ph: Chip Py. Dress by Beau Soleil.

April 19th, 2008 - Emcee at SF Green Apple Festival

Dress by Manish Arora

April 21st, 2008 - Attending the LOHAS/BBMG Event at ABC

Dress by Manish Arora

Havana pant and shirt by Anna Cohen; dress by Doie Designs

April 23rd, 2008 - The Discovery Upfronts

Summer Rayne Oakes with Annabelle Gerwich at the Discovery Upfronts. Summer Rayne wears a re-created vintage bustier dress by Deborah Lindquist.

April 24th, 2008 - Project Earth Day Ecofashion Show

Summer Rayne Oakes, Sass Brown, and Jill Fehrenbacher - judges at Project Earth Day student fashion show. Summer Rayne wears a Beau Soleil dress; iwood eco glasses; and hand made necklace with found stones by Kirsten Muenster ph: Inhabitat.com

April 25th, 2008 - Green Tie Gala

Dress by Enamore

Labels: Best Dressed Environmentalist, Best Dressed List, Discovery Planet Green, Ecofashion sustainable style, Summer Rayne, Summer Rayne Oakes, Sustainable Style Foundation

Emceeing Green Apple SF in my psychedelic Manish Arora dress

Radio Active and I. Ph: Diana Kurnit

Tommy on the drums. Ph: Diana Kurnit

Catching up. Ph: Diana Kurnit

"So I saw this porcupine on the street..."

In awe with Wavy Gravy. Ph: Diana Kurnit

Crowd went on for miles...

and miles...

Pumping up the crowd

Labels: Battleground Earth, Brett Dennen, Discovery Planet Green, Green Apple Festival, Jane Goodall, Ludacris, Planet Green, Summer Rayne Oakes, Tommy Lee, Wavy Gravy

We're on it. Ibrahim and I. Organic cotton "Clean Up or Die" tee by Katharine Hamnett!

Michael - I lost your contact!!! Get in touch with me!

Welcome to the Gun Show!

Vincent, you're the man!

My good friend Billy Parish, founder of Energy Action

Recording the music

Vincent (left) was the shit. He and I kept it real at the dinner. Richard Halpin (right) runs AmericanYouthWorks.org out in Texas.

Van signs his early-release book for me.

Ibrahim (Saudi Arabia) & Ibrahim (New York)

Father of environmental justice, Robert Bullard speaks at Dream Reborn. Some other notables are Afeni Shakur, Tupac's mom, who spoke of black entrepreneurship; Majora Carter of the Sustainable South Bronx, Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center; Bracken Hendricks of the Apollo Alliance, and a host of others. They were all invigorating speakers.

A group of Dream Reborners gather for a photo opp.

We even took the trombone player to the streets

Labels: Dream Reborn, Energy Action, green jobs, racially-just green jobs, Van jones

Labels: Flock, Flock Eco, Flock Eco Edition, Summer Rayne Oakes blog

I love the Germans or perhaps it's the other way around. No matter- there's just all love up in this house. And the Germans are just so on top of all things going on. The Frankfurter gave me some props in a recent issue and ran this beautiful photo that Anouk and I did at my place before she left New York. I'm wearing a Katharine Hamnett shirt and John Patrick Organic jacket. Click on the image to enlarge.

Labels: eco fashion, Frankfurter, john patrick, Katharine Hamnett, organic, press, sustainable style

Josh from Relix Magazine, one of the organizers of the event

My son, Dr. Hayes, Founder of the Rainforest Action Network

Labels: Discovery Planet Green, Green Apple Festival, music, Radio Active, Summer Rayne Oakes, Tommy Lee

Labels: Earth Day, Green Apple Festival, Mickey Hart, Radio Active, San Francisco, Summer Rayne Oakes, Tommy Lee

Labels: Campus Climate Challenge, climate action, climate change, global warming, Time Magazine, youth action

Governor Chris Gregoire
Office of the Governor
PO Box 40002
Olympia, WA 98504-0002

Dear Governor Gregoire,

As a constituent of Washington and staunch supporter of clean energy solutions and racially-just green collar, I am writing to thank you for supporting the Washington State Climate Action and Green Jobs Bill.

