofit organization devoted to energy research he founded with his wife, celebrated its 25th anniversary with a forum attended by luminaries such as Thomas Friedman of The New York Times and Majora Carter of the nonprofit Sustainable South Bronx. Plenty stole a few minutes of Lovins’s time to discuss ultralight cars, an indoor banana garden, and why efficiency is the best alternative fuel we’ve got.

Inspection Protection: Will New Council Bill Safeguard Workers?

January 22, 2025September 26, 2007

City Limits

City Limits • Sept. 26, 2007

After celebrating the City Council’s recent passage of a bill upping penalties for employers that lock in their workers at night, the legislation’s backers are faced with a new challenge: enforcement.

The lock-ins bill was designed to clamp down on stores, primarily groceries, that lock in janitors overnight in the hopes of discouraging theft. The bill, passed Sept. 14 and awaiting the mayor’s signature, will dramatically increase fines for violations, from $500 to $5,000 for the first offense, and $20,000 for each additional offense.