As a participant in Seventh Generation’s Come Clean campaign, NationSwell is asking that cleaning and hygiene product companies do the same thing that Seventh Generation has done for the last 27 years: disclose all of a product’s ingredients so consumers can make educated choices about what they bring into their homes.
To do this, we teamed up with activists and environmental advocates like Kristi Marsh who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 35. Watch the video above to see how Marsh, founder of the website ChooseWiser and the author of “Little Changes,” began educating herself and others about the chemical dangers lurking in our everyday products.
Tag: NationSwell Videos
#ComeClean to Prioritize Health
As a participant in Seventh Generation’s Come Clean campaign, NationSwell is asking that cleaning and hygiene product companies do the same thing that Seventh Generation has done for the last 27 years: disclose all of a product’s ingredients so consumers can make educated choices about what they bring into their homes.
To do this, we teamed up with activists and environmental advocates, including 24-year-old Erin Schrode. Today, she’s running for Congress in California’s District 2. But her dedication to the public’s wellbeing started more than a decade ago, when, at the age of 13, she co-founded Turning Green, a nonprofit dedicated to environmental advocacy.
Watch the video above to learn why proper ingredient disclosure is vital to one’s health and wellbeing.
#ComeClean to Protect Your Family’s Wellbeing
As a participant in Seventh Generation’s Come Clean campaign, NationSwell is asking cleaning and hygiene product companies do the same thing that Seventh Generation has done for the last 27 years: disclose all of a product’s ingredients so consumers can make educated choices about what they bring into their homes.
To do this, we teamed up with activists and environmental advocates, including New York City-based documentary filmmaker and father of two, Jon Whelan. His film, STINK!, reveals his three-year-long quest to uncover the source of a strange smell emanating from his daughter’s pajamas.
Watch the video above to hear what he learned about household products while filming his documentary.
#ComeClean To Live the Healthiest Life Possible
As a participant in Seventh Generation’s Come Clean campaign, NationSwell is asking that cleaning and hygiene product companies do the same thing that Seventh Generation has done for the last 27 years: disclose all of a product’s ingredients so consumers can make educated choices about what they bring into their homes.
To do this, we teamed up with activists and environmental advocates like Kristi Marsh who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 35. Watch the video above to see how Marsh, founder the website ChooseWiser and the author of “Little Changes,” began educating herself and others about the chemical dangers lurking in our everyday products.
#ComeClean About Household Cleaners
As a participant in Seventh Generation’s Come Clean campaign, NationSwell is asking that cleaning and hygiene product companies do the same thing that Seventh Generation has done for the last 27 years: disclose all of a product’s ingredients so consumers can make educated choices about what they bring into their homes.
To do this, we teamed up with activists and environmental advocates, including Richmond, Calif.-based housecleaner Elva Aguilar. Several years ago, she began having a variety of health problems that she eventually traced to the cleaners used in her daily work. After changing her products and habits, Aguilar’s health recovered. Now she is advocating on behalf of other housecleaners.
Watch the video above to see Aguilar speak out for her colleagues.
#ComeClean About Where That Vanilla Aroma Really Comes From
As a participant in Seventh Generation’s Come Clean campaign, NationSwell is asking that cleaning and hygiene product companies do the same thing that Seventh Generation has done for the last 27 years: disclose all of a product’s ingredients so consumers can make educated choices about what they bring into their homes.
To do this, we teamed up with activists and environmental advocates, including New York City-based documentary filmmaker and father of two, Jon Whelan. His film, STINK!, reveals his three-year-long quest to uncover the source of a strange smell emanating from his daughter’s pajamas.
Watch the video above to see how his true story is much more unpleasant than simply a bad odor.
#ComeClean About What’s Really Inside Your Face Lotion
As a participant in Seventh Generation’s Come Clean campaign, NationSwell is asking that cleaning and hygiene product companies do the same thing that Seventh Generation has done for the last 27 years: disclose all of a product’s ingredients so consumers can make educated choices about what they bring into their homes.
To do this, we teamed up with activists and environmental advocates, including 24-year-old Erin Schrode. Today, she’s running for Congress in California’s District 2. But her dedication to the public’s wellbeing started more than a decade ago, when, at the age of 13, she co-founded Turning Green, a nonprofit dedicated to environmental advocacy.
Watch the video above to learn what’s at stake when you don’t know what’s actually inside those gels and sprays.
When Treatment Makes Kids Feel Sicker Than the Illness Itself, This Program Offers Healing, Nutritious Bites
Danielle Cook’s oldest son was only 11 years old when he was diagnosed with stage three Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer that affects the immune system. “There was a huge sense of powerlessness and great sadness,” remembers Cook, a mother of three who worked for years as a cooking demonstration instructor in the Washington, D.C., area.
Cook, who now also works as a holistic nutritionist, relentlessly looked for answers in food. After months of making special recipes, she saw her son go from a “worn, depressed, tired kid to a healthy adolescent,” she says. Drawing from her experience, she founded Happily Hungry, a program that consists of cooking workshops geared towards hospitalized kids battling cancer and other illnesses.
Watch the video above to see how Cook helps patients and families deal with some of the negative side effects that accompany various medical treatments.
