Monthly Archives: December 2011

Hello everyone!

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Hello again from the Twin Cities!
Even though the winter’s just beginning, all of us here are getting very excited about next summer. Us program leaders (Ruby Levine, Daria Kieffer, Libby London and Courtney Dowell) have been having a great time meeting with new and  old community partners, hanging out on conference calls and sometimes even in person. Right now, we’re in the process of hiring a fourth program leader. More about us later, but first, our projects. We’re building off of a lot or the things we’ve been involved in for the past couple of years, and also starting up some new things.
Here they are!:
ARISE: The Ford plant in Saint Paul closed in June of 2011, and we’ve been working with the Alliance to Reindustrialize for a Sustainable Economy (ARISE) for a couple of years now to turn the plant into a mixed use green manufacturing site. Last year, a team of SOSers did a lot of outreach in the Highland community, which is where the Ford plant is located, in order to help the neighborhood get more involved. In addition, we worked on expanding a coalition of stakeholders, comprised on both individuals and organizations. A team of developer researchers also did extensive research on different possibilities for the plant, including anaerobic digestors. This next summer, we’ll be continuing a lot of this work and and are hoping to expand the coalition even further.
Urban Agriculture:In the past, we’ve worked with a variety of community partners, including the Harrison Neighborhood Association, the Concrete Beet Farmers, and YEACorps, just to mention a few. This next summer, we’ll continue to work with these organizations as well as hold weekly urban agriculture seminars, go on field trips throughout the Twin Cities, and start our own garden.

Bike Access: We have been partnering with the Sibley Bike Depot in order to expand bike access across the Twin Cities. In the past, this involved supporting their outreach efforts by attending fairs and bike rides, as well as revamping their website and improving volunteer relations. This next summer, we’ll also be launching a program to help children in South Minneapolis access summer programming by biking together to the park. This program is in partnership with the Southside Youth Workers Engagement Groupand will bring in a variety of organizations.
Energy Efficiency: Through the Our Power campaign, which is part of Grand Aspirations,  we’ve been organizing neighbors in South Minneapolis to take control of their energy future by lowering their own energy use and mobilizing for community owned clean energy. We also train participants so that they can offer energy efficiency workshops and connect them with interested residents through Cooperative Energy Futures.

About the program leaders:
Ruby Levine is a recent graduate of Macalester College in Saint Paul and has been a program leader since 2008 (she doesn’t really like vegetables). Courtney Dowell will graduate from the University of Minnesota this spring and has extensive experience organizing to get coal off the University of Minnesota’s campus (she is very fond of fried sweet potatoes). Libby London will graduate from the University of Minnesota this spring and has a background in community based art, biking and sustainability (she lives in the Powderhorn neighborhood). Daria Kieffer (me) is a junior at Carleton College who works with youth empowerment initiatives in Northfield, Minnesota and has been involved in SOS for the past two years (I’m trying to learn how to play the harmonica).

-Daria Kieffer, Program Leader

Greetings from Portland!

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Greetings from Portland, OR!

We here at the Portland Enrichment Program are incredibly excited to be firing up for our next Summer of Solutions!

In Portland, we work primarily with an organization called the Foster Green Eco-District. They are main stakeholders in a fairly large area of Portland with the same name. The neighborhoods that the Eco-District encompass are all incredibly diverse and working class. Many of the residents are new immigrants or work irregular and abnormal hours. This, if course, is not the image that most people have of Portland, and we intend to fulfill several goals of social justice through our projects, among others.

Last year, we conducted a listening project with over one thousand people in the Eco-District designed to gauge the interests that residents had in regards to sustainability and neighborhood livability. We have streamlined the process from last year, and this summer we will work towards our goal of visiting every resident of the Eco-District over the next three years. This is no small feat, as the Eco-District contains over twenty-five thousand unique addresses. We are aided in this goal by our many community, city, state, and regional level partners.

When we visit residents of the Eco-District, we conduct a survey of their interests, but we also engage them in producing a sustainable future for themselves. The Foster Green Community Challenge is a way for residents to sign up and take personal steps to live sustainably. Many of the actions are low or no cost.

Another initiative that we are undertaking (and this writer is spearheading) is what we call the Challenge in a Box. The model that we have created and are testing in the Foster Green Eco-District is one that we would love to see  expanded not only to other regions of Portland, but also to other cities all across the United States. The Challenge in a Box contains the materials, directions, and models that we have used to greatly expedite the startup process in other places. The faster the Challenge is set up and ready to go, the faster that strong Community Engagement data and effects may be generated.

We hope you’re excited at the prospects of our newly rejuvenated program! We can’t wait to get started!

