Sometimes called a “dinner co-op” or “supper swap,” explains the book’s co-author Alex Davis, it’s a small circle of 3 to 4 cooks living in close proximity who alternate giving and receiving fresh, hot weeknight dinners. “You cook only one night, but can ‘eat homemade’ all week."

“It’s a great way to build community, and it can help save money by cutting down on takeout or restaurant tabs during the week.” Davis continues. And it will allow you to “spend nearly an entire workweek slacking off between 5:00 and 7:00 p.m.”—while eating healthy too boot. Here’s how to get started:

1) Who’s cooking? The biggest challenge may be finding the right cooks to trade meals with. “You don’t want to jump in with just anyone who lives on your block,” says Davis. “It’s worth it to take a week or two to recruit the ideal co-chefs.” Davis came up with a compatibility survey to help Organic Fanatics pair up with Asian Mavens and vegetarians, for example. Some people host block parties, have everyone fill out the form, and several dinner co-ops can be born in a night.

2) Kick it off with a spreadsheet. Decide on a delivery schedule and portions (a 30-minute range is good, i.e. 5:30 to 6 p.m.). Exchange contact information. Give and receive delivery instructions. We recommend filling out a food preferences form in case you’d like your co-chefs to leave off the anchovies.

3) Buy containers. Invest in a group set to make life easier. For three households, you’ll want six sets, each with one rectangular and one round container.

4) Hold the salmonella. You’re now responsible for the health and happiness of not just your household, but of your co-op. Take steps to deliver on time, practice food safety in the kitchen, and prevent food borne illnesses.

5) Do your research. Before your official launch, consider a chef’s retreat for inspired menu planning—or a field trip to the gourmet store. Take a cooking class or start a cookbook lending library. Then, on your first night, begin with clean counters, an empty sink, clean kitchen towels, and a mostly empty dishwasher. Bring out your recipes and get started.

6) Make it fit your life. You’re doing this to make your life easier, right? So make sure the dinner co-op is as social—or not—as you want it to be. Do you want friends to hang out when they bring the food by or deliver and dash? Best to decide that ahead of time.

And your reward? “The best part for me is slacking off on a Tuesday night and having my doorbell ring just in time for dinner,” says Davis. “It’s like magic when a great cook is standing on my porch with a homemade dinner that’s hot and ready to eat. I didn’t have to shop for, or even think about those great meals. They just happen.”

Photo (cc) by Flickr user Noël Zia Lee

This post originally appeared on www.refresheverything.com, as part of GOOD's collaboration with the Pepsi Refresh Project, a catalyst for world-changing ideas. Find out more about the Refresh campaign, or submit your own idea today.

GOOD: How did the Soul Food program originate?

NIYATI DESAI: Through a partnership between the San Francisco Sheriff's Department and Nextcourse, we brought professional chefs into the San Francisco County Jail to teach women how to cook a nutritious meal. Naturally this transitioned to an ongoing, weekly course in nutrition and culinary skills. Classes were well-received but our staff was eager to do more to minimize recidivism and support women post-incarceration. The vision for the Soul Food Project comes from the desire to give women in our community an opportunity to reconnect with their purpose, to identify and define their skills, and to recognize their own desire and ability to thrive in this complex society.

G: Tell me a bit about how you work with the women.

ND: It's important to understand that a typical Soul Food client is likely surviving years of emotional and physical trauma, substance abuse, and isolation from society. Job and family skills are minimal, and access to a fridge, let alone a functional kitchen, is minimal. Understanding that vulnerability, we developed the project components with the following values in mind: affordability, accessibility and sustainability. Each week our nutrition class focuses on issues related to food and addiction, self-image, and illness prevention, while discussing the basics of an affordable, yet nutritious diet.

Our weekly cooking class focuses on doing more with less. Clients learn to prepare recipes at less than $3 per person. Each month, we all take a walk to a market in our local area, which integrates physical activity with knowledge of shopping tips and resources. Last, but certainly not least, the Soul Food Project offers 6-month internships for clients who demonstrate a strong commitment to living a healthier life. This is where clients shine, as they're given an opportunity to tap into another life other than that of crime.

G: What sort of results are you seeing?

ND: My clients fall along a wide spectrum in terms of their readiness and willingness to change. One client told me she only uses olive oil now and her arthritis has improved while another came back to tell me after six months of eliminating soda, refined flours and sugars she's lost 10 pounds and has endless energy. For me, these are all success stories. Just being a witness to these women who, many for the first time, are engaging with the process of change is the greatest gift and a wonderful reminder that a little support goes a long way.

