Define Our Decade: Summer Projects
This summer young people are not just demanding a clean energy economy, they are building it. In 10 locations across the country, young people are actively organizing to create a green economy through a number of innovative approaches. They include:
To hear updates and stories from the summer projects, be sure to check out our blog. There are still limited opportunities to participate, apply now! For more information on each of these projects, read below! LEARN ABOUT THE SPECIFIC PROJECTS |
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The program takes a multi-pronged approach to community greening on the west side of Cleveland, fitting immediate greening initiatives into these neighborhoods' long-term, strategic visions. Specifically, our program is working with two key planning nonprofits and the City of Cleveland to create a citywide model for greening an individual block. Three tracks; 1) schedule meetings with as close to 100% of the households as possible on three target blocks, discussing weatherization and energy efficiency while collecting data essential for broader city weatherization plans, 2) assist interested families with basic energy-saving measures and then navigate the bureaucracy to connect them with the City's existing weatherization programs, and 3) empower neighborhood residents to start and maintain new urban gardens on their own properties. http://www.urbandefenseproject.org/
The Northwest Institute for Community Enrichment (NICE) is a solutions-oriented organization that partners with diverse national and local groups to create collaborative solutions that holistically address climate and energy, the economy, and social justice issues. Our Summer of Solutions programs empower upcoming community organizers and create tangible change through real on-the-ground organizing and peer-to-peer learning and reflection. The NICE Summer of Solutions program will conduct a Neighborhood Energy Listening Project in Corvallis, Oregon, designed to identify the energy related improvements that neighborhood residents are wanting to make, connect neighbors with similar goals, and support them as they work together to improve their neighborhood's energy system. In addition, it educates program participants on program-planning and leadership techniques, and gives them resources for further involvement. http://thenice.org/
The 2010 Highland Park Green Leadership Program, a Global Exchange and GreeNation project, will use five recently acquired residential properties in Highland Park, MI as our hands on training center for the summer, dedicated to creating empowering skills within participants that will drive the clean energy economy through the green job workforce. Over the course of the 9 week program, participants will assist community leaders in renovating houses and vacant lands with green principals to create sustainable community models. The restoration of the properties will be accomplished in methods that will empower participants with trainings in energy efficient construction, urban agriculture systems, block-wide renewable energy systems, personal/team development and provide marketable, tangible skills that will be used to drive the green job workforce. It is the goal of this program to create a healthy system that embodies what a modern-day community actually looks like in a holistic, clean energy economy. http://www.globalexchange.org
CCAN needs your help to elect a clean-energy candidate to the board of an electric cooperative that wants to build a massive coal plant only miles from the Chesapeake Bay. This plant is the most expensive coal plant proposal in the country and the cooperative members have a unique voice as utility owners to put a stop to this proposal before it goes to the state for permitting. Organizers will run a political-style campaign while also galvanizing local residents to speak out in opposition to the coal plant and offering leadership training to coop members. Voter turnout is historically low in these board elections and we hope to change that. This fight begins before our arrival and will continue long after we leave so leadership development will be a core part of the summer project. The project will run from the start of June to the end of July.http://www.chesapeakeclimate.org/template/index.cfm
New England Climate Summer is a powerful nine-week internship experience for students to learn and practice effective community organizing skills while building a powerful movement to solve the climate crisis. Climate Summer participants put their values into action, bringing the moral authority of youth to bear across New England, knitting together the strands of a movement able to put our nation on the path to sustainability. Participants work in groups of six with a trained team leader, biking from town to town in one of the six New England states. Climate Summer teams form an intense community, living and working together sustainably, and they are housed by community partners, primarily in houses of worship. Each team develops and tests creative ways to bring together diverse community groups, to raise the profile of the work already underway in each community, and to facilitate new local partnerships in order to build a bigger, better grassroots climate movement. http://www.newenglandclimatesummer.org/
Utah is at the front line of climate injustice in the Western US, where fossil fuel interests have a stranglehold on state government. However, we have the opportunity to turn the momentum through two key issues that this campaign addresses. Utah is home to the first ever permit for commercial scale tar sands development in the United States, and ground could be broken on that project as early as this year. The proposed site would be operated by Canadian-based Earth Energy Resources, near Moab. Secondly, the only coal-fired power plant in the Salt Lake Valley, which is run by the Kennecott Copper Company, burns coal for half of the year and natural gas the other half. Peaceful Uprising is planning a campaign called The Western Front, which will channel the energy generated by the Bidder 70 Trial into efforts to stop the Earth Energy Resources tar sands project and the Kennecott coal-fired power plant, in one of the most conservative states in the country. http://www.peacefuluprising.org
This summer, Southwest Workers Union(SWU) wants to expand the Roots of Change community garden to get it up and running as a full fledged urban farm. We envision the gardening functioning as a multipurpose community space that serves as a hub for simultaneously fighting climate change, building community food sovereignty, promoting healthy eating and exercise, developing youth as leaders and community organizers, and promoting an understanding of how environmental exploitation is linked to systems of racial and economic injustice. Come work for climate justice this summer in the Roots of Change community garden! http://www.swunion.org/
The 2010 Summer of Solutions in the Twin Cities will unite and integrate a number of innovative projects that have been developed by local over the past three years, providing participants with the opportunity to dig in to the big picture of the green economy. Furthermore, the Twin Cities Summer of Solutions program will be rooted in close collaboration with local organizations, both in the neighborhood where participants will stay (Phillips, in South Minneapolis), and other communities where strong relationships have been built (North Minneapolis, the University Avenue Corridor, East Side St. Paul, and around the Ford manufacturing plant). To define the specific roles and goals in these projects, program planners will hold a collaborative visioning forum to gather input, build buy-in, and identify assets of those with whom we’ll work. From this visioning, program participants will take part in growing an integrated green economic ecosystem in Twin Cities communities. http://www.summerofsolutions.org
The DC Project's "How to Create Green Jobs" summer program provides youth from across the country the opportunity to work with WeatherizeDC, the nation’s most advanced community empowerment program around home efficiency. Summer leaders will learn how to create green jobs - and not just advocate for their creation - through learning and implementing cutting edge online, new media, and community organizing strategies and tactics. Through collaboration with The DC Project's field, workforce development, policy, communications, operations, and innovation staff, summer leaders will have the ability to experience the depth and scope of work involved in transforming our economy and creating good green jobs.
WeatherizeDC’s Goals: 1. Help every resident save money by eliminating wasted energy. 2. Create local green jobs. 3. Bridge communities to build a model green city. http://www.weatherizeDC.org
In this groundbreaking summer program, West Virginia youth will get the opportunity to work side-by-side with grassroots groups who are pioneering community sustainability projects. These community sustainability projects have crucial political significance, as they are grounded in the idea of transitioning communities that are heavily economically dependent on & impacted by dirty industries to local & healthy economies. All of our site locations are low-income communities, and we are heavily prioritizing the participation of low-income West Virginians through this Program to build a more diverse movement. We are running projects in Charleston (threatened by chemical plants which hold the same chemicals that killed more than ten thousand in Bhopal, India), Beards Fork (which has been economically left behind by the coal industry), and the Coal River Valley (which suffers from high levels of Mountaintop Removal and three dams full of billions of gallons of toxic sludge sitting about the community). http://www.seac.org/wvyal/summer
