Traderz grand opening at MiniMonos!

Hey Everyone, Phillies is posting!

I am honored to post about the new store on the island called Traderz! There is a list of items and some switch weekly!

So it is now open for business.

I am so glad the store opened because I was so eager to see what’s inside!

Here’s a picture of the whole store……..

  

Babbage had some things to say that were very important too!

 

He said that the items he has are extremely special and some will be switching out each week so make sure you get them while they are in the store!

I run a site called minimonosmod.wordpress.com and have just started it!

Thanks Minimonos for making and finishing and opening the store today! I don’t think I could wait another day

Now I am waiting for the Hairstyles lol!

Thanks again,

~Phillies!~

Thank you Phillies for the great post about Traderz!  The development team are working hard to fix some glitches over the next couple of days, then they will be working on some cool new updates!

 

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend -- Cool The Earth

We love hearing about other keen environmental advocates, who find fun ways to inspire school kids to take action!

A few weeks ago we described how Lynn Hasselberger created I Count For myEARTH, a great environmental awareness campaign teaching kids about trash -- in particular, the damage caused by disposable plastic water bottles.

Another incredible organization encouraging school kids to combat climate change, is Cool the Earth. Carleen and Jeff Cullen from Marin County, California, watched The Inconvenient Truth and took action to create their grass-roots, school-to-home program in 2007.

Cool the Earths' mission is to "engage kids and their families in climate change by motivating them to take simple, measurable actions to conserve energy."  The non-profit organization wants to demonstrate that every action counts and that, collectively, communities can make a big impact on global warming.

There are 5 main components to the Cool the Earth program:

This spirit-filled event is where it all begins.

Take an action, turn in a coupon, get a reward.

These monthly activities highlight a particular action.

 

A team approach makes it easy and fun to run.

See how all those actions add up to make a big difference.

At MiniMonos we're so impressed with the immediate impact the Cool the Earth community has made! Here are their stats so far:

And imagine how this positive impact will keep growing, as a result of these kids and their families changing their environmental habits over years to come.  Way to go, Carleen, Jeff and the Cool The Earth team!

You can find out more about Cool The Earth here.

MiniMonos members inspiring us to go green

We thought we'd share 4 wonderful green initiatives -- total surprises -- that our MiniMonos community have shared with us with this week:

1. PERcY's Pick Up Trash Friday

One of our MiniMonos members, PERcY, has been tweeting: "@minimonos I declare that every Friday its Pick up a piece of trash day!"   He has asked us to make this official at MiniMonos and publicize it so all the kids can be inspired to do it.  So this Friday we're starting PERcY's Pick Up Trash Friday!

2. Panda's green postal art

Another MiniMonos member, Panda, sent her membership subscription through the mail.  Accompanying it was an envelope that took our breath way:

 

 

3. Viper's Going Green Competition

A very generous initiative by MiniMonos member, Viper, led her to purchase a six-month Top Banana Gold membership as a prize for a Going Green competition on her MiniMonos fan blog. Here's what she has to say on her website,  MiniMonos Guide:

"Going Green can be described in many ways.  Using software on your computer...(may be hand-drawn), draw or create, expressing what you think going green is all about.  If you do not want to create or draw, then submit a picture of you doing something in real life representing going green, like planting a tree or picking up trash.."

 (Going Green title was drawn by blog co-author, Porsche.)  

 4. Peter Torr's raised garden bed

Inspired by MiniMonos founder Melissa Clarke-Reynold's blog post about her daughter Grace's garden, Peter, his parents and 10 and 12-year old Cousinettes decided to build a raised garden bed themselves!

The results are magnificent!

Now Peter will be eating silverbeet, rhubarb, peas, broccoli, passionfruit, jalapeno peppers, egg plant and even brussel sprouts!

We're totally inspired by what our wonderful MiniMonos community are doing to go green!  Keep up the incredible work, guys!

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend -- Natasha Utting

This week it is an honor to be writing about Natasha Utting as our MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend.

On Wednesday night, Natasha brought MiniMonos to New Zealand public attention with her feature on Campbell Live.  Since then, an overwhelming number of people we have spoken to have been blown away by Natasha's talent as a journalist. 

Sometimes it can be hard to explain exactly what it is we do ("What do you mean a social network site for kids? Oh -- so they play computer games?").  Natasha made it clear for people how kids engage on MiniMonos and her segment was so beautifully put together that beaming, glowing feedback about it has been pouring in.  And people signing up. 

