Good!

We all want to be good.

Especially after the indulgences of December, waking up in pajamas -and if you were really lucky staying in them until long after supper- the Family Guy marathons or Battle Star Galactica sagas, the homemade cookies you kept buying for that fundraiser at the office, the long Skype chats with old friends with new babies, the colourful lights on people’s front lawns or their balconies or in their tiny windows… December is meant to slow you down, make you laugh more, re-connect, eat, celebrate, play Parcheesi with your parents and then  January comes along, blows its whistle, whips off your pj’s and throws on some work clothes.

January means business.

And this week on Mouth2Mouth on CJSF 90.1fm, we’re talking about the business of being good.

Specifically...Tales of Good Vancouver (say this in a booming cartoon-god voice).

We’ll have full interviews with local goodies Loretta Cella from The Passion Foundation and Maughan Mariani from The Bavubuka Foundation and find out what they’re up to right now. (Empowering 100 young women in Uganada and Kenya and you can help them here: http://www.canadahelps.org/CharityProfilePage.aspx?CharityID=s98869).

Then we’ll feature a song from Jessi Nicholson (also say this in a booming cartoon-god voice, but one that sings so well your soul floats around in glee).

And lastly, we’ll play something so good from someone so good that I think he should be a new city representative and be paid to perform and summarize important political meetings, non-profit calls for help and organization and other cool goings on in V-town, er, Vancouver.

You’ll have to listen to find out.

But you can click right here to hear Jessi Nicholson’s dazzling song Freedom.

It’s just plain good.

Poster for the fundraiser at Raw Canvas. Visit www.bavubuka.org.

A few weekends ago I braved the rain to find a little soul. And I ended up finding a whole lot more. Upon first walking through the doors of Raw Canvas, I was hit with a sincerity and joy I haven’t felt since Chris Farley performed on SNL. I couldn’t tell the strangers apart from the people working there and the people working there from the people hosting the fundraiser because everyone seemed so universally happy. Even with our sopping umbrellas and wet feet, there wasn’t one person not smiling.

I was soon to join their numbers.

It was pretty hard not to considering why we were all there.

The Bavubuka Passion Project is an interesting amalgamation of two very cool, local do-gooding entities: The Passsion Foundation and the Bavubuka Foundation. Both of which help empower youth through the arts. As I talked to Maughan Mariani, Executive Director of the Bavubuka Foundation and Loretta Cella, founder of the Passion Foundation, I was struck by their ability to create something where it didn’t exist. Not only the fundraiser itself, but in the case of Loretta Cella she created a foundation especially for young women in British Columbia to feel autonomous and good about themselves. To have someone see that as important is very powerful.  As I’m sure it is very powerful to the young women involved as well.

Maughan Mariani and Loretta Cella’s enthusiasm and dedication in their projects have brought like-minded community powerhouses into the fold. Every single person volunteering for their foundations are working for one clear goal: to help empower young people the way young people want to be empowered.

Here are two excerpts from interviews I did with Maughan Mariani and Loretta Cella at Raw Canvas where the Bavubuka Passion Project fundraiser took place on November 28th.  On the streets outside it may have been flood-warning raining, but inside you never would have known it.

*The full interviews will be available on M2M on CJSF 90.1fm in mid-January.  Tune in for those during a show tentatively called “Tales of Good Vancouver”.