G: Your greatest inspiration so far?

ND: It involves two former clients of mine, both in their late 30's or early 40's with long histories of incarceration. As they describe, they lived a life of gangbanging, hustling, drug dealing – the "fast life." With early release from jail, and on the home detention monitor, they came to the Women's Reentry Center and both participated regularly in the Soul Food Project classes. While deepening their relationship with food and self-care, they told me story after story of how much they loved and missed cooking, reminisced about their favorite recipes, and expressed their desires to open a restaurant and give back to their community.

I hired them both as interns, and now, project assistants. Today, Chiquita has developed nutrition presentations for local in-patient treatment programs, has taken on the role of Childhood Nutrition Educator, and is dedicated to teaching parents the importance of modeling healthy behavior for the next generation. Nicole is completing a Healthy Soul Food cookbook, detailing the history of traditional southern ingredients, describing the health disparities plaguing southern African American communities, and of course, presenting ninety mouth-watering recipes for how to maintain revered food culture, while preserving her people's livelihood.

This post originally appeared on www.refresheverything.com, as part of GOOD's collaboration with the Pepsi Refresh Project, a catalyst for world-changing ideas. Find out more about the Refresh campaign, or submit your own idea today.

For Slow Jams’ Shakirah Simley,

“I taught myself how to can, and through many hours of practice, voracious reading, and research, my canning expertise has developed immensely with very successful results,” says Simley, who sells tasty Slow Jams flavors like Cranberry Balsamic Pepper locally and via Twitter at @EatSlowJams.

You can help bring about social justice through jam by buying local, organic products—or by making your own. Simley recommends that beginners “stick to the classics, like berry jams, which happen to be very forgiving fruits during canning and preserving.”

GOOD: What inspired you to create “jam for the people?”

SHAKIRAH SIMLEY: While some folks grew up canning, I did not. I grew up in the South Bronx and in Harlem. We hardly had access to fresh, affordable, abundant (never mind, local or organic) produce. Whenever my siblings and I did have fruit, it was mostly during summer months. My mom would specifically get fruit from street vendors in wealthier neighborhoods, and bring it uptown.

Jam like Welch’s and Smuckers was a requisite for our PB&Js. When I moved to Bay Area, I was amazed at the year-round produce availability, the varieties, and the strong connection to sustainable, local food systems. My desire to make jams and preserves and to start a socially-conscious company like Slow Jams is heavily influenced by my experiences growing up and that lack of access. As I steadily scale up my business over the next year, I want to ensure through Slow Jams that high-quality, local and organic, and culturally appropriate and accessible are not mutually exclusive values.

G: All of your ingredients come from local sources in San Francisco. Tell me a bit about the philosophy behind that.

SS: Some people see canning and preserving as something nostalgic or a dated practice from the past, or even a passing trend with the upsurge in urban homesteading. I’m trying to change that with urban, fresh, and modern products that appeal to a diverse audience and have a social justice mission.

My vision for Slow Jams revolves around a commitment to sourcing a significant percentage of my ingredients and produce from urban growers. We will work to build a sustainable network of urban producers to readily supply the necessary raw product. Urban sources might include urban farms, community gardens, neighborhood fruit trees, urban backyards, and wild and foraged food.

By creating positive economic activity through the vehicle of a local food enterprise, I hope to stimulate the local economy through urban agriculture and green job development and utilize the untapped market of urban farmers and producers. And of course, make really delicious, high-quality jams and preserves that are priced reasonably and distributed equitably.

Photo By Michael Bonocore

This post originally appeared on www.refresheverything.com, as part of GOOD's collaboration with the Pepsi Refresh Project, a catalyst for world-changing ideas. Find out more about the Refresh campaign, or submit your own idea today.

“Environmental justice,” explains LEJ Executive Director Malik Looper, is “the right of all people to have equal access to their basic needs.” To that end, LEJ has been providing free environmental service-learning programs to classroom and youth groups in the Bayview/Hunter’s Point community for the past decade. This brand of environmental education, explains LEJ Deputy Director Pamela Calvert, “meets youth ‘where they are,’ in the natural environment of their own community, building an appreciation of the connection of environmental health and urban life as an issue of basic justice and equity.

