Alumni Spotlight: Ashley Trull
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Ideas All Around
Greetings to you all out there in blogging land! I hope that all is going well for you this February. In Middleton, things have been going extremely well!
January 17th through February 8th has been a glorious rush of ideas and planning for us. This all began when we arrived at the United Church of Rogers Park in Chicago. This was the location of one of Grand Aspiration’s January Gatherings this year, where all the leaders of programs throughout the Midwest (and this year from Hartford, CT, too) gathered to learn, teach, and enjoy each other’s company. Though I have been involved in Growing Food and Sustainability for over a year, this was my first January Gathering and it was quite an experience. The week contained trainings on everything from the abstract early in the week (the green economy, and the larger systems organizing our world) to the concrete towards the end of the week (such as the best way to message and frame the work that we are doing). I also helped to facilitate a community organizing training, which was a relatively new and informative experience for me, as I had never facilitated a training for such a large group of people before. Towards the end of the week, we had some time to get together as a team and begin to create plans and share our ideas for our summer, and everything that goes into making it possible. It was a process that was slightly overwhelming, but in the end yielded many great ideas and much excitement for the semester ahead.
Facilitating the Community Organizing Training Continue reading
Johnson City is FULL of Energy for Food Justice!
Greetings from Johnson City! We’ve been super busy getting our programs set up and scheduling events for the coming spring season. But let’s just go ahead and get down to the fun stuff:
Johnson City, Tennessee is currently in the midst of an incredible blossoming of energy for food justice! Just last month we had a new café hold a “First Seed” fundraiser. Now, what’s so exciting about any old café? Well, let me tell you. This café, One Acre Café, is part of the “One World Everybody Eats Foundation” (http://www.oneworldeverybodyeatsfoundation.org/). Their mission statement is: “To nourish the body, replenish the spirit, and grow the community so that all might be fed.” In addition,
“It is the intent of One Acre Cafe to build a healthy community by providing the basic need of food in a respectful and dignified manner to anyone who walks through the door. One Acre Cafe will be unique in the lack of a set menu as well as set prices. Daily menus will be made using fresh ingredients and funded by the donations of patrons and community members. Everyone will be invited to pay what they felt their meal was worth or to leave a little more in order to help pay for someone else’s meal. If a diner does not have sufficient money to leave, they are encouraged to exchange one hour of service to the cafe for their meal.”
Getting to Know Our Community
Project Youth Green provides 60+ farmers with plots for a small fee that creates a sense of community in the city of Pacoima.
Last weekend Jackie and I (from the Arleta SoS program) had the opportunity to meet a couple of folks who have planted some veggies on the land supported by Project Youth Green. PYG is a part of the Youth Speak Collective organization. Youth Speak Collective has many branches that engage the youth on productive projects. These projects are long-term in scope and involve the community along the way.
We took a look at the gardening branch of PYG which allows for members of the community to rent a plot for the year with a small fee of ten dollars a month. Located on a hillside, this garden space gives us a sense of serenity. The streets below hold bustling cars and the fast pace of a busy city. In the garden we see bees pollinating, families enjoying nature together, lots of good energy emanates from the people around us and the plants that welcome us to this lovely place. A fruit tree orchard is found on one of the hills. Seeing the avocado trees makes me crave some yummy homemade guacamole. Now I see what the modest fee is for. This cost covers the plants most essential element for nourishment, water. This allows for residents who live in a place where there is little to no space for gardening the opportunity to grow something of their liking on a piece of land. Farmers can either consume the food they grow or trade with the 60+ farmers growing food there.
Its not the first time I see something amazing like this happening in our own Valley. It is people that keep that motivation high for the rest who want to contribute to the solution. I’m glad that I had the chance to spend time with my team member and absorb the beauty that keeps on thriving with the help from people. We also met and talked to some vendors who were selling crafts, homemade dips, and citrus fruits. On this particular day PYG had a DJ and various vendors for the Farmer’s Market that they host every first Saturday of each month. Continue reading
Seeds
Down in the basement of the St. Benedict’s Auditorium, a change has taken place. Two new cubicles went up, a huge amount of drop ceiling has been removed and the ceiling repaired with screws, drywall, mesh, and joint compound. The lights are suspended from chains, the twisted old wire has been scrapped. The kitchen has been cleaned and organized. Recycling has been taken away. A tremendous amount of chairs, heaters, and furniture belonging to Northpointe Academy have been organized away into closets, and the makings of a computer lab are growing in their place. Continue reading
Alumni Spotlight: Emily Stiever
This post is from our Alumni Spotlight series, featuring stories and reflections from past Summer of Solutions participants. The 2013 Summer of Solutions programs are now accepting participant applications! Apply here!
