Epic Checkin Contest Winner: Cheryl’s touching & triumphant !teachyourkids feat

Cheryl entered her !teachyourkids epic feat in our weekly epic checkin contest, and after reading about her son’s triumph, we had to choose it as the winner. Props to Cheryl for being such a dedicated and passionate parent to such a wonderful kid. Here’s her story:

“My son is almost 10. He has autism spectrum disorder and some other medical conditions. He is bright, charming and surprisingly social. He has come a long way in the nearly 5 years since he was diagnosed.

So many of the daily life skills that other kids pick up by osmosis or with simple instructions, we have to specifically teach him. Each skill has to be broken down into steps, taught one step at a time, practiced and as he becomes proficient at a step, we add the next step until, over time, he learns to successfully master a life skill. Sometimes he picks it up so fast it makes your head spin. Other times it is a long laborious process - toilet training has only recently been mastered (90% success rate) but it has taken 5 years.

My husband and I have become very creative in our teaching methods - learning happens best when it is fun! We also have deliberately chosen to celebrate all the small victories that come along – things other parents take for granted, we celebrate because they are hard-won stepping stones towards our son’s independence. We use lots of positive reinforcements - sticker charts, praise, high fives etc.

The example I gave was nose-blowing. It sounds odd but it is something a person needs to be able to do for himself, and to do it properly (without grossing out people around you!). It is counterintuitive to breathe forcefully out your nose, so I racked my brain for years trying to find ways to teach this. I pretty much had to wait until he had a cold, but no progress. I even cut up a file folder to make a headband, stapled a pipe cleaner to the front and bent it forward like a fishing pole and attached a tissue to the end of the pipe cleaner, so it dangled in front of his face. The game was to pinch one nostril shut and using only the open nostril, blow the tissue. Necessity is the mother of invention, but desperation is the father! Believe it not, even this didn’t work!! What finally worked was…

In Case You’ve Missed It: The Week of February 6, 2012

nicole-clark:

From sexual health, mental wellness, relationships, and everything in between, these are some of the news highlights that have happened this week:

President Obama punks the GOP on contraception, creating a compromise that addresses their concerns about religious institutions how having a say in the birth control debate, but without actually reducing women’s access to contraception. Kudos.

And does it seem like the discussion of birth control on cable news is dominated by men? You’re not imagining it - check out this graphic by Think Progress.

..and here’s a question for GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul: Sir, what the hell is “honest rape”?

Good news: Teen pregnancy rates in the United States are the lowest that it’s been in over 40 years.

Not good news: While teen pregnancy is down in the US as a whole, the rates for Black and Latino youth are 2-3 times higher compared to whites.

February 7th marked the 12th year of the annual National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day . Here’s a great analysis on why HIV still ravages Black communities.

Florida: A man is sentenced to taking his wife out on a date to Red Lobster and bowling after being charged for domestic battery.

Did you watch the Super Bowl this past Sunday? Did you noticed some of the sexist ads that popped up during the commercial breaks? Here’s how some Twitter users responded to the sexist ads.

…and CCN suspends Roland Martin for his tweets advocating anti-LGBT violence. Here’s an open letter written to Martin by Morgan State University student Samantha Master.

After a month of intense protests and advocacy, the makers of LEGO are meeting with SPARK to discuss how they can go back to offering all LEGO toys that challenge boy AND girls creatively and intellectually.

Here’s a beautiful insight on how we should love our daughters from the inside out.

Meet Adora Svitak, the winner of Women’s Media Center’s Girls State of the Union Address contest.

Read More

02/16/12

Featured Friend of DailyFeats: Generosity Day

Click the image to go to the Causes.com Generosity Day page

We were excited to reboot Valentine’s Day with Sasha Dichter, creator of the Acumen Fund, and his wonderful idea that shows how true, selfless love of our fellow (wo)man combined with simply saying “yes” to requests can make a difference in the world.

Generosity Day challenges you to do one simple thing differently: Say “yes” to anyone who asks you for something, whether that be help, advice, or a buck for coffee. It’s an exercise in disabling the filter that has inevitably set up shop over our brains and hearts in this crazy world of noise. We’re constantly tuning things out so that we can go about our lives peacefully.

