Greetings from Chicago! Over the past three weeks, we have been hard at work preparing the ground for the Rogers Park Yard Sharing Network. As one of our three project areas, this network aims to connect neighbors in the highly-dense Rogers Park community with arable land and gathering spaces to get to know one another.

Today we are launching a Kickstarter Campaign to help us raise funds to build new pilot gardens and demonstrate that this is an idea whose time has come. Last year, we built and operated a 700 square foot vegetable garden on borrowed land and produced a bounty of food that benefited our community. With four new homeowners ready to go, we are looking to generate resources to construct and support four new gardens that will allow up to 10 families to grow food together this summer and fall.

Read on for more information on the program itself and be sure to watch the video and visit the Kickstarter page linked below.

Continue reading →

Focus often eludes high school students with seven different classes covering seven different subjects and too much homework to jam in their backpacks at the end of the day – but on Thursday, April 5, EcoCentric and Envirocity, environmental clubs at two Iowa City high schools, teamed up with Iowa City Summer of Solutions to concentrate class discussions on one issue: the environment.

The daylong event, Focus the Classroom, encouraged teachers to relate the subjects they teach to current environmental issues. Last summer, Zach Gruenhagen, Bailey McClellan and Noelle Waldschmidt from the Iowa City solutionary team worked to complete a website with sustainability-focused lesson plans for every subject area, to help teachers more easily integrate the environment into their classes. In addition, presentations ran all day from environmental leaders in the Iowa City community, including Tim Dwight – a Iowa City High graduate and former professional football player.

Dwight, a popular speaker at both high schools, co-founded a renewable energy company called Integrated Power Corporation after retiring from the San Diego Chargers. At the Focus the Classroom event, he gave presentations extolling the virtues of solar energy.

“This shift [to renewable energy] that I’m going to talk about is your generational shift, and it’s going to be massive. Producing energy with wind and solar will change the world because those resources are available anywhere, and you’re going to see it,” he told students at West High school.

Dwight was joined by others including New Pioneer Co-op Outreach and Education coordinator Scott Koepke, Iowa City recycling coordinator Jen Jordan and University of Iowa Director of Sustainability Liz Christiansen. The speakers brought everything from live red wriggler worms to a battery-powered experiment that converted salt water into bleach. In a presentation at City High, teacher Mike Loots turned the students loose and after ten minutes, students from miscellaneous classes, with varying investment in sustainability, were almost all raising their hands to share an idea – from a trash clean up by the mall, to more vegan options at lunch, to guerilla gardening.

“A lot of times, as much as teachers try to bring in outside applications of what we’re studying, it’s really nice that we can see how to take what we’re learning and apply it to the world around us. You can actually go out and change things … and Focus the Classroom really reminds us of that,” said West High senior Javier Miranda-Bartlett, a member of EcoCentric and participant in the day’s activities.

According to Miranda-Bartlett, the message definitely reached the students in attendance.

“[My favorite part was seeing] the enthusiasm my classmates had for the whole concept and just how they actually got pumped, which surprised me. Also, [I loved] discovering that we have this wealth of resources of really knowledgeable people that are willing to help and work with us, and it was really empowering,” Miranda-Bartlett said.

Check out this video for a little background on past & current ICSOS work. Thanks to Nathan Meyer for his awesome video skills!

Applications for ICSOS are still open! Apply at grandaspirations.org – we’re looking for help with our local garden and energy efficiency campaigns!

Greetings from Portland!

This is Leo, your friendly Portland Summer of Solutions Program Leader! I’m just writing to inform you about some of the exciting things that have been happening around Portland.

Two weeks ago, we signed our first Memorandum of Understanding with a local community partner, Million Monarchs! Million Monarchs focuses on individual and community solar power projects, specifically seeking to connect residents of low income communities to the resources they need to finance solar power installations. This is not only good for the environment, but actually saves money in the long run!

This summer, Portland Summer of Solutions will work with Million Monarchs to raise community awareness of their solar installation efforts through their inclusion as an item on our survey-challenge model of community engagement! Furthermore, Summer of Solutions participants will work directly with Million Monarchs to create and implement strategies to raise awareness of individual and community solar projects in the deep Southeast neighborhoods of Portland!

Hope everything’s going well across the country!

Leo

After a successful first year, the Chicago Summer of Solutions team is back and ready for more. In fact, we have been plotting it ever since we put our gardens to bed last October!

What we learned in 2011 will help us build up 2012 into an experience you won’t want to miss. In 2012, we will engage in projects such as:

• Expanding our urban yard share to include 3-5 additional vegetable gardens for use by low-income families
• Growing our children’s garden program and bringing the food into the kitchen for our first ever summer cooking classes
• Launching a worker-owned green infrastructure business to install rain gardens and other storm-water management features on public and private properties

About our team

Molly Costello is a second year Program Leader for LETS GO Chicago. As an artist, organizer, and a lover of the outdoors, she usually has her hand dirty in one project or another.

Peter Hoy has spent the last three years honing his skills as an environmental educator in the Chicago area. When he’s not in a garden, he is usually counting down the days until the last frost so he can resume outdoor activities.

Nell Seggerson is a first year program leader with Summer of Solutions. She is in her third year at Loyola University, where she is studying to be a high school history teacher. She is also involved in Rogers Park Food Not Bombs and Loyola Anti-War Network. Nell is originally from Columbus, OH.

Ben Tucker grew up in Indianapolis, where he was involved with Keep Indianapolis Beautiful and Improving Kids’ Environment. He’s interested in music, comics, and urban history.

Gabriel Solis is a 21 yr. old History major, currently wrapping up his final semester at Loyola University Chicago.  Gabriel grew up in El Paso, Texas–a city on the US-Mexico border, which due to its desert ecology, is continually affilicted by drought and water issues.  These issues led him to become more interested in systemic-water conservation; a subject he hopes to explore through the “solutionary” method.  Gabriel is also a member of Food Not Bombs, a firm socialist and a silly human being.

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