LiveFeed is partnering with Lucas School House (located one mile south of downtown Saint Louis in Historic Soulard, at 1220 Allen Ave) to host a Fourth of July celebration. 3 bands, BBQ and beer. Please come join us either to volunteer or just to have a good time.

Jake's Leg from 12:00-3:30
Almost Brothers (Allman Brothers cover band) from 4:30-6:00
Big Smith (Bluegrass band from Springfield) from 6:30-8:30

A portion of the price of entry will go to LiveFeed.

I’m struck again and again by the generosity of people. Teri Winning emailed me last November. We had coffee and she asked what she could do to support LiveFeed. I was taken aback by her willingness to do whatever we needed. After several conversations, she took on being our volunteer coordinator. This was a position that she didn’t have much experience in so Teri sought out training to develop the necessary skills. She created a structure soon after and began managing the offers we got for volunteer help. Honestly, it never occurred to me that LiveFeed might have a volunteer coordinator in its first year and Teri’s enthusiasm and tenacity at taking on the position was incredibly inspiring. Teri provided a great service for LiveFeed in her time with us and we, I, will be forever grateful for her contribution.

There are so many who have made a critical difference to the creation and development of LiveFeed. I hope with time we will be able to fully appreciate and honor each of them. I also hope that everyone who has contributed will find themselves honored each time we are able to publicly appreciate one of our supporters.

~ tom

Labels: appreciation, LiveFeed, Teri Winning, volunteer

The first time I saw Javier Mendoza play was at Brandt’s in the loop. I’d heard of him, but as a friend of mine and I sat down to dinner, he started playing half dozen paces from our table. Before our food found its way to our table, we found ourselves on our feet, dancing. It was one of my favorite nights of dancing, though we were the only two doing so.

After dinner I purchased several of Javier’s CDs and over the next week, listened to them incessantly. I sought Javier ought the next week and enjoyed another great performance. Afterwards I asked Javier if I could take him to lunch and talk to him about a vision I had for feeding children in St. Louis. He agreed and we had lunch the following week.

As we savored raviolis at Raconellis, I told Javier about my dream for creating LiveFeed. He was the first musician I’d talked to about it in St. Louis and his reaction strengthened my commitment to building the organization. He said that he’d been thinking of taking a two year sabbatical to do service work to satisfy his commitment to making a difference. Javier has sense told me that supporting LiveFeed gives him a way to satisfy that commitment while doing what he loves, creating great music. He told me that he now finishes each show with the sense that what he is doing is making a meaningful difference.

That is what LiveFeed is about. We are creating ways for people to make a meaningful, lasting difference for the less fortunate in their community, not by sacrifice, but by slightly altering what they are already doing. We have seen that it is possible to support those in need while having a great time and we are clear that together, we can continue to alter the way our society views service to others. We can assuage apathy, we can circumvent cynicism, and we can care our cultures children.

It’s been a year since Javier and I first met. Tonight I was listening to one of his CDs on my iPod and found myself profoundly moved by what we’ve accomplished in the last year. None of what we have accomplished would have happened if it weren’t for faith and support of people like Javier. I am deeply grateful.

Labels: commitment, Javier Mendoza, LiveFeed

Saturday afternoon at Queeny Park LiveFeed held our largest event thus
far. When the heat of the day was at its peak the crowd arrived on the
park grounds to donate thousands of pounds of food. We approximate
that up to 5000 people were in attendance at our Cans Film Festival
where 3 bands performed, and a film featuring the Three Stooges was
screened at 9 o'clock.

Loud Mouth Angel, Big Red Audio, and Walk Sophie performed
entertaining sets and brought energy to the scene. Our partners for
this event, KHITS, 97.1 FM Talk, and CW11 were vital to our success,
and their commitment to our cause was inspiring to us and to our
supporters.

The people of St. Louis contributed so generously that a remarkable
amount of local hungry people will be provided with meals. The
ultimate outcome of the Cans Film Festival was the equivalent of an
impressive 12,000-15,000 pounds of food. Our thanks goes out to
everyone in attendance, and to those people who worked to make this
event happen. This was a touching experience, and a chance for the
more affluent members of our community to show their dedication to
helping those in need.

Labels: LiveFeed Cans Film Festival

LiveFeed is jammin'! You wouldn't know it looking at our blog, but we're about to change that. We recently realized that we have this great tool for letting our friends, fans and supporters know about all the great things going on with LiveFeed and we've completely neglected it. So here's our plan. Rather than back-dating posts to correspond with events, triumphs, failures and anything else we think to write about, we'll just start posting everyday. If something cool happened today, we'll tell you. If we're doing something fun tomorrow, we'll let you know. And, whenever we think of something that we want to share that we haven't yet, we'll tell you about that.

Watch for posts from Chloe King, our power-house, 9 year-old volunteer, from Aaron K., our special events coordinator, and the rest of the LiveFeed team.

By the way, we won the SEIC!!! We won a $30,000 grant from the Lutheran Foundation and a $5,000 grant from RubinBrown. We thank both of them, Wash U and all of the people and sponsors that made the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition possible. We don't know how things would be going if it weren't for all of the support we've gotten. Thank you all!