Today is different. Be all ears - be all action. You’d be surprised how much good paying it forward can do for all of us.

Here are some DailyFeats members who we found giving without even telling them too! Since they were already acting out generosity in their lives, we gave a little back to them. I’d say they were pretty pleased, wouldn’t you?

Watch Sasha Dichter’s TEDTalk on the original inspiration for Generosity Day here.

Did you participate in #GenerosityDay? Let us know by Tweeting us @dailyfeats and you too will be rewarded! *hint, hint*

02/14/12

bedsider:

We made this for you as a token of our adoration using the mini love note customizer we created with Daily Feats. We hope you’ll be our valentine, but we’re not the jealous type.

So why not make your own notes for love, friendship, or just plain flirting? Four letters to choose from, and you earn Daily Feats points for doing it! Because you’re awesome and we’re guessing your valentines are too.

Our newest collabo with Bedsider is pretty sweet (ha, ha).

And as our favorite resident vampire would suggest, you can also always fill one of these bad boys out for your favorite furry friend if you don’t have a valentine.

02/10/12

Nancy did !loseapound and entered it in our first Epic Checkin Contest. Her feat check-in is here, and she told us what made this feat extra special for her:

“I’d successfully kept off the #100 pounds I’d lost five years ago until I had to quit my gym a few months ago because of an eye problem that doesn’t let me get hit in the head (I had done Muay Thai and BJJ). That, and the stress of moving, led to my eating more carbs than normal, heck, more food than normal, and not exercising. As a result, I had gained back 25 of those pounds that took me a year to take off. This Wednesday I began to closely follow low-carb, Thursday I joined a gym where I can lift weights and do cardio, and today I weighed five pounds less than on Sunday. I find that using DailyFeats is helping me meet my goals by encouraging me to take small but tangible steps every day.”

Our members are so great. Nancy, thank you for sharing your story with us and I’m so glad you’re finding DailyFeats so helpful. Keep it up! :)

02/6/12

Nonprofit Spotlight: The Oath Project

Since the financial crisis in 2008, pressure has mounted on financial leaders to take responsibility for their actions. The Oath Project, one of our non-profit partners, is designed to teach business managers to implement ethical and socially responsible business into their responsibility into the culture, core values, and day-to-day operations. Financial leaders and their companies employ more than half of the US population. Don’t you think that they should be held to the same ethical practices as leaders in different professions?

The Oath Project especially aims to teach ethical business practices to future business leaders while they are still school. Distrust for financial leaders is higher than ever recorded, so there is no better time than the present to teach our future leaders how to conduct business in a way that benefits us all.

Over 7,000 people have taken the Oath so far, and we are super excited to announce that The Oath Project was invited to attend Europe’s leading student-run conference on responsible business February 23-24. Taking the Oath is easy; however, knowing how to implement these strategies and their benefits is the hardest part.

You can take the oath on their website. Learn more about it here, and sign it here. Don’t forget to check it in through the DailyFeats widget on the right-hand bottom corner of the homepage:

Posted by Maria Jose-Villa. Let us know if you took the Oath by checking it in and sharing your feat on Twitter. Tweet with us @dailyfeats!

02/3/12

Featured Friend of DailyFeats: The Giving Keys

This week our featured friend is Caitlin Crosby of The Giving Keys, a charity that sells custom-made key necklaces engraved with empowering words. All proceeds go toward helping the homeless people that work there afford start new lives off the streets. And the matching featured feat? !payitforward, of course! I spoke with Caitlin last week. Here’s her story…

Singer/actress Caitlin Crosby had been wearing a New York City hotel room key around her neck on a chain for a while when she happened to be standing in line at a locksmith shop and saw him engraving numbers onto keys.

“Do you by any chance have letters?” She asked him, thinking it’d be cool to have the word “LOVE” engraved on her key necklace. He did - and so the first giving key was born.

Caitlin and one of her key necklackes from The Giving Keys Facebook page

The Giving Keys evolved from being just a crafty, unique piece of jewelry that Caitlin wore in her everyday life, to the pay-it-forward model it now is. She gave away that first key to a friend for her birthday. Why? Caitlin said, ”When you have that gut feeling that you know it’s going to make that person’s day and they need it for some reason, it’s gonna mean something to them. It’s about having the mentality of not having our hands holding tight to our material possessions,” Caitlin told me.