Hi All! I’m Emily Stiever, a native of Minnetonka, MN. I was part of the inaugural batch of Solutionaries at Macalester during the summer of 2008. As I think back now, it’s difficult to remember exactly how I stumbled across the awesome group of people that morphed into Summer of Solutions (SoS). I think I had just come back from studying abroad in Nicaragua and I heard about the first January Gathering (in 2008). I have a vague recollection of showing up for a meeting at Macaleter’s Eco House over winter break and (since I got the time wrong) everyone was still sleeping. But once we got going, the January Gathering was really interesting and I was on board for spending the summer at Macalester and working on a number of the projects we’d dreamed up.
My experiences in SoS
One of my favorite experiences was riding back from a meeting at the Ford plant one evening. We’d just come from having a great discussion about ARISE (The Alliance to Re-Industrialize for a Sustainable Economy), “a coalition of local stakeholders, advocacy groups, and students seeking to create a sustainable redevelopment plan for the closed Ford factory in Highland Park, St. Paul.” (The Twin Cities SoS program will once again be working with ARISE this summer!) It was warm, and we all biked quietly home along the river trail on the Mississippi. It was one of the first times where I could see what my life could look like in the future: the ability to work on social issues that I cared about and to live sustainably in community with people who shared a similar passion. SoS helped me translate a general feeling of, “it would be cool to work on these issues at some point in my life” to a much more tangible, “this is how my life could look now.” The experience helped me clarify what I am looking for, both in my professional life and how I want to live personally, and has guided me as I’ve sought out living arrangements and jobs in recent years.
The other big take-away from my experience with SoS was the need to ground my activism and social justice work in extensive background knowledge about the issues. Throughout my summer in SoS, I learned a lot about climate change and renewable energy. Timothy, one of the program leaders, taught an ExCo (Experimental Community Education) class on climate, we met with multiple speakers, got into the nitty-gritty details of how to implement an energy efficiency program with Cooperative Energy Futures, and I borrowed a couple of great books from others in the program. I learned a lot of information that summer and I am surprised even now how often I use that technical and philosophical information even today. Continue reading
National Participant Application Open!
Calling all Solutionaries! The National Participant Application for all Summer of Solutions programs is now open!
During the Summer of Solutions, you will receive training in community organizing and sustainable community development techniques. You will use these skills to demonstrate the promise of energy efficiency, community-based energy, green industry, local food production, and/or smart design as described in the locations you choose. Beyond the concrete skills you learn, Summer of Solutions will be a really fun community-based experience. It is a great chance to grow with, learn from, and work with other incredible young people and community leaders who are building a better future.
Not sure if you should apply? Follow our new blog series, Alumni Spotlights, to hear from past Summer of Solutions participants about how their experience changed their life and prepared them for a life of solutionary work!
Now accepting participant applications: Arleta, CA; Chicago, IL; Hartford, CT; Iowa City, IA; Ithaca, NY; Johnson City, TN; Lexington, KY; Little Rock, AR; Middleton, WI; Oakland, CA; Raleigh, NC; Southern West Virginia; Twin Cities, MN; and Washington, DC!
Applications for the priority round are due on 3/3/2013 and applications for the final round are due on 4/14/2013. Some programs may keep their local applications open beyond 4/14, but there is no guarantee that any specific program will do so.
Find more details and the online application here!
New Recruit at January Gathering
Imagine this.
You’ve just been accepted as a new intern for a Summer of Solutions program…let’s say Iowa City. Aside from being jubilant with excitement, you read further down the email and find out that your cohorts will, in a little over a week, be hopping into a car and spending five days (at an undisclosed location) preparing for skill sets in leadership for the summer’s program. You are enthusiastically welcomed (and subtly encouraged) to join the group on this outing. Perplexed, you scratch your head. You are new (not only to January Gathering, but to Summer of Solutions), but ambitious. As such, you reply that you will be joining the crew for the January Gathering in Chicago. You are set in your decision, though wondering who the members of your chapter are, what Grand Aspirations actually is, and, perhaps, how you got into the position that you’re in right now. The feeling of affirmation and mild terror dance in your stomach.
This is exactly (and candidly) what happened to me the week and a half right before January Gathering. Rest assured, I made it to and from Chicago in one piece and perhaps more importantly, I made it back a more ambitious person. While I can only speak for myself and my experience with those that make Grand Aspirations grand, going to a January Gathering is as much a baptism by fire as it is a chance to find a genuine community of quality people who WILL make the world a better place. There’s something to be said about jumping into the back seat of a Suburu Outback with two young guys, a young girl and her mother (the driver) and having enough humility to learn that those in the car with you are going to become some of the most impressive people you’ve ever met. And that’s before even getting to Chicago. Continue reading
MN350 Is Going to D.C.!
On President’s Day weekend, MN350 will join thousands of others in Washington, D.C. to ask President Obama to honor his commitment to the environment by rejecting the Keystone LX pipeline once and for all. Keystone XL, proposed in 2008, is an extension of the Keystone Pipeline, which transports synthetic crude oil and “dilbit” (diluted bitumen, or asphalt thinned enough to fit through a pipe) to from Alberta, Canada, to various places in the United States. Continue reading
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