This past Earth Day, the Center opened in a brand new, 100 percent off-the-grid building at Heron’s Head Park that not only houses LEJ, but functions as a showcase for solar power and other green technologies and materials. At both this event and the groundbreaking, which featured grass-mowing goats tended by LEJ volunteers, the pride and enthusiasm was palpable.

LEJ reaches out to youth from kindergarten to 12th grade with programs like “Calling Nature Home,” an engaging curriculum featuring 29 modules on subjects ranging from growing native plants to air pollution monitoring. The wide array of seemingly disparate topics helps youth to immediately grasp the interconnectedness of issues such as pollution in the Bay to prenatal health, subsistence fishing, poverty, and “food deserts.”

Once informed, students can begin to take action. As Calvert explains, “energy efficiency, waste management, water conservation, and green building are powerful and pressing issues in California, and the living systems of the EcoCenter will literally bring these ideas home at a scale that is tangible for youth.”

But perhaps LEJ’s most remarkable effort is its “Youth With a Plan” internship program which engages youth directly with what will be the largest redevelopment plan in San Francisco’s history: Bayview/Hunters Point. Involving communities in development is one thing, but involving youth is definitely a far cry from the status quo. LEJ’s ability to draw them in is nothing short of amazing and could have serious positive impact.

This is no small endeavor. Proposed plans for the 780-acre project include a 69,000-seat NFL stadium, 10,000 units of housing, a marina and ferry terminal, a 300-acre state park land swap, a “greentech” research park, and the demolition and reconstruction of a public housing project.

“Bayview youth will live with the legacy of this project for the rest of their lives,” Calvert explains. “They will either inherit a community that supports their education, health, and empowerment, or one that closes doors to them—or even requires that they move out altogether.”

Over 400 young people have been involved so far. “They are the real heroes in this project,” LEJ Board Member Antonio White explains. ”They inspire all of us with their commitment to care for our city and our planet.”

Photo courtesy of Michael Mustacchi

This post originally appeared on www.refresheverything.com, as part of GOOD's collaboration with the Pepsi Refresh Project, a catalyst for world-changing ideas. Find out more about the Refresh campaign, or submit your own idea today

With so many problems of its own, why does the First World think it can solve Third World's problems? A new competition asks if it shouldn't be the other way around.

There’s something missing in the conversation around what’s variously called “social design” or “design for impact.” Over drinks with socially engaged friends you might broach the subject, but few would dare articulate in public the uncomfortable aspect of this work, however well-intentioned: Why is the First World solving all of the Third World’s problems?

Carolina Vallejo, a Bogota-born designer, editor, and writer would be the one to bring it up. Wondering if the Third World didn’t have something to teach the First, she launched Design for the First World (or Dx1W), a competition created in response to what she perceived to be a ridiculous assignment in her design class: to create an object on "social design." Vallejo was incredulous. "Why would [anyone] assume that you can design something to solve a problem for the so-called Third World—a world you don’t know—in a week?”

With the tagline, “The Rest Saving the West,” Design for the First World proclaims 2010 International Year of the First World in Need, and has defined four main areas for entrants to address: Food Production and Eating Disorders, Aging Population and Low Birthrate, Immigration and Integration to Society, and Sustainability and Over-consumption.

Ouch. Clearly calling the kettle black, Vallejo wants to draw attention to the fact that we’ve got a lot of problems to solve in our own backyard. Vallejo’s undertaking, which doubles as her NYU thesis project, calls upon designers, artists, scientists, makers, and thinkers in developing countries to provide solutions for First World problems, and she’s received entries from 14 countries so far.

Too often public—and media—attention focuses on what Vallejo calls the “Bono and Brangelina” approach. "The Red campaign and the One Laptop Per Child are on my top list of ‘paternalistic let’s produce unnecessary crap and throw it out there projects,’" she says. "While I give the OLPC project props for understanding that things other than water and medicine are useful for communities in need, the whole project is nothing more than a generalized remedy that ignores particularities…who cares if there's no electricity! Lets give computers to the children! It makes me sick."

Vallejo is a provocateur, but the tone taken on the Design for the First World website is challenging yet playful:

We live in a complex world, one full of inequities and wonderful things. Our fellows in the First World have been concerned for a while with us having the major share of the badness, so we thought, why don’t we pay back? After all, their life isn’t problem-free either. And that’s where this competition starts.

