Reenita's Wisdom

Do you have a desire to find new and interesting organic and natural beauty products but have no idea where to start? Or do you like keep up to the minute with the latest, hottest, best arrivals on the scene?

Organic Beauty Products Are A-Plenty: How Do You Pick and Choose?

There was a time, not so long ago when looking for organic beauty products was a fairly easy exercise because they few and far between. Until fairly recently it was the norm to create products with chemical preservatives and artificial additives a plenty, the odd organic beauty product was typically high profile making it easy to identify. Today things have changed: practically every beauty product on the market contains some organic ingredients. How do you even begin to pick and choose where to go?

A Style Blog by Beauty Experts

Organic Beauty View (OBV) is here to help. This new style blog is brought to you by beauty experts with 20 years experience in fashion and beauty. It delivers beauty lovers the scoop on stylish products, interviews, trend alerts and savvy surveillance from the modern side of organic and natural beauty. Whether you are looking for face serums or the latest eco fashions to style your wardrobe, the blog offers plenty of material to keep you busy.

To celebrate their launch OBV is giving away a gorgeous stash of organic & natural beauty goodies valued at $200.00. Subscribing to their website www.organicbeautyview.com will automatically enter you into the draw.

And you thought that greening your beauty routine meant sacrifice!

India might be one of the fastest growing economies in the world but how does an economy keep up with the rest of the world if it cannot fulfill basic human needs that are critical for economic growth? Food and population problems aside, the country faces a massive shortfall of qualified teachers at all levels of primary and secondary education.

According to the Times of India , the country face a shortage of about 800,000 primary and middle school teachers. Given India’s youthful population, the situation doesn’t look promising: 6.5% of India’s teachers retire every year; at this rate the country will be left with 350,000 primary and middle school teachers by 2011 (source: Times of India:India Faces a Drought of Teachers, July 5th 2008).

So how do we address this very serious issue? The Times of India and over sixty Indian NGOs, corporates, schools and social organizations believe that the answer lies in the hands of educated citizens. They have recently put their heads together to launch Teach India, a social initiative from the Times of India that brings together children in need of education and people who can contribute a little time towards teaching them.

Teach India has put a call out to ordinary citizens to spend two hours a week for a minimum of three months to teach underprivileged children who are willing to learn. The initiative aims to help undereducated children through a variety of programs, including basic education, support classes and even story-telling. It emphasizes easy to teach programs in which simple topics are taught to primary school children either on a one-on-one or small group basis.

Given the logistics of matching up teachers with students, the program is available only to those who can stay in India long enough to give a three month commitment. Alas, this is one of the times, when I wish I had the opportunity to go back home and put my skills to use. For more information you can visit www.teach.timesofindia.com .

A continuous increase in global population rates could have an alarming impact on climate change. Leonardo Di Caprio’s documentary The 11th Hour, tells us that “the real problem is that there are too many of us – using too many resources – too fast.” CNN news reporter Anderson Cooper, recently produced a documentary film called Planet in Peril which points out the perils of overpopulation on our planet. “Overpopulation could be people, planet problem.”

But are contraceptives the answer? Not according to Pett Corby, author of e-book, ‘How to Avoid Unplanned Pregnancy Every Time You Have Sex – WITHOUT Using Contraceptive Drugs.’ Corby is actively encouraging women to be aware of the health risks of using contraceptives, especially in the younger years. Her deliberately short book offers insight into researched natural contraceptive methods that offer women advice about avoiding unplanned pregnancies without toxic side-effects. Corby has recently launched an awareness mission on MySpace to inform women around the world about the choices they have. I blogged about on www.ecoworldly.com.

And since it is World Population Day, what better time than now to check out the trailer of The 11th Hour.

The 11th Hour

Eco Child’s Play recently ran a series of stories about women’s birth experiences. As a writer for the column I contributed. Not specifically to share my own childbirth story (I am sure everybody would be happier if I spared the details) but because it drew light on something else: the interconnected bonds between mothers and daughters. Like most incidences in my personal history, my daughter’s birth…ten years ago, was a series of episodes in dysfunctional family behavior. That it engendered another intense mother-daughter relationship in our family is something which I have only recently begun to realize.

My own mother does not visit us as often as I would like. However when she does, then my husband blatantly observes that her highly charged interaction with our daughter and myself, resembles three generations of the same woman debating with herself after a Grande size order of strong coffee. It is enough to make him reconsider his presence and exit for relief through yoga.

My story was picked up by Reuters. So I decided to post the story on my site. Check out the story on Reuters: Labor of Love, A Mother’s Work.