Report-Back on the Hartford Environmental Summit

Posted on November 12, 2012 by hinahara

On October 25th, Dave and Jen represented Summer of Solutions Hartford at the Hartford Environmental Summit.

We enjoyed a keynote address by Gwendolyn Hallsmith who has worked globally to help cities become sustainable, and found that Summer of Solutions was featured in her presentation! About halfway through her Power Point, this picture popped up:

This photo is from the August Gathering, which our team hosted at the end of our program this year. Program leaders and participants from all around the country came to the Emanuel Lutheran Church in Hartford to celebrate successful summers and plan for the future! It was so cool to see this great group of people highlighted in Gwendolyn Hallsmith’s presentation about the cool sustainable things happening in Hartford!

Continue reading →

Alternative economies in the Twin Cities

Posted on November 8, 2012 by rubylevine

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

With the MN350 Barter-to-Cash Network project well underway, we’re now beginning to reach out to the community in search of talent, time, and underused belongings here in the Twin Cities. We have set November 30th as the official launch date for the online platform, just in time to give it a publicity jumpstart when Bill McKibben comes to town for his “Do the Math” Tour on the same day. (He’s touring the whole country! Do you have your ticket yet?) Continue reading →

SoS Hartford Blog Feature from Christine Bullock

Posted on November 5, 2012 by hinahara

Summer of Solutions Hartford was interviewed for Christine Bullock’s blog! Here’s a segment of the interview:

“Gardening Q&A with Summer of Solutions Hartford”

Cooking and creating healthy recipes is a great way to ensure that you’re conscientious about nutrition. But cooking is only half the battle, that fresh and tasty produce has to come from somewhere, doesn’t it? In our second installment of Gardening Q&A’s, we’ve asked garden growing expert Jennifer Roach of Summer of Solutions Hartford to tell us a little bit about what it is they do.

Christine Bullock: First off, tell us a little bit about what you do and how you got involved in gardening with schools and children.

Jennifer Roach: We are Summer of Solutions Hartford- a 10 week summer program for young people in Hartford to learn about sustainable food systems and work to build an urban food system here in the city. Our team has built two community gardens and two school gardens over the past two summers.”

Check out the full article here! : http://www.christinebullock.com/blog/2012/10/24/gardening-qa-with-summer-of-solutions-hartford/

Solutionary energy business up for $5000

Posted on November 1, 2012 by rubylevine

Cooperative Energy Futures (CEF) is a cooperative that has co-developed with the Twin Cities Summer of Solutions program over the last five years. Developing the legal structure and community organizing for CEF was one of the three projects that participants in the first Summer of Solutions collaborated on. The organization currently in the running for a $5000 online voting grant from Green America. Read about the project and then vote for CEF once during the month of November! The top three vote-getters win.

If this is the first time you’re hearing about CEF, it’s an energy efficiency cooperative helping Minneapolis neighbors work together to make energy efficiency and clean energy accessible, easy, social, and fun. CEF helps communities make the biggest positive environmental impact possible by working together to lower energy bills, generate energy revenue, improve home comfort, and create a healthier community and planet.

Continue reading →

The Harvest Festival at Burns Latino Studies Academy

Posted on October 31, 2012 by hinahara

Cross-posted from Summer of Solutions Hartford

Summer of Solutions Hartford had the honor of participating in a great fall tradition at the Burns Latino Studies Academy called the Harvest Festival!

After school ended for the day, COMPASS Youth Collaborative set up a Halloween party for the children and families of the Burns School, complete with face paint, a haunted hallway, and dance floor!

In the spirit of the evening, we harvested red and green tomatoes, white and rainbow chard, carrots, spinach, mint, basil, oregano, kale and lettuce from the Burns School Garden and Wesley Colbert Zion Street Community Garden and set up a booth at the festival. We showed off photos of the garden and the workshops we’ve done with K-2nd and shared our bountiful harvest with the Burns community! Continue reading →

Hartford Environmental Summit

Posted on October 24, 2012 by hinahara

Cross-posted from Summer of Solutions Hartford.

We’re excited to attend the Hartford Environmental Summit this Thursday to meet and collaborate with other Hartford residents and organizations who are working to make Hartford more sustainable. There are 10 working groups available, but you’ll find us at conversations about youth and urban farming!