This historic piece of legislation will not only help build a sustainable economy for the state of Washington, but will also serve as a model for the rest of the country. I have full faith that when the time comes to fund the green jobs training program, you will provide your support. As you already know, enacting the bill will be fundamental to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty and fight ever-rising green house gas emissions.

Sincerely,

Labels: apollo alliance, cascade climate network, climate change, climate solutions, direct action, Green Festival, green jobs, Seattle green festival, Washington climate action, Washington State

It was Pete's brilliant idea not to create an all-out green show, but build green features into MTV's most popular show, The Real World. As part of MTV's Break the Addiction campaign, Think MTV partnered with Bunim-Murray Productions to help put together an eco-friendly house for the 20th season of Real World. In addition to the green house, Bunim Murray did many things to "green" their production of the show, and the roommates were given tips on how they could improve their lives and reduce their impact on the planet during the season.

Labels: eco-friendly house, green hollywood, Pete Griffin, Real World, Real World green house, Real World Hollywood, Summer Rayne Oakes, Think MTV

Labels: ecofashion, Green Festival, green jobs, Seattle, sustainable style

While some of us struggle to manage our shoe collections, many children have no footwear at all. A young American entrepreneur hopes to rectify the situation, writes DEIRDRE MCQUILLAN

WAY UP in the mountains of northern KwaZulu-Natal, about a seven-hour drive from Durban, hundreds of children are waiting eagerly in their classrooms for a delivery of new shoes. Many students trek daily to Juba's school in their bare feet through dense forestry and across rivers - when it rains, conditions become even more arduous. It is not unusual in these remote rural places for them to face a walk of nearly two hours to and from school each day.

Today, however, three vanloads of Americans are coming to distribute 50,000 free canvas shoes called TOMS in all colours and sizes that are already cult items sported by a more privileged elite living in very different circumstances on the west coast of the US.

The story of TOMS began when Blake Mycoskie, a 30-year-old Texan and former philosophy student living in Los Angeles, went to Argentina for three weeks in January 2006 to learn how to play polo and discovered the alpargata, an inexpensive traditional rope-soled espadrille worn by the gauchos. Mycoskie, the son of an orthopaedic surgeon and a best-selling cookery writer, was also struck by the barefooted children living in poverty in the area, often scrabbling around rubbish dumps, their feet cut and bruised.

An entrepreneur who had masterminded a number of successful ventures, he got the idea of upgrading the alpargata for the US market and for every pair sold would donate another to a child without footwear on a one-for-one basis. So, with his polo teacher, Alejo Nitti, as partner, he set up TOMS, derived from "Shoes for Tomorrow", enlisting the help of a factory in Buenos Aires. The hip new alpargata, which costs $4 to make and sells in the US for $38, came with improvements such as a hard-wearing rubber sole, leather insole and zany, colourful canvas uppers. The initial run, an investment of $2,000, was 250 pairs, which Mycoskie brought back in duffel bags to sell in LA.

A year later, TOMS has become an astonishing success story with some 10,000 pairs sold in the space of eight months through its website, www.tomsshoes.com, and in shops such as American Rag, a famous fashion store in LA, and trendy Scoop in New York's meatpacking district. Celebrity endorsement from the likes of Karl Lagerfeld, Keira Knightley and Cameron Diaz fanned the flames and the shoes won a Smithsonian design award last October. The lightning speed of the idea and enthusiasm for the product and its cause has taken all those involved by surprise, not least the company's founders, who were initially overwhelmed with orders following widespread publicity for their story.

In keeping with the pledge to give one away for every one sold, Mycoskie and a T-shirted, gum-chewing team of family and friends flew to Argentina last October to distribute 10,000 pairs from a double-decker bus. What that meant was going into the northern Argentine jungle and fitting each pair on every child, working tirelessly until no bare feet were left. For all concerned, it was an extraordinary and, at times, very emotional experience.

Now the focus has turned to South Africa, where in tandem with Food4Africa, an NGO feeding 16,000 malnourished children a day in the Eastern Cape, the TOMS shoe bandwagon rolls into action. They arrive armed with a consignment of 50,000 pairs of shoes from Argentina and face a back-breaking schedule of visiting at least four schools a day in widely scattered, disadvantaged areas. The groundwork was prepared and schools selected by three hard-working members of Food4Africa.