For Veterans Facing Employment Difficulties, This Boot Camp Boosts Their Tech Skills
“Thank you for your service, but we can’t accept you for this position.” That’s what Jerome Hardaway, an Air Force veteran, heard from several potential employers after he returned stateside from three tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Coming home amidst the second worst economic slowdown this country had ever seen didn’t help, but Hardaway suspects being fresh out of the armed services was a big problem to those looking over his résumé. “Inheriting the stigma of the Vietnam veteran, some people considered us unskilled or untrained,” he says. Today, with the economy largely back on track, Hardaway still hears about comrades struggling to find jobs. The overall veteran unemployment rate recently fell below the civilian unemployment rate, hitting a seven-year low of 3.9 percent in October 2015, but that still means about 422,000 veterans are out of work.
“For a lot of these [employers], the last person that served in their family was in World War II. We’ve gotten so far from there. If you served your country then, you knew you were not going to go homeless, that you’d get a job,” Hardaway says. “We’ve gone from joining the military being the best decision of your life to now, it could possibly put you in a worse position.”
To change that, Hardaway started looking for work in a rapidly growing sector: the tech world. The barriers to entry, like knowing how to code and compute, were higher there, but so was the possibility of finding a high-paying job. Hardaway had some experience — he started fiddling with computers in 2007, while stationed in Iraq, mostly “as a way to keep my sanity,” — but it was General Assembly’s 12-week boot camp in 2014 and a full-ride scholarship from the group’s Opportunity Fund that helped him transition to a full-time career in coding. Now, Hardaway is paying it forward by setting a goal of helping 1,000 fellow veterans follow him into software development.
When Hardaway enlisted, the wars in the Middle East were still new. Soldiers hadn’t started coming home, and the recruiters were persuasive, appealing to his patriotism and the sense of duty he felt coming from a military family. Hardaway, to be sure, doesn’t regret his service — “I’m happy I did it because I wouldn’t be where I am now,” he says, but finding financial stability as an African-American male and combat veteran in Tennessee was tough. Hardaway occasionally found freelance web design gigs, but on the whole, Memphis felt more “old-folksy” than “tech-savvy,” he says. “They call themselves a city,” he jokes. “They have tall buildings, but it’s really a town.” Its social structure operates on who you know, and Hardaway missed six and a half years of making connections while deployed.
He considered enrolling in a degree program, but he couldn’t find a school that offered what veterans needed as “24-year-olds reintegrating into civilian society.” A class might teach him HTML or CSS, but he wanted a foundation of strong logical reasoning to solve problems that would come up on the job. By chance, he saw a post about General Assembly’s Opportunity Fund on Facebook and applied. The first year, his application was rejected. Determined, he reapplied the following year. Within a week of losing his job, he was accepted for a boot camp in Manhattan.
He says practicing, “just making us solve problems every day,” was the most helpful part of his experience. “It’s like boxing,” he tells other veterans. “I can teach you how to throw all the punches, but you’re not going to be able to know if your first punch should be the right cross or an uppercut.” Now, he knows which tools to use and when. He says he’s started to think like a programmer, rather than a guy who liked messing around with computers.
“I tell people I’ve gone from no job to having one. I can’t understate the importance of General Assembly,” he says. “But I don’t feel like I’m special. I was willing to do the work. I went from being fired to being hired and getting invited to the White House.”
Dressed in sharp suits, a fan of shaken martinis and hot bowls of ramen, Hardaway today might not appear like the stereotype of a veteran. But his military training quickly comes out in conversation. “Roger that,” he wrote in an email about setting up an interview. His yes and no are “negative” and “affirmative,” and they’re often followed by a “Sir.” Above all, Hardaway strives to live up to the Air Force’s core value of excellence in all you do. That’s the principle that guides his nonprofit, Vets Who Code, in closing “the digital talent gap” for veterans. (A celebration of the group is why Hardaway went to the White House.)
Hardaway says veterans are particularly attuned to tech, because from the minute they enter basic training, they’re constantly working on solving problems in high-stress situations. While some employers may doubt those skills can translate from the battlefield to an office, Hardaway is blazing a path for other warriors to follow by sitting down at the keyboard.
Watch the video above to see how General Assembly helped Hardaway achieve a career in the tech sector.
MORE: The School That’s Making a Career in Tech Possible for Everyone
Allergy-Friendly Food Is Expensive. This Pantry Feeds Families That Can’t Afford Special Diets
At just 12 months of age, Emily Brown’s daughter was diagnosed with allergies to peanuts, eggs, dairy, wheat and soy. Because allergy-friendly food can cost two to four times the price of regular food, Brown’s family quickly became overwhelmed by its ever-increasing grocery budget.
Neither the federal nutrition program Women, Infant & Children (WIC) nor a local food pantry provided any financial relief to Brown since few of the available food products were safe for her daughter to eat. After meeting Amy Goode at a food-allergy support group, the two mothers launched the Food Equality Initiative, aiming to make food that’s safe to those with allergies more affordable and accessible to those in need. In 2015, the inspirational duo opened Renewed Health, the country’s very first allergy-friendly food pantry. In just a year, it’s provided assistance to more than 70 clients and has distributed more than 12,350 pounds of allergy-friendly food.
Watch the video above to learn how the pantry provides a safety net to low- and middle-income people with food allergies or Celiac disease.