'Mushrooms with a Mission'

A few months ago, the Humpty Dumpty Institute, co-founded by Connie Milstein, began its new program, titled Mushrooms with a Mission. This project focuses on vulnerable families in central Vietnam, teaching them how to become mushroom farmers. The institute chose mushrooms because they are an easy, cheap, and low tech product to grow. The program is intended for landmine and UXO (unexploded ordinances) victims only, and so HDI chose a crop that even amputees could manage easily.

HDI is providing an automatic market for their mushroom farmers, having promised to buy as many mushrooms as they can grow. The mushrooms will be dried, packed and sold to many markets in Vietnam, and hopefully to neighboring countries, and, in the future, even worldwide.

All proceeds from the sales made by HDI will be donated towards removing landmines and UXOs in Vietnam and its surrounding areas.

The Spa Experience at The Jefferson Hotel: Connie Milstein

Recently reopened after a two year restoration, The Jefferson Hotel in Washington D.C. is receiving enormous accolades. With the two year renovation by Ogden CAP Properties, LLC with Connie Milstein, the hotel, today, offers 99 rooms, a spa, and so much more.

The Jefferson Spa includes a large menu of massages, facials and body treatments. The body treatments actually use herbs and botanicals grown in Monticello’s gardens and specialize in vinotherapies that reflect Thomas Jefferson’s passion for wine.

In addition, they have manicure and pedicure services, a hairstyle salon, vintage-styled barber chairs for men, and extremely high quality products.

In addition to the spa, customers will find a 24 hour fitness room with a vast selection of cardio equipment, exercise mats, jump ropes and medicine balls.

Groundbreaking and Construction of Constance Milstein and Family Academic Center

Following various speeches at the groundbreaking for the Constance Milstein and Family Academic Center (NYUDC), the symbolic groundbreaking took place. This comprised hardhats and shovels using the purple NYU torch. Work on constructing the 75,000 square foot 12-story building is scheduled to start soon and will have dorms on the upper floors to house 125 students. It will be perfect for those doing courses in journalism, economics, history and politics as will come with an internship in the city of Washington, DC. But the fun continued after the groundbreaking with the VIPs assembling at the St. Regis Hotel along with around 400 guests (mainly alumni) for food and wine. Following a brief introduction (requesting further donations for the new construction), Connie Milstein, who donated a generous $10 million to the project, talked about the “need for an NYU campus in the nation’s capital and echoed the evening’s excitement about NYU’s global push. ‘[Sexton’s] vision of the ‘global network university’ is no doubt one of the most brilliant ideas of our time,’ she said.”