On Wednesday before Campbell Live was aired we were thrilled to be ahead of our target, with 2700 kids as MiniMonos members.   Immediately after the show Kiwi kids came flooding in and they haven't stopped since.  In a few hours we will have over 5000 kids on board.  We're stunned. So is our server, which is barely coping with the level of traffic and will be getting a massive upgrade early next week.

We want to thank Natasha from the bottom of our hearts for her amazing journalism and the depth of understanding and feeling that she put into producing that segment.

However it's not new for Natasha to put her all into what she does! From being poisoned in India to undercover journalism in Iran when all foreign journalists were banned, back in New Zealand she has thrown herself into:

 -- A Jet Pack, as one of the first people in the world to ever fly one

 

-- A 'Onsie', looking sooo cute!  (Please don't kill me, Natasha!)

 

-- And the bath, rolling in the money as a novice poker player who cleaned up 30 other competitors to win cash for her favorite charity.

We think you are a total rock-star, Natasha!

You can contact Natasha here at Campbell Live

 

MiniMonos in the news!

Last night we were privileged to be on TV3's Campbell Live, a leading New Zealand current affairs program.

Natasha Utting visited the MiniMonos team and found out what kids are going bananas about!

Thanks so much Natasha and the Campbell Live team for your beautifully crafted segment. Immediately after the show, many hundreds of Kiwi kids created their own monkeys and came to check out MiniMonos.   It has been an overwhelming and wonderful experience to see such huge interest from our own home country.

Good Morning Melissa Clark-Reynolds!

MiniMonos founder, Melissa Clark-Reynolds was interviewed last week for Television New Zealand's Good Morning show.

On Good Morning, Melissa describes how her early  struggles, successful entrepreneurship and working with Al Gore led to her create MiniMonos.  You can check out her interview with Sarah Bradley here.

How MiniMonos kids are creating positive change

At MiniMonos we have always had the goal to give back to those who are not as lucky as we are.

Two days ago we launched our premium subscriptions and our leadership moderation program.  The general tone of the kids' conversation for the first day, was "Wow!  Look what I got!" and  "Cool! Look at me now!"  The MoniMonos team were also full of excitement about the kids' positive responses and the fact that they want to engage so deeply with us now, they are now co-writing our kids' blog!

After much back-patting to our team and kids, on Tuesday we decided to shift the focus off ourselves, and back onto the reason we created MiniMonos.  It's important to us that our MiniMonos kids recognise how to look after the planet we live on and help others who are affected by climate change.  Even in our testing phase, we have been donating to kids in need.

So as promised, our MiniMonos subscriptions will always give back.  For every six-month Top Banana Gold membership purchased, you and your child will cause a week's worth of clean drinking water for a child in India.  We do this through our partnership with Buy1Give1.  Buy1Give1 give the entire donation to an organisation called Bird India, which supplies clean water for these kids.

Our MiniMonos community will also save the life of an orangutan baby by adopting it!  Shortly, when we reach 50 Top Banana Gold memberships, we will adopt an orphan for a year.  This is an at-risk orangutan baby whose rainforest has been burnt down to make room for palm oil tree plantations -- the process devastating both for the environment and the orangutan population.

We're really looking forward to this wonderful opportunity to discuss with kids the effect of deforestation and how we can help. Through Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOT) we'll also be sharing reports of our MiniMonos orangutan as he or she grows up.

Here's what one of the MiniMonos kids had to say about giving back to those in need:

...thank you everyone for all you guys have done on MiniMonos and put the time and your heart in the game to make it the best it can be for everyone along with helping unfortunate kids in India and to give them hope!...I love the whole clean water supply for kids in India and can't wait to see the adopted orangutan baby! ^.^ Keep the bananas rockin' hehehe! :P

MiniMonos Meatless Meal -- Marvellous mushroom risotto

This lunchtime, for our MiniMonos meatless meal, I’m making mushroom risotto.  My family feels like something rich (and meaty!) so this is a vegetarian option for them to get that urge fulfilled. Looking at the recipe, I don’t think I’m going to have any problems with the rich side of things!  We’re going to have to have a big walk afterwards to work it all off!