The group of 25 workers are mostly Americans and volunteers from the company and interested friends of TOMS. The team includes Mycoskie, his mother Pam, father Mike and brother Taylor, alongside Alejo Nitti, a distributor from Korea, and assorted Californians, cameramen and photographers. A key player in organising the event was Candice Wolfswinkel from Phoenix, Arizona, who has extensive experience in managing charitable foundations. Boxes and boxes of shoes, from tiny TOMS in red and white stripes to colourful tartans and corduroys, are loaded into vans.

The drill is to arrive at a school, set up in one of the classrooms, line up the children, then fit the shoes on their little feet. The delighted, if often bemused, smiles on their faces is reward enough, though there are occasional disappointments when the right size isn't available, pacified by promises to send on replacements. The sheer entertainment provided by the madcap Californians who came with skateboards and played football with the kids outweighs everything else.

"They'll talk about this for weeks afterwards," says Mr Myeni, the principal of Jubas school, after hundreds of children had received their shoes, sweets and colourful elastic bands handed out by Pam Mycoskie. "They have enjoyed this so much. It's been more than just shoes. By playing, running and laughing with them, your coming has been a blessing," he said.

The area around Juba is spectacularly beautiful, with lush green hills and panoramic views, but the reality on the ground paints a grimmer picture. In a country with some 2.2 million children orphaned under the age of 17 and 65 per cent living at home with teenage heads of households, so-called child parent families, this district is one of the most economically deprived in all of South Africa. There is 80 to 90 per cent unemployment and the generation of parents from 20-49 has been all but wiped out by HIV/Aids. Many of the children so eagerly trying on their new shoes had come to school on empty stomachs.

Sisizakele Special School for children with disabilities was set up five years ago, the first and the only one of its kind in a population of 108,000, and some of the problems are only too evident. Run by a dedicated principal, Lorato Jood, three teachers and voluntary house mothers, it caters for 40 children, most of whom have congenital disabilities such as cerebral palsy, spina bifida, Aperts syndrome and autism. There are more than 1,000 children needing special care, but there is only one therapist in the area. Sisizakele can only cope with 40 children.

Many of the children, ranging in age from two to 16, were in wheelchairs or leg irons. One little boy could only walk struggling on his knees. But they sat and sang, and those that could danced a traditional stamping Zulu dance. Their housemothers sing May You Stay Forever Young for the guests. In return, much to the amazement of the gathered throng, two of the Californians lunge into an impromptu Zulu dance that puts smiles on the faces of even the most severely disabled kids.

FOR THESE YOUNG US philanthropists, the experience validates a collective belief that there are new ways of doing business to which consumers will respond. Many refer to Invisible Children, a documentary about child soldiers in Uganda made by three film school graduates from Los Angeles that had an enormous effect in the US of raising awareness of the issues and prompted the setting up a charity called Invisible Children.

"Youth in the US are organising in a major way like never before using new media for discussions," says Mike Hammer, who runs TOMS intern programme in Los Angeles. "People are finding creative ways to raise awareness of issues. We should do all that we can to use our privileged position to make the life of those struggling in the world better - that is the whole idea of TOMS."

Such lofty ideals, also echoed by other TOMS crusaders, are all very well - the venture sometimes raises more questions than it answers. According to Summer Rayne Oakes, the eco-model who is also part of the group, "fashion can raise awareness. A simple shoe has an amazing story behind it and students can be transported to an entirely different world and learn about different cultures and developing countries. That is what was interesting for me; TOMS is an inanimate object that kids get." A qualified scientist, Oakes is to present a series on sustainability for the Discovery channel this year and has spoken on the issue at the WTO.

On the five-hour road journey back to Durban, Candice Wolfswinkel argues that "consumers have so much power. The millennium generation are much more conscious consumers and this company is one of the few making a product that makes a difference. TOMS is just a beginning, but there is so much potential. People don't need TOMS, leather shoes can be better, but it is the principle behind it that's important. It is showing business owners that they can make a small change in the world if they are willing to give up some of their profits."

TOMS shoes are on sale in Brown Thomas for about EUR 40

Labels: Blake Mycoskie, South Africa, TOMS shoe drop, Toms Shoes