All Posts Tagged With: "Health"

The Environmental Protection Agency has a way for you type in your area code and keep tabs on what businesses have regulations on pollution, hazardous waste sites, and other regulatory information. It’s called Envirofacts

Founded in 1986, and the oldest urban outward bound program in the U.S., the Baltimore Outward Bound Center teaches kids how to be community leaders and learn important life skills from our natural environment, whether out in the wilderness or at the heart of an urban center. The programs focus on helping kids cultivate personal and community leadership skills through physical fitness, self-reliance, craftsmanship, and service.

My good friend, Mare Cromwell , has been a professional gardener for many years. She also has a Masters in Natural Resources from the University of Michigan and has worked in the environmental field for 27 years both internationally and locally in the Baltimore-Washington region. She is offering a workshop on Sunday, October 12 (see our News & Events link to the calendar for more information.) This workshop comes out of her apprenticeship for the past twelve years with a Cherokee Medicine Woman. In these changing times, Mare tells me that Earth Mother is calling us to heal ourselves and our relationship to nature. Our gardens are where we can intimately rekindle a deeper relationship and reverence for the life around us to promote healing. This workshop gives people the opportunity to learn Native American practices and worldviews that will encourage deeper gardening practices honoring nature energies, garden health and planetary healing.

Mare’s gardening informs her other work, which is writing and occasionally speaking on ecophilosophy and eco-spirituality topics such as Environmental Hope, Living Simplicity, Deep Ecology and "Right Relationship". The workshop on October 12 will cover:
- How to bless your garden when you open it up in the spring and put it to bed in the fall;
- Claiming your relationship with the Creator and Earth Mother to honor your sacred place in the world and garden;
- Your garden as an altar;
- Intuitive gardening;
- Deepening your relationship and awareness of life around you;
- Nature as teacher and healer.

Amity Organics offers energizing herbs, healing plants, vitamins and soothing oils as part of an extensive line of organic skin, body, hair, cosmetic and nutritional products. They support sustainable agricultural practices and insure all their products are completely organic and certified to food grade standards. They also donate a portion of their proceeds to the David Suzuki Foundation to help preserve the environment. Learn more about Amity, check out there locally held events to encourage healthy, organic living and collective well-being.

Beyond Pesticides was formed in 1981 (formerly the National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides) as a nonprofit membership organization to help keep local, state, and national pesticide policy responsive to public health and environmental concerns. With the overarching goal of leading the transition to a world free of toxic pesticides, the organization seeks to effect change through local action, assisting individuals and community-based organizations to stimulate discussion on the hazards of toxic pesticides, while providing information on safer alternatives. Their website features daily news, various fact sheets, and information on a number of issues, as well as membership.

Baltimore Medical System (BMS) is building a Healthy Living Center in Highlandtown on a City-owned parking lot. From the lifeless asphalt will soon rise a LEED Certified building, housing a LEED Platinum community health center. On Friday, June 13, we went to their groundbreaking ceremony, which was both heartwarming and well-attended.

Twenty-three years ago, BMS began providing quality primary health care to the citizens of Highlandtown, many of whom were elderly and wished to age gracefully in their own homes. Today, BMS provides care to 14,000 people, including traditional east Baltimore residents, as well as new refugee and immigrant patients from around the world.

This new center will continue to provide the full range of health services for all people, whether insured or uninsured. The new space will allow BMS to increase their patient base to 21,000 and to provide educational programming such as smoking cessation, prenatal classes, and healthy eating in a new community room. As it increases its staff, it will continue to be the largest employer in Highlandtown. Continued

Melaleuca was originally founded in 1985 and now has a line of over 350 different environmentally safe consumer products. They believe that “the products we use everyday should make a significant difference for our health, our families and the earth. The name Melaleuca comes from a plant of the same name which is used as an essential oil for most all of their products.