By Speed Shop Specialties Inc. November 25, 2008
Thank you for taking the time to connect with us on Merchant Circle. Please take the time and visit our website and see the multitude of services offered from daily maintenance to full service auto repair and online appointment scheduling. www.speedshopspecialty.com ...read more
By ActionCOACH Business Coaching | Christy Shore August 27, 2008
Connie, I am so grateful for the way you've handled projects and requests for me. You provided me with the space to breathe at a crucial point in my business. I'm looking forward to future projects with you, and will be happy to provide a written testimonial or verbal reference whenever you need it. Feel free to give out my name and number to your prospects. Twin Cities business owners, managers, and other busy people: find out how Q1 Consulting can take the load off your back and free up your time to invest in things that generate income for you. Connie will ensure things are done well and done right and done on time. ...read more
By Homes by Kodiak Inc May 05, 2008
There is more to a CPA service than just taxes & ledgers. You need someone that looks to your future business, investments and the next tax year. Planning ahead for your financial future. Kodiak: Custom remodeling Expert. ...read more
90 Days to End World Hunger By ServILutions What if it could be done? What if their was a way? Would you help your neighbor and join the cause today? What if a man had been shown a plan? Would you open your heart and hear the man? What if he saw a vision to change the earth? Would you give the idea a chance at birth? What if you thought it can not be done? Would you crush the thought, and say "change starts with one?" What if you prayed for a sign, and it was given to you? Would you ask for another, or believe it to be true? What if you said "nothing matters but gods plan for me?" Would you cast out the thought, or accept the peace? What if being content was a state of being? Would you ask for the faith of a child to start seeing? What if you didn't understand, but still believed? Would you accept the greatest gift you ever received? What if being content meant battling yourself? Would you throw in the towel, or fight for your health? What if true peace meant selling all that you had? Would you value peace enough not to be sad? What if a better way was shown to you? Would you ask your neighbor, "will you join too?" Food for thought. We will be attempting to work with non-profit and government agencies to implement our course of action. We would love your help. Please send us an email with your ideas, and necessary information to help us help you help others. servilutions@gmail.com Below information is originally found on http://www.trickleup.org/foodforthought/Food-For-Thought.cfm 1. Acknowledge the existence and severity of the food crisis in both the west and the east of AfricaThe Horn of Africa is currently suffering from a full-scale famine. While a far cry from the eastern crisis of the African continent, the entire semiarid Sahel region across Northern Africa faces a fixated hunger season every year. Although Mali rarely makes the news, it is often referred to as the “silent tsunami” of Africa’s food crisis. The poor can always expect the hungry season to be waiting for them when their stores of millet, rice and corn run out. ~ Marieme DaffLearn more about the hungry season >Learn more about Trickle Up&food; security >Read more on Roger's blog on agricultural development in Africa >Back to top2. Increase agricultural research&development, especially for appropriate technologies based on local needsWe must make agricultural research and development a priority. We are spending less today than 30-40 years ago when Dr. Borlaug, along with the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, were able to save 100 million lives through the Green Revolution with research into heat tolerant wheat. Today, we need crops that use less water, are resistant to disease, and are capable of adapting to climate change. One of the ways this can be achieved is by creating and sustaining relationships between American colleges and colleges around the world, who are already at the forefront of such R&D.~ Dan GlickmanAt the same time, the Green Revolution was not perfect, and the technological advances that were its catalyst had negative repercussions as well. We should not ignore this reality, but rather embrace listening to the local needs and abilities of the farmers themselves to use this technology properly. Future R&D needs to complement the local contexts it is trying to support.