All Solutionary Systems Go!

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Eli Shepherd

Summer is back already!..wait, it’s not? Well, with sixty degree weather in November and December it sure feels like it. The physical season of summer may not be here but the problem-solving and action-oriented spirit of summer which earns us the name “solutionary” is most certainly in full swing.

Iowa City solutionaries hard at work at Wildwoods Farm in Solon, Iowa.

Since a group of us Iowa Citians got back from the 2012 Grand Aspirations August Gathering, we have been quite a busy bunch. For starters, we have applied for two grants for our energy efficiency campaign Our Power. The funding organizations were the United States Climate Action Network (USCAN) and RE-AMP, a network of Midwest nonprofits and foundations working to reduce global warming pollution. We successfully secured the RE-AMP grant. In fact we were awarded $5,000 over our expected amount, allocated for the purpose of hiring consultant to help us identify viable ways of engaging landlords in our campaign for city-wide energy efficiency. We could not have achieved this without the hard work and dedication of our program leaders Nick Gerken and Zach Gruenhagen. Most exciting, and frightening, of all, was that in the message accompanying our RE-AMP grant, we were referred to by the grant selection committee as the only youth doing solutionary work in the state of Iowa. Needless to say we’re determined to live up to our status. Continue reading →

SoS Middleton: Making Art and Winning Awards

Posted on December 6, 2012 by growingfoodandsustainability

Thank you to everyone who made Growing Food and Sustainability’s first year a success! Please take a look below to see all that Summer of Solutions-Middleton accomplished.

Program Mission:
We started GFS to engage youth in hands-on environmental education through food production, cooking, art, biking, and multi-age relationship building. We ran a summer garden camp, organized community workdays, piloted a bike-powered compost service, and delivered produce donations to those in need.

Accomplishments:

27 students ages 4-17 involved in the summer garden camp
108 hours of garden summer camp taught within 9 weeks
1,260 pounds of produce grown and harvested
1,220 pounds diverted from the waste stream through our bike-powered compost pick-up service
730 pounds of produce donated to the Middleton Outreach Ministry Food Pantry
229 pounds of produce donated to the Middleton Senior Center

Since our Garden Summer Camp finished-up in August, we have been working with the Ecology Clubs at Middleton High School and the Clark Street Community School to keep students involved in garden and sustainability education. These groups helped us prepare the garden and youth farm for the winter, learned how to construct a light table to grow plants indoors year-round, and participated in conversation about our food system.

Continue reading →

Do the Math: Author Bill McKibben Visits Minneapolis

Posted on December 4, 2012 by patricialamas

Do_the_Math_family_photo_Minneapolis_copy

The turnout was astounding: 1296 in attendance (fire code limit: 1306).

This post is by sustainable community organizer Patricia Lamas. You can read her last post here.

This past Friday night, environmentalist, author, and founder of 350.org Bill McKibben came to Minneapolis as part of his Do the Math tour through twenty-one cities across the country. His message? A call to action in response to his July 2012 article in Rolling Stones Magazine, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math.”

In his article, McKibben pieces together a stark picture of our present reality. To summarize, the fossil fuel industry has in its total known reserves five times the amount of coal, oil and gas we would need to burn in order to cause a global climate catastrophe. The numbers are fairly simple. Though not much else was decided at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, it was agreed that a 2ºC rise in global temperatures is the absolute highest that we can “safely” allow (see a breakdown of scenarios here). We have already raised the global temperature by 1°C. To raise it one more degree, we would need to emit 565 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Sounds like a lot, but we already have 2,795 gigatons at our taking. So much for peak oil, right? Continue reading →

Little Rock Summer of Solutions: Getting off the ground

Posted on December 4, 2012 by s0luti0naries

This Winter and Spring, our team in Little Rock, Arkansas will be organizing Little Rock Summer of Solutions. We are really excited about putting together this 8-week summer program that will address environmental justice issues in a traditionally underserved area of town. Our focus area is ripe for social reform, we have a passionate team, and we believe that our initiatives will bring healthy food, homes, and community feeling to our neighborhood focus: the 12^th Street Corridor of Little Rock Arkansas.

The Central Arkansas community:

There is already a huge movement in the central Arkansas community for urban development and community cooperation. Young people are breaking new ground in the local food movement, alternative energy sector, anti-oppression work, and entrepreneurial innovation as evidenced by a growing wave of youth-run urban farms, energy auditing businesses, feminist book clubs, non-profit organizations, cooperative start-ups and other initiatives.

For the last few years, members of the Little Rock community have worked towards the historic preservation of the downtown area, a traditionally low-income neighborhood. Assortments of sustainable, small businesses are opening here, and seasonal community festivals are bringing new energy downtown. While several of our potential Summer of Solutions program leaders and participants have been elbow deep in this work for years, the low-income inhabitants of the neighborhood have been excluded from the benefits that are accruing to already privileged individuals and groups. Our work will be focused on co-creating community programs that are designed to benefit the members of the community where we will be working. Continue reading →

Hope for GREEN- Grass Roots Energy and Environment Networking Movement in Detroit

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Rev. Dr. Dorthea Enrique

Having Only Positive Expectations for GREEN in NE Detroit

Starting in Mid- December, a new youth-led green movement will began in Northeast Detroit. This grass root organization Commission is fired up and ready to make a difference in the lives of those affected by environmental justice, pollution, and degradation in the community.