The building materials:

•    1 tablespoon olive oil
•    3 small onions, finely chopped
•    1 clove garlic, crushed
•    1 teaspoon minced fresh parsley or basil
•    1 teaspoon minced celery
•    salt and pepper to taste
•    1 1/2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms
•    1 cup whole milk
•    1/4 cup heavy cream
•    1 cup rice
•    5 cups vegetable stock
•    1 teaspoon butter
•    1 cup shaved Parmesan cheese

The construction:

1.    Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Saute the onion and garlic in the olive oil until onion is tender and garlic is lightly browned. Remove garlic, and stir in the parsley, celery, salt, and pepper. Cook until celery is tender, then add the mushrooms. Reduce heat to low, and continue cooking until the mushrooms are soft.
2.    Pour the milk and cream into the skillet, and stir in the rice. Heat to a simmer. Stir the vegetable stock into the rice one cup at a time, until it is absorbed.
3.    When the rice has finished cooking, stir in the butter and Parmesan cheese, and remove from heat. Serve hot. 

The verdict:

I would never have thought about putting minced celery in a mushroom risotto, but it gives a really nice top-note to the dish, along with the fresh herbs.  Yes it was rich!  As usual I put too much on my plate, expecting to eat the lot.  I’ll be glad of the left-overs tomorrow lunchtime, though. 

Right.  Time for our walk!  If. I. Can. Just. Get. Myself. Off. The. Couch.

This will be my last MiniMonos Meatless Meal for a while.  As MiniMonos has been getting busy, the completely marvellous kids who are part of our community have been displaying their talent for writing, art (and being kind and funny!).  From next week, I’ll be posting a best-of the week, so parents can get an idea about what their kids really do on MiniMonos!

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend -- All Good Organics

  

Hooray!  New Zealand finally had its first shipment of Fairtrade bananas!

The dedicated New Zealand-based company behind this,   All Good Organics,  has  been looking to import Fairtrade bananas for a while, as they already do a lot of good work with women and business in Samoa,  building opportunities to sell their products in New Zealand.

All Good bananas come from a cooperative called El Guabo in Ecuador, which represents growers from 339 family farms in 15 different communities. 

As consumers, by paying approximately $1 more per bunch for All Good bananas, we will give back free medical care, food baskets and improved education for the farm workers and their families.  Some families in this community are even sending their kids to college for the first time. 

Amongst other initiatives, in 2008 El Guabo elected to use their Fairtrade premium for the following projects:

1.    Medical teams that each spent 15 days in high-need areas plus support for 2 medical dispensaries.  They also invested in preventative health measures including nutrition and vaccination programs.
2.    Providing teachers in 17 schools in the community, including special needs learning support.
3.    900 educational scholarships for the children of plantation workers and producers.
4.    Baskets of essential provisions, including food for the families of production workers.

Bananas are the main fruit in international trade and the most popular fruit in the world.  Incidentally, New Zealanders are one of the biggest worldwide consumers of bananas! Hmmm -- I wonder if that’s why we invented MiniMonos ('little monkeys' in Spanish) and why we sign-off our communications: “best bananas!”

New Zealand consumers, like many developed countries, respond strongly to supporting our neighbors around the world.  We recognize that there are real issues in countries where farmers are being paid poorly and treated unfairly. 

So we’re glad we finally have Fair Trade bananas in New  Zealand!  A huge well done and thumbs-up from us to All Good Organics!  Thanks Guys!

You can find out more visiting the All Good bananas website.  

What do your kids really do on virtual worlds?

Photo by GK Weir on Flickr

This month we've been astonished at the growth of the virtual world we're developing. Suddenly parents and kids have heard about MiniMonos and they're visiting in droves. We've been blown away by what these children are really like and what they do when they engage online.

Predictably, the first wave of kids coming to MiniMonos have been early adopters and are highly tech-savvy multi-taskers, mostly aged between 9 and 13.  Many of them are seasoned gamers, often on a number of mature virtual worlds. What surprised us, however, was just how heart-warmingly supportive and helpful they are to each other and to us.  Just last month, around 25 MiniMonos fan help-websites sprung up, created by kids, every one of them offering positive support to new players who are discovering MiniMonos for the first time. On MiniMonos Island, if any player asks a question, it is instantly answered by someone more experienced.  We have been inundated by players requesting to be virtual tour guides, ensuring that new players are welcomed while playing and chatting together.