Vallejo is obviously looking for a reaction (though she tells me the response has been “surprisingly good, almost disappointingly so”). The United States has a recession, Detroit, homelessness, BP—and isn’t doing such a great job solving those problems. If it's having such difficulty on its own turf, why should we trust it to fix things elsewhere? Why, she’s asking, is the tacit assumption that the Third World has nothing to offer?

Vallejo isn’t suggesting designers discontinue their efforts to bring clean water, electricity, and similar necessities to the developing world. Rather, she hopes to draw attention to—and dissolve—the dualistic, Us versus Them dynamic that persists in this kind of work.

“This is one planet and the multiplicity of voices should be working together to design a developed world, one that fits us all,” she says. “The present model of the First World is failing the Third World and we [the developing world] are following those steps without having much consideration on what are the mistakes already made and where are the new ones to make. It is not only that over-optimistic naive First World designers should stop thinking that just because they are from the First World they have the solution, it’s that designers from the developing world should wake up and think that what happens in the other hemisphere is our problem as well and that everything has a direct impact on how our life is going to be.”

Vallejo isn’t just picking on well-meaning proponents of design thinking. She’s also pointing fingers at the developing world for seeming too ready to hand over their fate to others unfamiliar with their reality. It is our fault, she explains, “for critiquing 'the system' as if we were not part of it. And this is scalable to planetary magnitudes. It is time that we all take responsibility and agency and become present and aware, and open our hearts and minds.”

Her message to her fellow designers is a positive one. She just wants to do “a little ass-kicking first.”

Design for the First World entries are due by July 1, 2010.

Working with a core team of about 10 people, Roberts co-founded Go Oak Cliff, a nonprofit news, advocacy, and quality of life organization focused on supporting and inspiring the local community. The group's projects involve everything from staging art exhibits to restoring an old local swimming hole that had been closed for over 40 years. Go Oak Cliff's most recent effort is The Better Block Project—which would make Jane Jacobs proud. It brought music, art, food, and street life to the neighborhood.

"We'd done PARK(ing) Day and this was a glorified version of that," says Roberts. "Now the city is allowing us to create other things. They're giving us free range. We learned that city staff has piles of work to do. They're understaffed, and the work they are having to do is fixing a stoplight or drain. If we come to them as citizens and say 'make a walkable community,' they just scratch their heads. So if we create the work and present a plan they're particularly amenable because they want to succeed as well."

"It's easy to get hipsters out," continues Roberts. "But how to get oldsters playing chess and kids playing in fountains? If you can make something appealing to 5-year-olds and 95-year-olds, you're going to be successful." On the heels of Go Oak Cliff's successful Build a Better Block weekend in April, Roberts offers 10 tips for organizing one in your neighborhood.

1) Pick your spot. Look for a block of buildings that has a good pedestrian form, but lacks a complete street.

2) Assemble a team. It should consist of grassroots community activists, artists, and DIYers. If possible, work with existing area nonprofit leaders or organizers (community gardens groups, local volunteer corps, etc.)

3) Connect. Make your Better Block part of something larger like an art walk, ciclovia, fun run, etc.

4) Use empty storefronts. Work with area property owners to gain access to vacant spaces for a weekend. We pitched the event as a giant "art installation" so the vacant spaces become de facto art galleries. Our property owners were excited to allow access because we were actively marketing their properties. And, immediately following our original better block, these vacant spaces were leased.

5) Pop up! Develop and install temporary "pop-up" businesses to show the potential for what could be if the street had a more inviting presence. This might include a café, a kids' art studio, a flower/gift market, or bookstore.

6) Gussy it up. We worked with a local props warehouse to bring in planters to help divide the street, and temporary street lighting.

7) Invite artists to perform. Music is a key component to having a dynamic street. Use a guitar amplifier and pump out tracks from an iPod, or invite DJs to spin.

8) Give people a reason to stay. Provide plenty of seating, things to read, games to play, and food to eat.

9) Get a permit. You'll probably need to close a portion of the street. We specifically asked for a permit to allow one lane of vehicle traffic so that residents could see that a "complete street" that allowed all modes of transit was a viable solution.

10) Invite local VIPs. Include your Mayor, council members, and city staff, so they can see the possibilities for themselves. Be sure to track sales to show the increase in area business—potential for increased tax revenue is a city's largest motivator for change.

Photo (cc) by Flickr user blhphotography

This post originally appeared on www.refresheverything.com, as part of GOOD's collaboration with the Pepsi Refresh Project, a catalyst for world-changing ideas. Find out more about the Refresh campaign, or submit your own idea today

Here in the United States, we generate 18 billion pounds of dirty diaper waste per week, and each filthy diaper takes up to 500 years to biodegrate. Earth Baby offers a much-needed solution.