The mission of the HOPE for GREEN Movement is to foster an environment for growth, leadership development, and advocacy for environmental and climate justice for young people and communities of color with a special emphasis on the progression of women. Our purpose is to help develop policies and protocols to help make Detroit a more healthy and sustainable society by developing principles on waste reduction, energy efficiency and conservation, while also educating the community about the effects of climate change and environmental injustice. Our focus is to build awareness and provide leadership development in a community learning setting in Detroit, MI while working on women’s concerns for gender equity in a green economy.

Continue reading →

Lighting up Highland Park!

Posted on November 27, 2012 by jkoeppel

The news is breaking: Highland Park has a solar-powered streetlight.

On Thanksgiving, we gathered together at dusk. The sunset was particularly beautiful that evening. The glow lasted in a sky with few clouds. As darkness fell, we filled the empty street, forming a ring around the light. It was like watching water to boil – we knew it would happen, we didn’t know when. It got quiet. Moments became hours. All the work, the stress, logistics, arguments, fundraising, became compressed. We’d scrambled for funding and footing, scheduled and rescheduled, and hashed and rehashed. And just when it seemed like we’d have to postpone, the money came, the logistics became logical, and on Tuesday, Craig from SolarStreetlightsUSA drove out here to put it in the ground. AJ was up in the cherry-picker with him, wiring the wires and connecting the connectors. The press, the city, and the people were all present. By Thursday, the news had already broken, and this ceremony was effectively unimportant. But it was Thanksgiving. This was what we’d waited for. It was a small crowd – Andre, AJ, Lawrence (dressed as St. Nick), my family, a few people from the neighborhood. In the shadows of the original Model-T factory, we waited to see our work come to fruition. Continue reading →

Unifying Aquaponics at Unity

Posted on November 20, 2012 by s0luti0naries

This post is by sustainable community organizer Carey deVictoria-Michel. You can read her previous posts here and here.

I started my positions with YEA in September when I helped launch one of our programs at Unity Minnesota Internship Center (MNIC) in lively North Minneapolis. Yea Corps’ mission is to provide hands-on sustainable education to youth empowering them for life, education, and employment. This is what YEA has been gradually implementing at Unity MNIC students during this school year into the Spring.

The YEA Unity field trip to an aquaponics business in Minneapolis.

YEA program managers, including myself, arrive at Unity MNIC most every Wednesday. Usually we get to the school, greet our regular students at the entrance when they are hanging out and taking one of their breaks. Our program is based out of the top level of the school in the upper-class classrooms in a shared two room space. Students work in this space with teachers, scattered at different tables and working on various assignments, or taking one the required standardized tests. Students at Unity come from diverse backgrounds, and have the opportunity of alternative education at MNIC, where they are given flexible classes and assistance in getting their diplomas. Continue reading →

Coming Together Over Food

Posted on November 16, 2012 by growingfoodandsustainability

Cross-posted from Growing Food and Sustainability

GFS kicked off this fall with two bountiful, joyful events! On October 15^th we worked with the MHS Ecology Club to put on the 8^th annual Organic Dinner. It was really exciting because this was the first year the meal included produce that was grown in the school gardens. As has become tradition, The Roman Candle Pizzeria catered the main course, which was a pasta dish containing our veggies, Clasen’s, a local bakery, provided bread sticks, and the Chocolate Shoppe donated ice cream.

In order to have enough fresh veggies in the middle of October, a few weeks ahead of time we harvested a bunch of kale, onions, peppers, and eggplant and blanched and froze them so we could have fresh veggies, in the pasta dish. We also harvested kale the day of the event for a fresh kale salad. Between the dinner and the silent auction, the event raised $1,400 which will be split between the Ecology Club, the school’s Envirothon team, our program Growing Food and Sustainability, and the Friends of Pheasant Branch, the stewards of our local nature preserve.

It was a really great experience to work with both of the high school Ecology Clubs on the Organic Dinner. There was a lot of fun to be had harvesting the veggies and I think the experience of creating a delicious, sustainable meal to serve to their teachers, friends and family was really rewarding.

MHS Ecology Club students preparing kale and eggplant

Continue reading →

Rain gardens, greenhouses, and hunger walks

Posted on November 13, 2012 by rubylevine

This post is by sustainable community organizer Lookman Muhammed. You can read his first post here.

Lookman Muhammed (r) with Ethan Viets-VanLear, building a rain garden in Rogers Park.

My name is Lookman Muhammed. I work with A Just Harvest’s Genesis Project specifically the “Aquaponic Social Enterprise”. My first blog post explained a lot about my work here, what I do, and the purpose of my work with A Just Harvest and LETS GO Chicago. These two organizations have a common goal to fight hunger and poverty through urban agriculture. My responsibility is working to maintain and increase the effectiveness of our aquaponic system located in Gale Academy on Marshfield and Jonquil in the community of Rogers Park. The North of Howard area is where a great majority of the population we engage reside. Continue reading →