FAIR MINDED: Saturday afternoon, we made our first ever trip to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Visitors Center. We've walked and driven by it dozens of times. It's just east of the Seattle Center campus.
Ironically, we didn't really spend but a couple of minutes checking out the many, intriguing permanent displays there. Rather, we were there to check out a special event, the Teen Action Fair.
CJ and Annabelle are both civic-minded and action oriented, and it seemed like a good place for us to go to learn about programs other area teens and pre-teens are involved in.
I'll let CJ take over narration for a bit ...
Since 2014, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been host to the Teen Action Fair, which, according to the South Lake Union Chamber, is an annual youth-led event showcasing young leaders (primarily in their teens) who are inspiring positive change. This year's Teen Action Fair included over 30 diverse youth-based organizations as part of their program, with several of them setting up info stands to learn about the organizations.
One example of a group I learned about at the Teen Action Fair was Junior Asha. According to a handout at the TAF, Junior Asha is the youth chapter of Asha Seattle (a nonprofit organization that helps the underprivileged in India, mainly through education). Junior Asha "encourages youth participation in the community", and everybody aged from 12-18 can join Junior Asha.
Another group I learned about at the TAF was Birthday Dreams. According to their official website, Birthday Dreams is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing joy to homeless children with the gift of a birthday party. Birthday Dreams serves the Puget Sound area, and we were actually able to do a little service for Birthday Dreams at the TAF, by filling gift bags for the homeless kids with toys and candy.
The Teen Action Fair was a very informative and interesting event, and I would like to go again.SOURCES:
There was a lot of diversity among the groups, and so many really wonderful projects and programs, it made us want to volunteer for all of them!
At the booth below, the kids decorated book bags that were bound school kids in Kenya.
We each filled out cards listing causes we support locally.
We only took a quick look at the regular exhibits at the center. We definitely need to go back in the near future!
POPPIN': Monday afternoon, we took a field trip to the South Park neighborhood in South Seattle for the opportunity to tour a successful local popcorn company that is getting notice far and wide.
Before we could go in the production facility, we had to don hairnets.
I'll let Annabelle tell you a little bit more about the visit.
Today I took a field trip to Seattle Popcorn Company, the producers of Uncle Woody’s caramel corn. The production facility was very small and there were only about 5 employees working at the time (our tour guide, the CEO of the company, said that a few employees were out sick).
CEO Jesse Greene showed us how they pop their popcorn with only the essentials- corn, salt, and soy. He said they use soy instead of butter because it’s better for you and it’s organic, something they pride themselves on. Right next to where the popcorn was popping, an employee was dumping popcorn into their real butterscotch mixture, which is made with organic cane sugar.
He then led us over to a bagging machine, which had one error as we looked at it (one bag didn’t get sealed), but our tour guide used this bag to show us how their metal detector works. The metal detector isn’t legally required, but if a nut or a bolt fell off the machinery and into the popcorn mix, the detector would sense the metal and push the bag off the conveyor belt.
He then took us to the cool room, which has the ingredients for making heat-sensitive flavors like cheddar and truffle salt. We bought a bag of truffle salt, and it was very good! He explained that the truffle salt flavor is more expensive because they use real truffles instead of flavoring like other companies. Other companies use flavoring because European white truffles can cost as much as $3,600 a pound! However, it does taste better with real truffles. At the end of the tour, everyone got a complimentary bag of caramel corn on our way out. The tour was really interesting and I learned a lot about their process of making popcorn!
GREEN SEEN: I didn't manage to get a post up on Friday night, but suffice it to say, we celebrated St. Paddy's day with a little fun, including green oatmeal for breakfast.
And before we sign off for the night, we have to give a nod to spring, which has arrived on the scene. It was a long, cold winter in Seattle. Here's hoping spring is sunny and mild!
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