Tired of lugging your bike on and off the bus everyday?
Ever been stranded with no bike spaces on the bus?
Want a place to leave your bike overnight for the next day?

Boulder County’s new program offers long-term bicycle parking in a card-key accessed shelter. The shelters will provide a secure place for bikes and bike accessories to be stored overnight, allowing commuters to avoid lugging their bike back and forth on the bus each day. Host Nikki Kayser chats with Scott McCarey, alternative transportation coordinator, about the need for connectivity in the county.

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They are an alliance of nonprofit organizations, concerned citizens, and scientists dedicated to the protection of prairie dogs and restoration of prairie dog ecosystems.  To accomplish this mission, Prairie Dog Coalition provides information and advocacy training, facilitates communication and planning, and promotes conservation projects. Host Nikki Kayser interviewed director Lindsey Sterling Krank.

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The DaVinci Institute is a non-profit futurist think tank in the fertile proving grounds of Colorado. They are a community of revolutionary thinkers and innovators intent on unlocking your future, one idea, one invention, one business at a time. Host Nikki Kayser spoke with founder and futurist Tom Frey, who invites all to join us on their journey into the future, as we build tomorrow’s leaders through the visions and programs produced at the Institute.

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They provide an easy way for Boulder County residents to share time, skills and resources like our grandparents used to do. SkillShare is a cooperative system where members earn and bank Time Dollars for hours of service given to others. SkillShare uses the internet to restore the lost pleasure of neighbors helping neighbors and being in a community. Conversation with host Irene Rodriquez.

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Street Fare is a social entrepreneurship venture established in 2011 by the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless. At its beginning, it is a cupcakery that bakes gourmet mini-cupcakes for sale at the Boulder County Farmer’s Markets as well as by special order. The program aims to create a truer sense of community through the structures of trade and business by employing and training clients of shelter services to enrich and engage our shared community.

Street Fare operates from within the hearth of the Boulder Shelter in its professional grade kitchen. The kitchen produces roughly 75,000 meals over the course of a winter season, but sits unused during the day when the shelter is closed for services between 8am and 4pm. This is when the baking happens! The ovens fire up, the burners alight and the mixer whirls up the best icing this side of the Mississippi. Just as the kitchen transforms from dining hall to gourmet bakery, Street Fare transforms the baking-impaired, into culinary whizzes working towards the perfect cupcake. They learn about the science of baking and how to organize a kitchen as they battle the finicky worlds of cake making, caramel, ingredient sourcing, sales and marketing. Imaginations are challenged to come up with new flavor compositions that will keep customers drooling. Most importantly they focus on team work, accountability and how good it feels to be proud of a job well done.

These skills are real and marketable, but sometime that feels beside the point. The utility of what is gained through work with Street Fare is often overshadowed by the lessons and love that is shared. It is rare that a social entrepreneurship venture so boldly transgresses class lines: the poorest and most outcast citizens producing gourmet items for sale at Boulder’s expensive social hub. The contrasts and frictions that arise are, at times, uncomfortable, but have proven interesting, worthy and even beautiful in their experience and contemplation. It is odd that the notoriously trendy cupcake is providing a safe platform over which people can commune, but it is undeniable. As people from all backgrounds satisfy their pallets, they also come together in support of the Boulder Shelter for the Homeless, as an institution and as a group of people. Boulder is a small city that has the resources and opportunity to form a family all its own and Street Fare enables everyone, if nothing else, to come to the table and share a bite or two. Host Nikki Kayser spoke with Sarah Haas and Timothy John.

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They provide financial assistance for the basic living needs of cancer patients receiving treatment in Colorado. Assistance from Rocky Mountain Cancer Assistance is for rent or mortgage, food, utilities, transportation, and health insurance premiums or COBRA payments, and other non-medical expenses.  Support from RMCA helps cancer patients avoid delaying or ending treatment due to financial stress.  Host Nikki Kayser chats with executive director Stephanie Shulman.

Their mission is to expand and support educational opportunities for under-served females in remote and undeveloped regions of the world. Girls Education International envisions a world where educational opportunities for women and girls are equal to those typically given to men and boys, providing the foundation for healthier and more prosperous societies that reflect their unique cultural differences. Host Maeve Conran finds out more from Maryann Williamson.

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In an interview with Nikki Kayser, Elizabeth Mayne speaks about the importance of education and the mission of Cal-Wood Education Center.

Education must become the number one priority of the world. It is no longer enough to understand the past or even the present. We must learn to anticipate direction and change, and teachers must help students acquire knowledge, ethical standards and lifestyles which recognize our personal responsibility to quality environment.

Cal-Wood’s mission is to offer a unique outdoor educational experience to youth and adults in a manner that will carry on the vision of Roger and Oral Calvert. To this end Cal-Wood’s goals are to help all who come to Cal-Wood develop a greater appreciation for the natural world,  to offer environmental education to those who would not otherwise experience it, and  to provide unique educational opportunities in a special mountain setting.

While Cal-Wood’s main focus is to provide unique outdoor education programs to schools throughout the year, their remote and breathtaking setting, combined with cozy accommodations and delicious food, creates the perfect atmosphere for organizational retreats, youth camps and professional development opportunities such as seminars, workshops and conferences.

Cal-Wood has been serving the Front Range community for nearly 30 years. Cal-Wood instructors utilize innovative educational techniques in science, Colorado history, the arts and physical education, to teach and inspire young people and adults so they can develop a new relationship with the environment. Most fifth graders from the Boulder Valley School District have made great memories at Cal-Wood.

Cal-Wood reaches out to low-income and under served schools from the Front Range visit the mountains for a profound educational experience in nature. Many students who attend Cal-Wood are English language learners and inner-city children who might not otherwise visit the mountains.

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They are the only agency in Boulder and Broomfield counties that provides comprehensive psychiatric services to county residents regardless of their ability to pay. People served by Mental Health Partners generally do not have access to services in the private sector because they cannot afford to pay the significant fees, and most do not have insurance. They have 24 hour emergency psychiatric services and outpatient offices for infants, children, adolescents, adults, and families, and offer bilingual/bicultural services and an in-house pharmacy. Host Nikki Kayser interviewed marketing manager Susan Williams.

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They are volunteer artists, makers, producers, and performers in Boulder and Denver with seriously twisted imaginations. Circus of Fear presents a showcase of hand-painted 3D holographic murals and theatrical performance that tell the chilling tale of a mysterious horror. Crew members love pulling together all their different artistic strengths to produce good, creative Halloween entertainment that makes people laugh, scream, and have fun. Host Maeve Conran talks with Erica DeNorscia.

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