There are still 30 registrations open, so it’s not too late to sign up and contribute to this crucial conversation! “We invite you to join us at the first Hartford Environmental Summit intended to increase collaborative involvement and action among private and nonprofit organizations and committed individuals in projects that are transforming the City of Hartford into a sustainable community.”

The summit is Thursday, Oct 25th from 5-8pm at the Academy of Engineering and Green Technology (55 Forest Street, Hartford)

Meet Middleton’s Fall Interns!

Posted on October 18, 2012 by growingfoodandsustainability

Cross-posted from Growing Food and Sustainability

Even though the summer is over, here at Summer of Solutions-Middleton we are continuing to involve students in our garden project. We are working with the Ecology Clubs at both Middleton High School and the Clark Street Community School, providing students with projects to fulfill their service-learning hours, and outreaching to teachers to help them to see our gardens as teaching spaces. Much of this has been possible because of the help of our two fall interns, Caila and Sara.

Caila Fredrick

Hey! I’m Caila Fredrick, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. First and foremost, you should know that I love to eat. You could say this motivates most of what I do, from packing my backpack with 10% books and 90% snacks, to hopping on board with Gabrielle and Natalie as they bring high school students out of the desk chair and into a classroom filled with dirt, plants, worms, and good old-fashioned working with your hands.

My love for being outside and Mama Earth began when I was a brace-faced ten year old canoeing through the Northwoods of Wisconsin with Camp Manito-wish YMCA. I’ve been goofing around in the woods ever since, and now I strive to bring that love of nature into my kitchen…and into my belly. I believe in knowing where your food comes from, and in making it taste good. More importantly, I believe in sharing this passion, something I get to do with Growing Food and Sustainability. I especially look forward to bringing the philosophies of experiential education, which have been so powerful for me through work at Camp Manito-wish and through Adventure Learning Programs in Madison, into my time with the high school students in Middleton. Continue reading →

North Minneapolis Youth Visit the Urban Farm Project

Posted on October 17, 2012 by rubylevine

Chad (L) sharing his knowledge with the students (R).

This is Carey with some updates from the YEA Corps program at Unity high school in Minneapolis where YEA is teaching sustainability and entrepreneurial education. YEA Corps is a month into our school programs, and recently we took students on a field trip. We got to the Unity campus last Wednesday prepped and ready to bring students to the Urban Farm Project. The first thing I heard once we got to the school was a couple students making jokes about churning butter and petting the cows at the ‘farm’. This was pretty funny, because there would be no cows, no farm animals, and no butter churning on this farm visit (although that would be fun). The Urban Farm Project is not your classical farm on the countryside. The Urban Farm Project is a for-profit operation in South Minneapolis that produces perch and a plethora of fresh vegetables, and they grow all of this through aquaponics systems in a large converted warehouse space. Continue reading →

After School at Burns

Posted on October 16, 2012 by hinahara

Cross-posted from Summer of Solutions-Hartford

Part II of our Autumn Update Series focuses on Summer of Solutions’ work at the Burns Latino Studies Academy.

When we arrived at the Burns School for the first time, it looked like this (actually, this picture was taken after we had hacked down and dug up all of the weeds and vines that grew along the fence):

By the end of the summer, our participants and volunteers had helped create an outdoor garden classroom for students and teachers to use throughout the year.

Working with COMPASS Youth Collaborative and the Latino Studies Academy administration, we were able to help the school set up an after-school program that will offer students garden-based education and recreation throughout the fall. Burns created a position for one of our Program Leaders to work with teachers and students to care for the garden and teach a new outdoor and experiential curriculum.

We believe that making gardens and environmental-education accessible to all schools is essential to realizing social and environmental justice. School gardens can serve teachers and students by offering outdoor, hands-on alternatives to classroom education. Gardens can also teach students subjects like ecology and botany, and applied skills like growing food and cooking.

Finally, working with students is fun. In a movement focused on injustice, oppression and crisis, the importance of fun cannot be overstated.

We hope that the two garden plots at the Burns School will continue to serve both educators and students as places of play and places of learning. As we head into 2013 and the first full growing season at Burns, we envision a student garden that serves as outdoor classroom and functional vegetable garden.

Student gardens offer students not only curricular enrichment (and potentially, in the future, a real alternative to standard education), but also culinary enrichment (and again, potentially in the future, a real alternative to conventional food systems).

(fresh basil pesto)