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.

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend -- Global Green USA

In 2008, I had the pleasure of meeting Matt Petersen, President and CEO of Global Green USA.  He was a guest of The Hillary Institute  and spoke at a dinner in Christchurch, New Zealand.  The dinner was incredible.  It included Dr Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the 2007 Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the President of Kiribati who brought tears to my eyes with his heartfelt plea for the future of his homeland with the impact of sea level rise and climate change.  (You can read an interview here where he says Polar Bears get more attention than his people).    The following year I was honored to speak for The Hilliary Institute myself, on the role of entrepreneurship.

Matt Petersen and his Global Green USA organisation are hugely  inspiring.  I must disclose that I am a member of Global Green USA, and proud owner of their organic “Respect your Mother” t-shirt!

Global Green USA has done amazing work, greening the clean-up and rebuild after Hurricane Katrina.  Last year Time Magazine said “No organization is doing more to green New Orleans than Global Green USA...". They raised $10m  and have used it well – providing technical expertise and financial assistance to New Orleans schools, housing groups, and city and state agencies, leveraging the money to impact hundreds of millions in reconstruction.

Imagine my excitement when I got an email from Leonardo diCaprio!  Sadly, it was to a list -- but he had great stuff to say about Global Green:  “In places like New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles and Youngstown, Ohio, Global Green is developing and implementing cutting edge solutions like “green” schools, which improve test scores and lower energy bills at the same time. They are also creating the first net-zero energy apartment buildings -- which meet all of their electricity needs from solar and energy efficiency -- for low-income families in the nation."

Now, Global Green USA is taking several of the lessons they learned in New Orleans and has responded to the tragic disaster in Haiti by providing expertise and creating partnerships to help sustainably rebuild Haiti's devastated homes, schools and communities.

Their goal is help create a more sustainable Haiti, with energy efficient, healthy, disaster resistant buildings which will make the nation more resilient to future electricity shortages, public health crises, and disasters.  Global Green USA is helping to provide solar flashlights and other ‘sustainable’ aid for lighting and water purification that can assist in the long recovery from this humanitarian crisis. 

You can donate to Global Green's efforts in Haiti here. Funds donated will be dedicated to helping create healthier, energy efficient, disaster resistant housing, schools and other structures in the months ahead, appropriate for Haiti.

You can also find out more about Global Green here or follow them on Twitter.

MiniMonos Meatless Meal -- Ten-minute Tempura

This week for our MiniMonos Meatless Meal my husband reminded me about a meal we used to cook often when we first met.  I had forgotten just how easy it is to prepare tempura, and how delicious it is. And of course, it's the ideal dish to prepare if you're looking to reduce your carbon footprint, not just because it is meatless, but because the cooking time is super-fast.

The building materials

Tempura batter:
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup cornstarch
4 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 ½  cups cold water

For cooking, 2 cups of vegetable oil.

The construction

Put dry ingredients into a bowl.  Slowly add water, mixing until it is smooth, without lumps.

Chop your favourite vegetables into large chunks.

Put the vegetables into the batter, swirling until well covered.

Heat oil in a saucepan until it is simmering.  We kept an eye on it to make sure it wasn’t smoking-hot and kept our son well away from it.  I have a very healthy respect for a pot of boiling oil.

Drop several vegetable pieces into the hot oil and remove when lightly browned.
A tip to use less paper towels is to place one layer on newspaper.  This way you can use it more than once.

Once it’s cooked, dip into your favorite soy sauce and enjoy!

Again, I had forgotten how filling tempura is, so a few vegetables go a long way.  The vegetables were tender, with a light, crisp batter that didn't give us deep-fried regret after eating them.

Yum! We'll be putting tempura back on our regular household menu again!

MiniMonos Friday Featured Friend: Givealittle

The Legalo Family's Bar & Fales at Faufau beach, Samoa was destroyed in seconds by a massive tsunami on September 30 which caused wide-spread devastation across the island.

Despite their own immediate danger, the family's quick thinking and bravery meant a number of tourist's lives were saved. Those tourists, and their family and friends wanted to help the Legalo Family.  So they turned to Givealittle.

Givealittle is an online giving platform for everyone and part of a wave of online ventures worldwide who nut out ways to use the web to create a real difference offline.  As the Givelittle team say: “Everyday we get up and come to work on clever online tools so that real issues, people and organisations can get the support they need from people like you. Just call it our noble mission!”

With Givealittle you can find charitable causes to donate to, start your own cause for public donations  or support a favorite charity with a fundraising page.

At MiniMonos we used Givealittle to give a donation to the people of Samoa after the tsunami.  Donations to the Legalo family helped pay for timber for them to rebuild their business.

In the wake of the Haiti disaster 2 separate appeals launched on Givelittle raised a total of over $20,000 USD.

Here's the awesome and inspiring team behind Givelittle!  Fantastic effort, guys -- we love what you do!

 

You can find out more about Givealittle here or follow them on Twitter.