The Conscious Alliance
The Conscious Alliance creates opportunities for social action within music, art, and athletic communities to eliminate hunger and promote hunger awareness. We facilitate the redistribution of food to the hungry in cities and impoverished Indian Reservations through inspiring people of all ages, particularly youth, to participate and volunteer in grass roots food drives.
The Conscious Alliance Vision:
Our vision is to co-create a world where all communities have equal access to food. This will be achieved by raising consciousness through compassionate service. It is our purpose to inspire people to become this change.
There are many upcoming events benefitting the Conscious Alliance mission. Visit the Conscious Alliance Events Page for details! Get involved!
The History of Conscious Alliance:
Since inception in 2002, we have successfully collected and distributed over 500,000 pounds of non-perishable food donations to local food pantries and impoverished communities across the United States, through our collaborations with musicians such as String Cheese Incident, STS9, Dave Matthews Band, Jack Johnson, Phil Lesh and many others. In addition, we successfully built a much needed food storage and distribution facility on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The unit is used to store and distribute emergency food supplies to more than 100 families at the end of each month when bills are due and emergency food is critical in making it to the next month.
The Conscious Alliance began as one young, college student’s vision and drive to help others. It all started when Justin Baker, founder and executive director of The Conscious Alliance, mobilized a group of friends and fellow students to come together as food drive volunteers. Baker’s vision led him to host campus-wide food drives with the hopes of not only collecting and distributing food to impoverished Indian Reservations in the Western United States, but also to raise awareness around the fact that poverty that still exists on American Indian Reservations today.
The vision didn’t stop there. From campus to concerts, Justin Baker quickly discovered that it would greatly benefit the cause to appeal to a larger audience. Music concerts were just the venue he needed to capture a larger audience in one place at one time. Concerts proved to be a success. There were greater food and fundraising opportunities given the welcomed support of generous concertgoers.
Today, The Conscious Alliance VISION is bigger than ever. We hope to continue to inspire high school and college students to become more actively involved in their communities by participating in and hosting food drives for people in need. Using food drives as our medium, we hope to encourage leadership and inspire community participation by young people across the country. In the meantime we have harnessed the momentum behind our cause to expand into disaster relief efforts.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, we were able to respond within days, calling upon our network of supporters and musicians to come together to raise aid. Though generous donations and a series of food drives with Dave Matthews Band we were able to personally deliver over 30,000 pounds of food and almost $100,000 that was used to purchase more food. We have realized our potential to get food to those most in need, and will continue with this area of relief when disaster strikes.
It is our goal to collect and distribute one million pounds of food to America’s hungry both in cities and on impoverished American Indian Reservations. Once we reach that goal, we hope to collect and distribute one million pounds of food per year every year thereafter. We are confident we can reach our goal!
How to Get Involved
1. Donate
It is not conceivable that everyone can make the widespread hunger issues their primary cause, which is why we have undertaken that responsibility. Your contributions not only allow us to keep our initiatives active they allow us to get food to those in the most critical need. We maintain the most minimal overhead possible so that more of your contributions are going to where they are intended and not into paper clips, fax machines and the many other assorted supplies that weigh down businesses.
2. Subscribe to our Newsletter and Updates
Our mailings will not flood your inbox but will rather keep you informed of all of our seasonal events, and potential opportunities to get involved in a number of different capacities.
3. Volunteer
We have been able to grow at such a substantial rate solely because of the thousands of hours logged by countless volunteers. Hunger is a community effort, which is a perspective that we vigorously seek to maintain, but without your assistance it wouldn't be possible. For more information on volunteer opportunities please check the new section of our main page or email us at volunteer@consciousalliance.org
4. Host a Food Drive
There is always the option of hosting your own food drive, whether it is in your local school, grocery store, or place of worship. We have included a link that helps cover some of the basic areas of operating a food drive to ensure that your food drive is a success! (Organize a Food Drive)
5. Host a Benefit Party or Dinner
We recently had the opportunity to be guests and honorable recipients of a private dinner party. The couple hosting the event realized several years ago that instead of just having their annual party be the gathering of friends for food and drink that they could make the event more meaningful by promoting a local chartable organization. Essentially they created their own fundraising event that benefited a different charity every year. This model is easily replicated and creates fantastic networking opportunities for you, your friends and the charity.
6. Write Letters or make phone calls to your Elected Public Officials
Representatives, at all levels of public office, want to hear from their constituents. The more they are pressed to address a given issue the greater the likelihood of generating a response from them. The greatest weapon you have is your voice, so don't be afraid to use it. Things to remember when drafting your letter:
A. Name and address on letter and envelope.
B. Find the appropriate representative to address your concerns: If you don't know who your representatives are this is a great resource: http://votesmart.org/index.htm. This website will allow you to locate your representatives and to determine what issues they are working on.
C. Personalize the letter: Be sure to identify yourself, whether you are a 'concerned citizen from their district,' 'student,' 'union worker,' etc. This will help your representative better understand your relationship to the issue.
D. Designate what issue you are writing about: If you are writing regarding a specific issue be sure to include the bill number.
E. Be short: To ensure your letter is read, keep it to one page, when at all possible. It is important to keep in mind that your representative receives hundreds or even thousands of letters.
F. Explain why you want a particular action taken: Provide support to your letter, expressing how something is affecting you and giving personal reasons for the representative taking a particular action. Be clear and concise.
G. Request a reply: This provides you the confidence in knowing that your voice is being heard. Also be sure to thank them for taking the time to read your letter.
Find out more! Visit www.consciousalliance.org today!