Leo Qin, Program Leader

http://www.neighborhoodenrichment.org

All the way from Mountain Standard Time – Denver, CO

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By: Chris Morgan

Chris Morgan here! I’m very happy to introduce everyone to Denver’s Summer of Solutions! First, let me say that I wish I could write this introduction using the “we” pronoun, but I’m still looking for team leaders! Feel free to send any connections my way! Feel like coming to Denver? Email me!

The Idea

So here’s the idea. Let’s find some people who really care about growing, eating, and cooking food in the city, and we’ll live and learn together! What if we produce not only food to eat, but solutionaries to lead in this new, green economy? I’m confident that the handful of people who will come out for the summer of 2012 in Denver will finish as competent gardeners, if not entrepreneurs and advocates for urban agriculture and food justice in Denver. One of the best parts about this is that there are so many options in Denver to accomplish it! I have been lucky enough to connect with a number of great organizations to work in partnership with! I would love to tell you about a few of them! All of them influence me in some way when envisioning this summer! [I’m going to try to let them use their own words as much as I can.] Continue reading →

Iowa City making noise

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It’s been an exciting week in Iowa City. One of our program leaders – Zach Wahls, maybe you’ve heard of him – has been fighting hard for marriage equality across the nation the past few months. He gave a speech a while back to the Iowa legislature, and it’s been blowing up the Internet (again). It recently hit 12 million views – woah.

It’s pretty easy to be proud of our friend. It’s also been pretty easy to get excited for this upcoming summer. We continue to work on projects from this past summer and have been planning away for new ones.

Update on 2011

IC is on the verge of something great. Our Solar Schools project – an initiative to install solar panels on two local schools in the Iowa City Community School District – has grown tremendously. After working with the school district, the project now includes at least 10 schools, and our team has been working tirelessly to get this passed. If the project is approved, it will be the largest solar project network hosted by a public school system in the nation.

Looking forward – 2012 projects

Our Power: Born in the Twin Cities, the Our Power program is a home weatherization initiative for low-income households in the Iowa City area. The program combines strong outreach and educational components focused on energy/environmental benefits of winterizing homes, the effect on residents’ energy bills and local resources for homeowners and renters. We recently received an $8k grant from Re-Amp, an alliance of foundations focused on clean energy issues, to get the project off the ground.

Iowa City Roots: Jumping on the local food bandwagon is easy to do in Iowa City, where our community’s educators, farmers, expert gardeners, parents and students all have a common goal: feed our kids with fresh, local and HEALTHY foods! We’re in the planning stages of this bloomin’ awesome project, which aims to construct and maintain 6 community gardens in public parks and schoolyards throughout the growing season of 2012. Partnering with the Parks and Recreation department of the City of Iowa City, the ICCSD, the Johnson County Local Food Alliance and dozens of community members, we have received a bounty of support thus far; the planning will continue through the dormant winter months as we secure land and funding–be on the lookout for things to start sprouting up come March!

Internship program: We working with the University of Iowa Career Center to create internship opportunities for U of I students interested in gardening, green economy work, clean energy issues and other community-based projects. Our team incorporates leadership development and youth empowerment in all aspects of our organization, making us aptly suited to be a Community Based Learning partner with the University. We are also working with professionals in local green businesses to match interested interns with sustainable companies in need of help and innovation.

White Roof and Neighborhood Compost Pilot projects: still in preliminary stages, these two projects aim to involve community members in simple intiatives that make a big impact. White roofs are perhaps the easiest way to engage businesses in sustainability, and with a lively downtown business community, we hope to provide white roofing services while partnering with local hardware and home improvement stores. The Neighborhood Compost Pilot is a branch of Iowa City roots, and hopes to bring composting intiatives to the community garden centers we’ll be working with.

Who we are

Our team is led by Zach Gruenhagen, Hadley Rapp, Zach Wahls, Tom Frakes, Eleanor Marshall and Kerri Sorrell. All of us are Iowa City natives or students at the University of Iowa. We’re committed to building a model of sustainability in Iowa City, one that can hopefully be replicated in other parts of our state. Iowa may be small, but we’ve got a lot of potential to do big things in this unique community.

Interested in keeping up with Iowa City Summer of Solutions? Check us out on Facebook, Twitter and at iowacitysos.org. We can’t wait for what promises to be an exciting, exhausting and exhilarating summer.

p.s. – Did you know Grand Aspirations is in the running to win $25K in the Pepsi Refresh Project? We’re working with the Progressive Slate to fund-raise towards our amazing programs and leaders. You can vote every day in December, so mark your calendars! Share this link: http://bit.ly/sWzLvl with your friends online and help us spread the word! Go team!