Design too often focuses on creating a need rather than responding to one. This isn’t always bad—we never knew we needed iPhone apps, for example—but often, it is, as anyone gazing at stovetop potato bakers, underwater cellphones, and ultrasonic dog deterrents on the pages of a Skymall catalog can attest.
 
Aspiring designers hope for a life of creating solutions but often find themselves creating more stuff. Such was the case for Mark Siminoff, a former designer at a global design and innovation consultancy. Though the company talked a lot about sustainability, Siminoff and many of his colleagues had become increasingly disillusioned by how much of their work seemed destined for landfill. At the office, he found himself talking with a couple of friends about the ridiculous quantities of waste they were generating—which was definitely not what they’d signed up for when they decided to become designers.
 
The three friends had something else in common—all had recently welcomed new babies into their lives. I resisted calling this article, “Three Men and Some Babies” but this shared experience of fatherhood was really the turning point. As diapers became a fact of their daily existence, so too did debates on disposable versus cloth which quickly led, says Siminoff and his fellow designing dads, to an epiphany: "This is a huge problem." Followed by, "this is a tremendous market opportunity."
 
The trio realized that designing a better diaper, says Siminoff, would be “the coolest design project we could work on.”
 
The stats on diapers are devastating: The average child generates close to 10 pounds of dirty diapers per week. California alone uses 3 billion diapers each year; the United States 18 billion. All of that goes to landfill each year where each diaper will take between 300 to 500 years to decompose in landfill (and yes, this holds true for even those so called "eco" diapers).
 
Armed with this information, the men set out to do as they were trained: Design a solution to a problem. They began by asking, as Siminoff explains, “What’s the least we can do from an impact standpoint and still have the greatest benefit?”
 
They explored existing alternatives to disposable diapers. “The issue wasn’t what to do for the three percent of people using cloth,” says Siminoff, but for the disposable majority throwing away that staggering amount of diapers each year. They discovered that many of the things that we think are recyclable or compostable are not. That the cost and energy associated with cloth tend to diminish most of its environmental benefits over disposable. That conglomerates like Proctor and Gamble were putting little effort into research and design for disposable alternatives. That some people let their babies go diaper-free but that was not a reasonable pursuit for most. And so Earth Baby was born.
 
This wasn’t about creating the iPod of diapers (as a designer friend of mine was once asked to do). The designer fathers just wanted to find the best solution to the problem. So rather than design a brand new diaper, they found a company, Nature Baby Care, founded by a corporate lawyer-turned-environmental-activist, that was already making compostable diapers in Sweden. Thorough research convinced them that this company’s product—100-percent chlorine free, made from biodegradable materials (mostly of polyactic acid plastic made from non-genetically modified corn with absorbent material from forest certified wood pulp)—was environmentally responsible. But this was only half the battle. Earth Baby needed to find a way not only to make these diapers a convenient, affordable option for parents, but a way to guarantee that they wouldn’t end up in the landfill like their disposable competition.
 
Siminoff and his partners developed a service model so customers could not only get diapers delivered, but also get them picked up and composted—guaranteed. Each week Earth Baby delivery trucks bring diapers—as well as a small selection of other compostable (of course) baby products like wipes, bibs, nursing pants, and training pants—and then return to pick up the used product (which parents place in bio bags) and bring it to a composting facility where they turn into compost in as little as 14 weeks.
 
The complexities of designing this model—How many delivery trucks? How large a service area? How many scheduled pick-ups and drop-offs?—was the biggest challenge. On the first day out it took five hours to deliver to 17 families; today, Earth Baby averages about 20 deliveries an hour.
 
Just over a year after launch, Earth Baby now serves 686 customers in the Bay Area, and is adding approximately 50 to 60 new ones each month. Siminoff is unsure if major players like Proctor and Gamble or Kimberly Clark are working on their own version, but he’d welcome the competition. He and his collaborators are for now just taking pride in what they’ve accomplished this past year.
 
“After more than twelve years of designing consumer products (all of which were destined for landfill) and diapering my two children, I felt as if I had contributed more than my fair share of harm to the environment,” says Siminoff. “It's incredibly gratifying to know that all this diaper changing and awareness that EarthBaby has inspired is making a real and measurable change for our planet.”