~ Roger ThurowRead ENOUGH: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman >Back to top3. Strengthen institutions to adopt the right to food“ Ensure accountability so governments follow up on their commitments to ending world hunger.”In the fight against hunger, institutions and rights matter. People are hungry not because too little food is being produced, but because their rights are violated in impunity. Victims of hunger must be allowed to access remedies when their authorities fail to take effective measures against food insecurity. Governments must guarantee a living wage, adequate healthcare and safe conditions of employment for the 450 million agricultural workers in the world. This can be achieved by enforcing a stronger implementation of the conventions on labor rights in rural areas. Finally, it is essential that their actions in this area be subjected to independent monitoring. ~ Olivier De SchutterLearn more about the right to food >Back to top4. We have the way, we need the political willAfter the Green Revolution of the 1960s, the world believed the problem of hunger was resolved. Governments, non-governmental organizations and other influential entities became complacent, and there were huge decreases in aid directed towards food security efforts in places like Africa. The US alone had food aid decrease from 15-20% in the 1980s to 3% a few short years ago. We need to reverse this neglect that has set in. With the lessons we continued to learn from the Green Revolution, we have the way to decrease global food insecurity; we just need the will. Fortunately, we have some efforts already in progress: President Obama’s recent USAID Feed the Future campaign, the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations’ own joint initiatives in Africa, and a new drive by African leaders to meet the food security needs of their countries, particularly in Mali, Ghana, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya. ~ Roger ThurowRead Roger's blog post on "Political Will" >Read Roger's blog post on "The Right Vote" >Back to top5. Invest in creative new tools for fighting hunger, particularly focusing on early childhood nutritionWe need to avoid the long-term costs of hunger, and we need to start with children. One of the most striking statistics that has come out in the last few years was that if a child doesn’t get proper nutrition the first one thousand days of his/her life, they will never catch up later on. We need to focus on creative solutions, such as school-feeding programs. You and I get cranky if we’re trying to learn or work while hungry; imagine that magnified 10x worse for a starving, impoverished child. If you feed that child while you’re educating them, it will help keep them in school, and they can retain more of their education to better their future.~ Bettina LuescherLearn more about school-feeding programs >Back to top 6. Empower womenWomen are the ones who make sure the whole family is fed. If you help a woman feed her family, by extension an entire village will be fed. This trickles up, and eventually you can feed the future of an entire country. Empower women with a livelihood that can bring them income, and also create solidarity among women in a village to stand together in times of need. ~ Bettina LuescherWatch how Chhaya Madji overcame her family's food inscecurity >Back to top7. Create local, rural empowermentApproximately, 75 percent of the poor reside in the rural areas. One major reason why the majority of the hungry are among those who depend on small-scale farming is that these farmers are insufficiently well organized. We must support these farmers’ organizations. By forming cooperatives, they can move up the value chain into the processing, packaging and marketing of their produce. And they can count politically, so that decisions made about them cannot be made without them.Even more, food chains are currently deeply imbalanced. They are in favor of middlemen or "aggregators" at local level as well as commodity buyers or large agri-food companies in global supply chains. Today's food chains are against the small-scale farmers, who often have no choice but to sell at low prices even when prices in markets go up. Remedying these imbalances is possible by combating excessive concentration in the food chains by using competition law; by combating the abuse of buyer power by regulation and a better organization of farmers, in particular through cooperatives; and by developing local markets, to ensure that farmers have alternative avenues to sell their crops and are less dependent on one single buyer, or on a handful of buyers that conspire to buy cheap at the same time that they sell dear.~ Olivier De SchutterRead Olivier's “Farmers must not be disempowered labourers on their own land” >Back to top8. Tackle speculation by financial actorsWhile not a cause of price volatility, speculation on the derivatives markets of essential food commodities significantly worsened it. Such speculation was made possible by massive deregulation in important commodity derivatives markets beginning in 2000. This must be reversed. Major economies should ensure that dealing with food commodity derivatives is restricted to qualified and knowledgeable investors who deal with such instruments on the basis of expectations regarding market fundamentals, rather than mainly or only on speculative motives.