Helping Ninjas recently volunteered during a local park’s celebration of monarchs! Cool Creek Nature Center of Hamilton County Parks in Westfield Indiana held their 3rd annual Migration Celebration! Helping Ninja kids and moms and dads volunteered their time to help at the event on Saturday morning – and got to take part in a monarch butterflies release! Cool Creek Migration Celebration consisted of live music, games, crafts, face painting. a boucne house, learning and interactive stations, tagging of butterflies, butterfly release and tons of family fun!
Thank you Cool Creek! Thank you for creating awareness and helping to educate youth and the community about monarchs and for your continuous efforts to help the monarch species.
These Helpoing NInjas give Cool Creek’s Migration Celebration a helping ninja high five!
Want to learn more about pollinators? Helping Ninjas loves hearing about ways you are learning — learning is helping! Share with others what you have learned – and be a helping ninja! Share with us or tag us @LearnHelpShare
Popcorn&Pollinators. Learn more about our popcorn and pollinators educational program for students birth through teen. Helping Ninjas believes it is important to teach our youth about pollinators, native species, native plants, healthy soil, organic fertilzers, endangered pollinators, eco-system balane and sustainability — and how you can help. Learning what you can do at home to help is a beginning step to conservation.
Helping Ninjas recently donated organic, home grown tomoatoes to Second Helpings – an organzation that rescues food and creates meals to feed those in need in the Indinapolis and surrouding areas. Helping Ninjas grew tomatoes from seed, using organic and natural gardening methods. Such as home made compost, organic tomato seeds, organic soil, orgnaic fertilzers: egg shells, milk, banana peel tea and epsom salt. They also used herbs as natural pest deterrants.
Helping Ninjas made homemadre pesticides from garlic and cayenne pepper to deter the unwanted pests that attemped to eat their transplant seedlings. The kids planted the tomato seeds in mid-Feburary and kept them well-cared for indoors using natural light from windows and light from a house-lamp. We turned the seedliings daily, rotating them towards the sunlight, and assemalated wind by having our hands over the seedlings. We replanted the seedlings three different times, into larger containers as they grew – using home made compost and eggshells as fertilizer. By May, the seedlings were grew into healthy plants ready to go into the ground. A Helping Ninjas dad created a tomato garden in their backyard.
Helping Ninjas give Second Helpings a Helping Ninja high five!
Learn about Second Helpings in Indianapolis and how their food rescue program encourages helps to feed others in need all while creating a sustainable environment!
Did you know that they also compost any leftover or unused food scraps?
Want to see more pictures of the Helping Ninjas Volunteering at Second Helping? Click Here.
Food Rescue Environmental responsibility is at the core of our mission toreduce waste. We take food resources that no one else wants or needs to fulfill the most fundamental needs that people can’t life without — nourishing food and careers that lead to self-sufficiency.
It’s estimated that every man, woman and child in the U.S. wastes up to a pound of food every single day. In Indianapolis alone, that’s almost 1,000,000 pounds of perfectly good food headed to the landfill every day. We work with our partners in the food service industry—distributors, caterers, restaurants, grocers, and others—to safely and efficiently collect surplus and perishable food that was headed for the landfill. Every year Second Helpings rescues more than 2 million pounds of nutritous food and uses that food to transform lives through our Hunger Relief and Culinary Job Training.
Recycling Often when Second Helpings takes in food, we also take in a great deal of packaging. It would be incompatible with our mission to merely throw away this extra packaging. Second Helpings recycles all cardboard, crates, plastic and bottles that hold our food. We also recycle all of our office paper and packaging as well.
Garden In 2011, Second Helpings partnered with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful to build a water-friendly herb garden at Second Helpings. Volunteers worked hard to erect the structure, grade the land, and plant all the herbs. Now, the garden is providing the kitchens here at Second Helpings with fresh basil, parsley, mint, and oregano. These herbs will season Second Helpings’ food long into the winter.
The Magic Yarn project, is a program for kids suffering from cancer. Hundreds of thousands of kids have cancer. The most common type of kids’ cancer is Luekimia, Luekimia is a blood cancer most commonly found in kids. kids going through Luekimia usualy go through a Drug treatment called “Limo-Therapy.” People going through this treatment have hair loss due to the effects of the medicines. The Magic Yarn Progic makes beanies in the style of princess hair styles and Superheros. The use yarn to make these beanies, which make them much more comfortable than store bought beanies. These beanies are also very uniqe do to their creative styles. People have said that their children have felt like normal children again after recieving these magnificent gifts. The Magic yarn Project also accepts cards with Superhero stickers, and Princess stickers. My school has been praticapating by collecting Superhero and Princess stickers, and then they have been turning those into cards for donations. Help The Magic Yarn Project accomplish their goal by donating today! Link to donate: Magic Yarn Project
Join the efforts in standing up to plastic to help the environment! Lindsey Fella-Berry, CEO of Helping Ninjas, and Laya Berry, a 7-year-old Helping Ninja, share startling facts about how plastic impacts the environment negatively, such as:
Recyling is important becuase it helps reduce waste in our landfills, but knowing where to send recyacalbes is even more important. Some plastics can’t be recycled locally, and have to be sent to certain states or facitlities, even other countries.
