Kate's fruit monkey oatmeal lunch.

Homemade Angry Birds chocolate bird-day cake for @tinierbites' 2nd birthday.

Pig construction with nilla wafers, buttercream, toothpicks, and chocolate sprinkles.

Tasters' set of microbrew at Canmore's The Grizzly Paw

Tasters' set of microbrew at Canmore's The Grizzly Paw

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Vancouver website consulting for restaurants, food service, and hospitality

Blogathon Vancouver 2008 for the David Suzuki Foundation

Tiny Bites is at it again for Blogathon 2009! This year, we’re aiming to raise $2000 or more for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society. Visit the Blogathon 2009 section for more info.

This is the one-stop page for learning about the Tiny Bites effort for Blogathon Vancouver 2008. During the course of the Blogathon, use this page to donate to the cause, pledge your support, and encourage me to stay awake!

If you’d like to learn more about Blogathon Vancouver 2008, please read on.

What the heck is a Blogathon?

A Blogathon is a fundraising relay where a community of bloggers commit to publishing 1 post every 30 minutes over the course of 24 hours. Every cent of the proceeds goes to the blogger’s charity of choice. This year, 13 bloggers in the Lower Mainland and beyond will be donating their time and words for a good cause:

What organization have you chosen for Blogathon 2008?

The David Suzuki Foundation is my charity of choice for a number of reasons:

Achieving sustainability within a generation is an admirable goal to strive for

By no means am I a shining example of how to live sustainably. Still, it is important to me to change my unsustainable habits, one by one, until I achieve a lifestyle that I can be proud to teach to my children and grandchildren. The David Suzuki Foundation’s programs can arm you with research and tips to help you build towards sustainability without making you feel like you have to give yourself a major overhaul in a single day.

Supporting the David Suzuki Foundation is more about taking action

I personally feel that the best way to support a cause is by donating time and effort. The David Suzuki Foundation would naturally appreciate your monetary contributions, as their programs are supported in large part by public donations (see their Annual Report, page 23). However, what I admire is that they also ask you to take action: participation in their free programs; advocacy; volunteerism. So don’t feel obliged to pledge dollars to support this Blogathon. I’d be ecstatic if you pledged me by taking action instead. Or you can do both and be a superstar!!

David Suzuki kicks ass!

Dr. Suzuki has been my role model since I first watched him on The Nature of Things when I was a little girl. He made science accessible, brought environmental issues to light, gave me the travel bug, and is just plain cool. It was only natural that I’d want to align myself with his foundation for an event like this!

What can I do to support you?

You can do one or more of the following to support myself or my fellow participants during Blogathon 2008:

Donate to the cause

You can sponsor me by donating to the David Suzuki Foundation via their online donation form. Please do not send me money directly. I would appreciate a comment below or an email telling me about your contribution so we can aggregate results.

Are you an organization that is interested in donating $50 or more to the David Suzuki Foundation? Please do drop me a line. I’d be happy to spotlight your contribution in one of my 48 posts. If your organization is a restaurant or food stop that I have been to, it’d be my pleasure to write about the dining experiences I’ve had with you in that same post.

To donate online and have your contribution tracked to the Tiny Bites effort, please complete the 4 steps below:

  1. Visit this special Tiny Bites link to their online donation page
  2. Fill out the 2-page form with your info and your donation amount. Feel free to make it on behalf of your restaurant or business. You’ll get a tax receipt and much gratitude from me if you donate $20 or more!
  3. In the field marked Comments, please type in tinybites. This will help us track donations that are tied to this Blogathon effort. See the sample screenshot below
  4. Write me a comment on this page to let me know of your contribution

Invite Blogathoners to blog and/or dine from your cafe or restaurant

If you are a dining establishment with Wifi access, kindly consider hosting us bloggers that will not have the time or the alertness to make food and drink for ourselves. We’d likely fall asleep at our desks if we all blogged from home, so any love from coffee shops, restaurants, or Wifi spots, even if for an hour or two, would be very much appreciated.

Similarly, I’d be interested in profiling any such hospitable sponsors in a post…especially if you happen to be a regular haunt that I have not yet had the opportunity to write about.

Cheer us on!

Here just a few ideas on how to keep participants motivated and awake during Blogathon Vancouver 2008:

  • Drop a comment on our blogs
  • Send us ideas for blog posts
  • Show up at the venue(s) where we are blogging from and chat with us for a bit
  • Spread the word about the Blogathon and our efforts by linking to us (from your website(s), Facebook, StumbleUpon, Digg, etc.)

When is Blogathon Vancouver 2008 taking place?

The Blogathon takes place over the weekend of July 25-27, 2008. There are three shifts that a participant can choose from.

My shift is the Sunshine Shift:
10pm on Friday, July 25th to 10pm on Saturday, July 26th

Thank you for your interest in Blogathon Vancouver 2008. Hope to see you online during my shift!