Today, The Giving Keys has morphed into a charity aimed at helping young homeless people get off the street and make money doing rewarding work. Awesome, right? It began with Rob and Sera, a couple whom Caitlin met in LA and decided to take to dinner (see more about this part of the journey in Caitlin’s video here). They’re now gainfully employed, and Rob is starting community college this month.

The charity employs nine people at present, and they spend their days carefully engraving words like “HOPE”, “FAITH”, “DREAM” on old, reused keys. And business is good: the necklaces are sold in many specialty boutiques, as well as online. Caitlin told me although they’ve been overwhelmed by requests, they are excited because, as she said, “We want to give the people as much work as possible so they make as much money as possible.”

This model of empowerment is working, and not just in the financial sense. Caitlin stressed that The Giving Keys is special and unique because it truly brings everyone together. From the person giving a special key to a loved one who seems to need it, to those requesting certain words for their key, to finally, the ones engraving the words, the workers themselves: ”People all around the world are in need of these things, these words, in their lives. The people making these feel like, Wow, we all have the same emotions, everyone starves for it,” Caitlin said. “It’s interesting that the people engraving the keys are having to look at these words all day long, having to pound out the word DREAM or HOPE or FAITH. Whatever they’re going through, they can’t help but be encouraged and know they’re not alone.”

The most popular “key”word? Strength. Caitlin thinks it’s because “the obstacles that we’re all faced with can weaken us, and a lot of people may feel they need a reminder”. Scroll through the stories on The Giving Keys website, where anyone who has bought a key or given their key to someone is invited to post: you’ll see echoes of this, that the key - this one, small thing - can serve as a talisman for someone who needs a little bit of something to keep them going.

A custom-ordered key from a mother to her daughter who was going through hard times (from Facebook)

Like we always say: small positive actions lead to big change, and The Giving Keys is just another wonderful example of that. Thanks, Caitlin, for sharing your story with DailyFeats!

What would your word be? Let us know on Twitter with the hashtag #givingkeys @dailyfeats.

01/30/12

A Few Good Pins This Week - January 27, 2012

Hi Featers!

Our pin blog this week is all over the place - from yummy recipes (both containing cheese, of course - oops!) to inspiring quotes to kitchen organization tips. And don’t forget to check out the no-more-muffin-top-tips. :)

Follow our Pinterest boards and share the love.

1. Sir Edmund Hilary quote: “It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

2. 5 easy ways to get rid of a muffin top

3. Skinny macaroni and cheese with broccoli recipe

4. Waffle-iron ham and cheese panini

5. Tips for kitchen organization

01/30/12

Nonprofit Spotlight: Prevent Cancer Foundation

If you knew it were within your power to potentially stop something horrible and life-threatening from happening to you, what would you do?

Well, you would probably try to stop it, right? Fortunately, when it comes to preventing cancer, there are many easy ways to proactively protect yourself. Prevent Cancer Foundation, one of our nonprofit partners, wants you to do them all and check them in on DailyFeats.

They’ve designed a challenge, Stop Cancer Before It Starts!, which consists of feats geared toward the small steps you can take on a regular basis to prevent cancer in your own life. When you’ve finished the challenge, you’ll have enough points to redeem toward a donation to this foundation, which is funding extremely important and tide-turning research like that of Lauren Trepanier, DVM, PhD, who is using her Prevent Cancer Foundation grant to analyze whether certain enzymes in our bodies are associated with a risk of breast cancer.

In fact, every 50 points you earn on DailyFeats can be redeemed for a $1 donation to Prevent Cancer. Not bad, eh? With a few trips to the gym and some healthy meals, you can help make an impact on this organization’s efforts. Small positive actions lead to big change.

Donate points to Prevent Cancer Foundation here, on our donation rewards page. And keep it up, Featers! Together, we’re changing the world, one feat at a time.

01/27/12

A Member Testimonial: Ameliab555

We have genuine, helpful interactions happening on our site every day. It’s an added bonus when we get to put a face with a name that’s become familiar to us, and share a member’s story with you.

Amy (Ameliab555 on DailyFeats.com) shot a testimonial over to us this week and it made our day! See it on our video testimonial page.

01/26/12