The Lovenotes blog is situated over at our website.
http://www.lovenotes.co.nz/scrapbook
For all our followers, please come along over and visit us :)
Thanks to the world for your support and patience, this blog has been an interim while our website was in the making. Loving all the connections and love we’ve received from around the world, and all the beautiful and creative people who follow what we do and are also doing the same. Love your work.
I’ve been doing a workshop for the past few days hosted by PIYN. A collective of us are making a Zine together in just three days. Working with Swifty and Paul Bradshaw, and a whole lot of awesome creatives from around the place, here’s a few snaps from the scene…
Just for fun – I came across this awesome, inspiring video earlier today. Puts things in perspective!
Gorgeous kids at Seattle Children’s Hospital sing along to Kelly Clarkson’s hit ‘Stronger’ – they warmed my heart, and will most likely put a smile on your face too.
Here’s to optimism and aroha x
I read some cool news the other day – the government is going to continue funding Enviroschools across the country. This means our little ones will have access to important education about sustainability and the environment from a young age – pretty awesome, if you ask me.
The initiative will provide kids with information about everything, from making their own compost to planting their own vegetable gardens.
A total of $7.6 million from Budget 2012 will be invested in the programs over the next four years. It’s awesome to see our government spending money on education for the future – and hopefully our kids will come home from school excited about sustainability and all things green!
Wendy Barry, World Wildlife Fund’s education programme manager, said: “Environmental education empowers and inspires young people to live within the planet’s limited resources. It gives children a great understanding of the way people’s lives impact upon the local environment and the planet.”
We like the sound of that!
For more information on Enviroschools and to find out how you can get involved, visit:
Some Lovenotes notepads were recently given away at the Auckland Changemakers Convention.
We caught up with Lani Evans from ReGeneration, who hosted & coordinated the event, to talk about positive change, generosity and the community, and the RAK she performed at the Convention.
LN: How did you get involved with Lovenotes?
Lani: I met Amanda at one of the first ReGeneration events in 2009 and she spoke about Lovenotes then. I thought it was a fabulous idea – such a simple concept, well executed and effective!
LN: Tell us a little bit about the Random Act of Kindness that you performed at the recent Changemakers Convention – how did the crowd react?
Lani: I spoke on generosity at the Auckland Changemakers Convention alongside Kate Frykberg from the Todd Foundation and Philanthropy NZ. We spoke about financial giving, volunteering and acts of kindness – how these acts of generosity are good for us as individuals and as communities. At the end of the speech, we asked the audience to look beneath their chairs where we’d taped gifts! Lovenotes very generously donated notebooks to us for this event, so 100 lucky people were able to walk away with upcycled notebooks.
LN: Have you had any feedback about the Lovenotes notebooks that you gave away?
Lani: Yes! People loved them – they were perfect, pocket sized, up cycled and the designs on them were really beautiful :)
LN: The Random Act of Kindness happened during a speech on generosity – what sort of things did you talk about?
Lani: We talked about philanthropic giving, volunteering and acts of kindness. We shared our own experiences, as well as some interesting facts about the benefits.
I love reading research on generosity. The most interesting thing for me is that our brains are wired to be altruistic. When we do something nice for someone else – whether it’s volunteering, or mowing your neighbors lawn or putting $2 in the Rape Crisis fundraising tin – we get a sort of feel-good buzz that’s called a helpers high. There were a couple of neuroscientists in 2007 who decided to explore this helpers high a bit further. They found that when you commit acts of generosity you light up the same reward pathways in your brain as sex, and food – which suggests that we’ve evolved to to be altruistic. How cool is that!
LN: Do you have any advice for businesses or individuals who are looking to make positive change within their community?
Lani: There are three ideas that we try to communicate strongly at ReGeneration.
Firstly, we believe that the challenges we face are interconnected and that in the future we will need to break down the silos and start working holistically if we’re going to create a more just and sustainable future.
We believe that it’s more useful to take a positive approach to change, rather than an adversarial one. So we really encourage each other to get behind ideas that we like, as well as, or instead of fighting against the things we dislike.
And we believe that you don’t have to be a superhero to make a difference – small acts are just as important as big acts and making mistakes is a really useful way of learning.
LN: Tell us a little bit about the sort of things you do at Changemakers – what does your job involve?
Lani: I’m a co-convenor of the ReGeneration Trust – I am lucky enough to work full-time on something that I’m really passionate about.
Our kaupapa is to help support and develop young people who want to create positive social, environmental, cultural and creative change in their schools communities and workplaces. We do this through a series of innovative national and regional events, mentoring and skills development, the creation of resources to inspire and record change and by modeling collaboration and generosity.
My job involves organizing and facilitating events, designing new programs and methods of engaging, creating films and resources for schools and young people and pretty much everything else!
It’s great – I get to do positive change work, engage my creative side and spend time really thinking about how to tackle challenges.
LN: What sort of people or businesses would you like to hear from and how can they get involved?
Lani: Everyone! Everyone is a change maker and everyone has a story to tell :)
Tonight we rocked an awesome Paper Jam at the studio. 4 boxes of paper, 3 awesome people, lots of good snatch and bevy, and as usual the good convos. What are the good convos you may be wondering? — Tonights topics ranged from leadership and team work and getting people amped, to movie music quiz, hybrid cars and luxury goods, and a good dose of how to make the world a better place.
For our snatch we had hot mugs of soup with fresh Paneton bread, Kikorangi Blue on walnut crackers, celery and carrot sticks with hummus, russian fudge, and Pheonix organic juice in the best flavour, guava!
If you’re interested in getting involved, we’d love to have yo’ll fans come join us! From giving a hand, to getting a back door perspective on how we do business and what we’re all about, or even for the kai and good tunes -diversity of interests welcome! E-mail us on hello@lovenotes.co.nz if it sounds like your gig.
Check out more pics over on our Facebook Page.
Wow, this is very awesome and beautiful!… Makes me wanna phone the girls up to meet at the floor, get out our old rhythmic moves and equipment, and do it!
And here is how they did it…