~ Olivier De SchutterRead Olivier's "Food Commodities Speculation and Food Price Crises" >Back to top 9. Reduce biofuel subsidiesThere are a number of countries, particularly France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the USA, that have supported subsidies and tax breaks for biofuels. While biofuels have reduced the global dependence on fossil fuels, they have simultaneously had a damaging effect on food supplies as more and more land is being taken away from food production and turned over to fuel production. ~ Roger ThurowRead more on Roger's take on biofuels >Back to top 10. Implement pro-poor aid policies in the United States“Development is an equal partner with defense and diplomacy.”~ Dan GlickmanPresident Obama’s inaugural address and promise to the developing world was that the USA will help “...nourish starving bodies and feed hungry minds.” On a local level, this message resonates with farmers who have two goals: feed their families, especially through the hungry season, and send their children to school. Therefore, there is nothing foreign about the aid the United States gives to achieve these universal goals we all share. This was the push behind USAID's Feed the Future campaign, an effort to bring agricultural development to the poor beyond just food aid on the part of the United States’ fight to end world hunger. However, with a new Congress that wants to cut foreign aid, this is proving much more difficult to achieve. ~ Roger ThurowLearn more about USAID's Feed the Future >Read Roger's blog post on "The Right Vote" >Read the Chicago Council's progress report on US leadership in global agricultural development >Back to top11. Involve the private sectorThe private sector has access to both the capital and brand recognition needed to feed the world, both the poor as much as the rich. PepsiCo, for example, along with the World Food Programme and USAID, has entered into a public-private partnership with Ethiopia wherein the company helps local farmers build their capacity for chickpea farming through better seeds and irrigation systems. PepsiCo then purchases the chickpea harvest from the farmers for their own chickpea products, in order to meet growing global demand.~ Bettina LuescherLearn more about PepsiCo's project in Ethiopia >Read the Chicago Council's "Leveraging Private Sector Investment in Developing Country Agrifood Systems" >Back to top 12. Establish social safety through a global reinsurance mechanismMany cash-strapped developing countries fear that social protection schemes, once put in place, may become fiscally unsustainable following domestic or international shocks, such as a sudden loss of export revenue, poor harvests or sharp increases in the price of food commodities on international markets. The international community can help overcome this uncertainty factor by putting in place a global reinsurance mechanism. If premiums were paid in part by the country seeking insurance and matched by donor contributions, this would create a powerful incentive for countries to put in place robust social protection programs for the benefit of their population. ~ Olivier De SchutterRead the rest of Olivier's ideas to end world hunger > ...read more
By ServILutions December 07, 2012
Have you lost business because you aren't in regular touch with your customers or clients? Do you have good intentions for personal communication with them but just can't find the time? I work with busy business owners to solve that problem through a company called Sendoutcards.com. We provide an automated, yet highly personalized card system for customer follow up, thank yous, birthdays, product or event announcements, even for generating referrals. With Sendoutcards.com you send your customers highly personalized cards through the mail using our unique website technology without ever leaving your office! So using our product does NOT add to your busy day, yet it gives you an easy way to have that personal customer contact. You could send 5 or 500 cards in about 5 minutes - in your own handwriting, with your own signature, and even upload a picture or logo into the card.If you'd like to try it out yourself, log ontowww.sendoutcards.com/76193. Click the banner to send a free greeting card. Any questions/comments go to: cjherzog28@msn.com ...read more
By Q1 Consulting Services, LLC December 31, 2009
I used an online greeting card system to send my Christmas cards this year. It was so easy and I just love it! I created my own card using a digital photo of my family. I uploaded the photo, chose a nice Christmas border, wrote a scripture verse on the inside and a nice message. I could choose when the company prints my cards and mails them. They'll be going out on December 20. Got that task done, now onto shopping!!! Interested? Contact me. ...read more
By Q1 Consulting Services, LLC December 15, 2009
Small businesses can benefit from accepting credit cards. Credit card processing companies now recognize that you may need to take a credit card while away from your office and have made that easy to do with your phone. Credit card machines come in a number of sizes, and small businesses have a variet... ...read more
Making a living from home offers independence and unlimited potential. To improve a home business strategy, explore the areas of your business that might benefit from a change. Home office organization, marketing strategies or communication with clients may be areas in need of improvement. ...read more
