While researching for A Red Lotus, many activities, web sites, products, etc. are discovered that merit sharing but do not fit clearly within the theme of specific needs yoga resources for NYC. Therefore, this blog was started to share such ideas as well as to spotlight some great community ideas.
It's been a while since I posted a "for a good cause" post, so here's one and there will be more soon.
VolunteerNYC is a service offered by The Mayor's Volunteer Center and United Way New York City. NYC nonprofit organizations can post volunteer opportunities and potential volunteers can search by area of interest, location, and keyword.
It's been a while since I featured an option for free online yoga classes
Yoga Today offers free online yoga classes daily, keeping some them available (with the help of a variety of sponsors). These are not specific needs classes, but some of them are for beginners and/or can be adapted (if you're good at doing that). Therefore, the classes might be helpful for someone who does not need a lot of adaptation and wants options for home practice.
GoodSearchRaise money for your favorite causes (including some yoga-related ones) by using GoodSearch as your search engine. Every time you search, they make a donation to your favorite nonprofit or school. The search is powered by Yahoo! (Shopping through their "mall" also benefits nonprofits.)
Lagusta's LusciousLagusta's Luscious vegetarian home meal delivery service helps you eat well. Wonderful, hassle-free, vegetarian meals (including entrees, side dishes, special treats, and simple heating instructions) are packed carefully and delivered to your door. No commitment is required, so you can feel comfortable trying her service.
Network for Good makes it incredibly easy to search for and find organizations to donate to and volunteer with. They even keep records of your favorites, automate donating, save your donation records (for tax time), and more. It's also easy to donate in someone's name (and share that with them). It's definitely a good idea for many good causes, so try it.
One BrickOne Brick is a volunteer organization that brings people together to help non-profits and community organizations staff events or work on projects. One Brick volunteering does not require a commitment; attend as few or as many events as you want. Check out the event calendar and RSVP online.
Yoga Spirit offers tele-classes (workshops) for students and teachers on a wide variety of yoga-related topics. The classes are live, 60-minute, interactive sessions conducted over the phone. The general format is lecture-based with question and answer periods. Sometimes, additional materials are provided via download. A downloadable recording of the workshop also is included in the fee–and the recordings are available even if you cannot or do not "attend" the workshop. (and, yes, they obviously are fond of lotus symbolism, too. :)
In order to stay informed when new workshops are scheduled, class times change, new classes are developed, classes are cancelled, and more, A Red Lotus relies heavily on a great free service, ChangeDetection. It monitors web pages for changes and automatically emails notifications of those changes. The email links to a log of the changes as well as to the page itself, making it much easier to find what's been changed. Anyone can use the service to monitor any website page for changes. It does not work well with frequently changed pages (unless the webmaster adds some extra code) and there are fancier, more complicated monitoring services out there, but ChangeDetection is an invaluable tool!
