Kids Cooking Green Helps Families Connect; Seeks Expansion Funding Through HelpersUnite Crowdfunding Site

Lexington, MA, October 04, 2011 --(PR.com)-- The average American parent spends just 38.5 minutes per week engaging in meaningful conversation with their children, researchers claim. One in three American children and teens is overweight or obese, a condition that pediatricians say is directly linked to increased rates in diabetes, asthma, heart disease, and depression.

Massachusetts chefs Lori Deliso and Liza Connolly hope to reverse these trends with Kids Cooking Green, a program that guides fifth and sixth graders as they learn about nutrition, check out local foods from farmers markets, and get hands-on experience making healthy family meals.

“Considering the rise of obesity and diabetes in American children, our passion to share our knowledge with kids truly inspired us to create this unique program. We wanted to find a way to help people connect with where our food comes from and slow down enough to enjoy it with those they love,” says Lori Deliso, the program’s co-founder. Kids Cooking Green has reached over 1,000 children and their families in Lexington, Arlington, Bedford, Dover and Westford.

Now faced with the need to expand to meet increased demand for the five-year-old program, Deliso and her co-founder, Liza Connolly, have launched a $40,000 fundraising campaign on HelpersUnite.com, a new internet-based crowdfunding platform that launched in September 2011. Crowdfunding connects networks of people with similar interests who pool their money and resources together to achieve a common goal.

The boost in funding would allow Kids Cooking Green to hire and train more teachers, develop web classes and a cookbook to enhance their curriculum, and offer the program in underserved areas.

“Crowdfunding is a very new concept for us,” says Connolly. “But since our focus is on community involvement, it makes perfect sense to get help from the communities we serve as well as individuals who believe in our program.”

Deliso and Connolly were particularly drawn to HelpersUnite because of the platform’s unique ability to facilitate charitable giving through all funding projects. Five percent of the contributions they receive will benefit vital Mass Farmers Markets projects, such as the planned Boston Food Market, management of the redemption process for the state’s WIC and Elders’ Farmers Market Nutrition Program, and various educational programs.

"Early on, we realized the full circle of education that was available to children and their families by connecting them with their local farmers markets and the people that grow their food, as well as the classroom sessions,” says Deliso. “Mass Farmers Markets is committed to this purpose.”

Kids Cooking Green is one of several projects featured on HelpersUnite, which connects artists, entrepreneurs, and charitable organizations with supporters who are compelled to contribute time, talents, and funding to help reach a common goal. The platform currently also features other creative fundraising projects for documentaries, demo recordings, theater and more.

“Kids Cooking Green is a perfect example of how the HelpersUnite platform can help small businesses and the communities they serve,” says Luan Cox, CEO and co-founder of HelpersUnite.com’s parent company GoodWorldCreations. “They have tremendous support in the community, which translates directly to the crowdfunding concept.”

GoodWorldCreations was founded in early 2011 and specializes in leveraging complex, state-of-the art web and social technology to help make the world a better place. Its flagship platform, HelpersUnite.com, is the first-ever platform to combine fundraising for creative and business ventures with charitable giving and online event ticketing. For more information, visit www.HelpersUnite.com.

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