Learning about companies like Terra Cycle, finding local sources that collect plastics #2 and #4 and single use plastic bgas, or calling your local recycale company can help you learn where and what is recyable. And then you can share what you learn, by tagging us!, or emailing Helping Ninjas so we can share with others!
Recycling is a word to learn, and practicing it is an act to learn.
Share with us how you are reusing, recyling and reusing – or reducing at home! We want to hear! Email: [email protected] or post and tag #HelpingNInjas on Social Media.
Learn Help Share
Helping Ninjas Anthony and Shruti at school, helping other students learn how to help the planet! #HelpingNinjas
Stop by one of the followiing Ninja Zone locations!
The Books for Youth Program is committed to placing backpacks filled with 25 age-appropriate books into the hands of Indiana foster youth and young adults. changes that and provides books foster youth can call their own. Since the program began in 2006, BFY has given away more than 8,750 backpacks.
Books For Youth is an organization that makes backpacks for youth who are in Indiana Foster Care. Indiana State Department, Indianapolis Colts and CSI Cargo Services are working together to pack each bag with 25 books. So far, Books for Youth has collected enough books to give out approximately 8,000 backpacks to foster chidren Indiana.
To learn about Books For Youth and it’s sponsor, CSI Cargo Services:
Why is the books for youth organization important? There are approximately 29,000 youth in the foster care program. Since 2016 only 1,500 have been adopted. The youth that are placed in Indiana Foster Care do not always have the opportuntity to read books outside of school. So, in order to solve this problem Books For Youth is giving to school backpacks with 25 books so that these children can have the benefits that reading can bring to kids.
We need to support this cause; imagine having being in foster care, and not being able to have books? I believe that what foster care kids are going through, or have been through, not having a book to read, should not be one amongst the list of hardships. And, this can be addressed, simply simply donating a book.
Helping Ninjas is helping the Books For Youth program by providing collection bins, pick up and delivery for others to join the efforts, by donating new or gently used books.
We currently have bins located in the folloiwng locations:
Off The Wall Sports, Carmel IN
Excel Chiropractor, Marcus McCray (86th and Ditch)
College Wood Elementary Media Center, Carmel, IN
Ninja Zone – Grand Park Academy, Westfield, IN
Ninja Zone – Geist Academy, Gesit IN
Ninja Zone – Wrights Gymnastics & Fundamentals, Carmel IN
CreekSide Middle School, Carmel, IN
How can you help? Create awareness or donate a book. Ask someone if you can have a book drive of your own. We, Helping Ninjas, are workiing with Books For Youth and helping them to help the communities to help provide collection bins and carry out pick-up/delivery of donated books.
I truly believe together we can help these kids. Everyone deserves the opportunity to read.
Written By: Sid, Helping Ninja, Age 11, Creekside, Carmel, IN
Accoriding to an article by Demin Vaughn, in the IndyStar published in July 2018, “The program is important on two fonts. First and foremost, statistics show that children who read, succeed. Reading at an early age not only increases success in the classroom, but also in life. Secondarily, the program raises awareness of the foster care system in Indiana — a state that’s in desperate need for foster families.”
The creator and founder of Books For Youth, Steve Pemberton said in an interview on the Books For Youth Website “Reading gave me self-esteem, confidence and let me know that, despite the instability and uncertainty that was happening all around me, I did have a purpose and a place in this world after all.”
To learn more about Books For Youth, click on the one of the following links:
Helping Ninjas wants to share this educational information we learned about on the United Nation’s website. The full article and graphs can be seen at: www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/
Here are a few key facts Helping Ninjas learned from United Nations and wanted to share!
Abstract:Did you know that there are 815 million people in the world that go to bed hungry, while 1.9 billion people are overweight?
The world has set a challenge to achieve Zero Hunger and better nutrition by 2030. But governments can’t do it alone – everyone has a role to play.Come on the Zero Hunger journey with me to discover what each of us -governments, farmers, businesses and the general public- have to do to reach this goal. Learn how you can become part of the Zero Hunger Generation!See also related Activity Books:
How do I participate?
BOOKS FOR YOUTH GAMES RSVP
What if I can’t make the Books For Youth Games? 