There is plenty of parental worry about kids on computers being in danger of social isolation. Many articles advise parents to get their kids off keyboards so they can get 'real friends'.  As mother to an 8-year old, I've been very aware of this theory.  At MiniMonos we advocate a balanced lifestyle for kids -- we openly communicate our love for the environment and encourage the kids to interact with and look after the planet they live on.  But even the highly experienced gamer kids with multiple virtual world accounts have amazed us with their level of social competence.  They are articulate and outspoken. They are so polite it makes my mother-heart glow. They follow an ethical set of social rules. They want to know who we are and what we stand for   -- then they decide if we're good people and if they want to stick around.

These kids laugh a lot and love to have fun.  I spend much of my day writing Lol! and :-) to them with a big, silly grin on my face. I'm often giggling at my desk. Then suddenly they will say something beautiful or give one of the MiniMonos staff members an unexpected, stunning gift of art and we'll be so moved, we have tears in our eyes.

Yesterday, a group of children, as their monkey avatars, were chatting on the beach at MiniMonos when a new kid -- a nay-sayer -- turned up.  The new kid was walking around the beach saying: "This is boring." "I'm leaving." "This game is lame." "I'm leaving now". "I'm going."  He must have said it 20 times.  I was interested to see how the kids reacted.  A couple of them asked him why.  Others offered to help.  When he didn't explain but just kept repeating the same sentences, it was like an unspoken social rule was activated.  I observed, fascinated, as the kids just withdrew their attention from him and continued chatting and talking to each other.  They didn't move away from him.  They didn't say anything like: "Well why don't you just go then!"  They weren't negative towards him.  They just got busy chatting about other things and eventually the nay-sayer quietly went away.  Nobody commented when he left.

Researcher Mizuko Ito led a large study about young people's use of digital media, with 28 researchers and collaborators at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Berkeley. He says: "There are myths about kids spending time online -- that it is dangerous or making them lazy. But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age." Ito's findings showed that “most parents knew very little about what their kids did online, and struggled to give real guidance and help." 

We recommend that if your child spends time on virtual worlds, you check it out first, making sure that it encourages good values and is safe and appropriate for their age group. Check that it has 24-hour moderation, or a safe-chat filter.  Ask your child about the friends they chat to. Make sure they know how to communicate instantly to virtual world staff if there is a problem.  Allow them to show you how amazing they are online.  Prepare to be overwhelmed.

We expected that the process of building MiniMonos would be fun, exciting and challenging. We didn't expect our hearts to be constantly bursting.  We didn't expect the children to be so clever and creative. The MiniMonos team fire emails to each other several times a day with examples of cute, funny, amazing things these kids do and say.  We're always saying "Wow!  Aren't these guys INCREDIBLE!"

These kids I've described are the vast majority of the MiniMonos community so far, not the exception.  We're not so naive to think we won't have behavoural issues to deal with in the future; however, good safety standards and the ethical culture the pioneer kids continue to encourage mean that any problems are able to be dealt with quickly and effectively.

Parents -- thank you for allowing us meet your glorious children. Long may these amazing digital natives continue to teach, delight and inspire us all.

Comments

[Viper [Blowsight10]]

I'm really happy to be able to give another monkey the chance to be a Top Gold Banana Monkey but I also get the satisfaction knowing that I'm not wasting my money but instead I'm able to provide help and care to unfortunate kids in need on the other side of the world! :)

[panda]

I need to take some pictures of my garden, especially when spring come around, but not right now.

And all my trashes (cans and such) that we're saving so that we can take it to the recycle center once in a while. It's pile up high right now. :D

[Viper [Blowsight10]]

Lol talking about cans, I just remember my family collected all these tin cans and plastic bottle to recycle too but need to find one near where we live first. xD

-Viper

[panda]

Talking about that I need to enter my monkey photo holding one of my soda can from the recycle pile at my house. Hehehe

[smilinggreenmom]

Yay!! It is so great that she helped to raise this awareness to so many little ones! I am excited for you all at Minimonos :)

[Melissa (AlphaMonkey)]

Yes Natasha you are a rock star! You did great work raising awareness for The Climate Project last year too. Thank you for making a difference in this world.

[BUBLEE]

Hi u r meanage

[Dad]

My Sons, account user: Demo , has been set on safety chat, how do you get that off?

[Andrea Deely]

Hi Dad - thanks for your question. At this stage all our chat is set on safety until we get full chat. As we develop further and get 24-hour moderation, full chat will come.

If Demo earns his status as a Top Banana, he can message his buddies in open chat. He'll show you what Top Banana is -- he just clicks on himself and can see his Top Banana card.

Hope this helps!
Andrea