Clean, cheap transportation – why Minneapolis has it right

Dear Friends,
I am re-posting Adarsha's Nov 9th blog entry from ACE's blog: Hot and Bothered about his trip to Minnesota conference. Adarsha established new contacts which will help us in future. His next post will be about the conference itself.
~Apoorva

Minneapolis Light Rail

Last Sunday through Tuesday, I represented ACE and attended the 1st Annual Green Schools National Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Upon arriving at Minneapolis, the first thing that struck me was the rail system. I live in California, and specifically, the Bay Area. BART is the public transit system, but many people have legitimate gripes with it-it’s rather costly (going from the San Francisco airport to the general area of SF can cost $8), not aesthetically pleasing and often delayed. Perhaps that’s why I found the Minneapolis public transit system to be nothing short of impressive.

The trams themselves are well-designed, with specific vertical racks for bikes that are convenient, and a general openness that makes them more pleasing to ride on. The trams came on time and frequently, which would help explain the large number of people riding them. Stops were placed throughout the city and clearly marked off- I also noted that by putting them literally in the middle of the streets, they were the center of attention, rather than an afterthought.

The most stunning aspect of the Minneapolis public transit system is how cheap it is comparatively. To take me and Emily from the airport to a mere 10 blocks from our hotel cost a grand total of $3.50. This is by far the cheapest fare I’ve payed for traveling the distance we did.

By making mass transit so accessible, so cheap, and rather attractive, Minneapolis is setting a good example of how public transit should be done in this country.

Another example of how Minneapolis is really quite admirable is their system of bikes around the entire city. There are dozens of stations where green bikes (literally green!) are located. You can pay a small rental fee and take the bikes wherever you want in the city and drop them off at any other station. If I remember correctly, the fee was around $5 per month, and $50 per year-a very small amount, especially if a person bikes frequently in the city (and Minneapolis is a bike-friendly city it seems).

The stations are located in convenient locales, like near libraries, gyms, and large buildings. Biking in Minneapolis is also really enjoyable due to the nice weather (which I unfortunately did not experience much of), and the accessibility of bikes definitely results in more of the population taking cleaner forms of transportation.

All in all, even before the actual conference, I was very impressed by Minneapolis. It’s really a city that’s trying, and so far succeeding, in becoming more green, and more energy efficient. Not only that, but the streets are far less congested because of the use of mass transit and bikes. It seems to me that in terms of transportation, Minneapolis is a model city.

More to come on the conference itself…

Sincerely,
Adarsha

Charity vs sustainable development issues in Haiti

Hello readers of the Project Jatropha blog,
My name is Michelle Lacourciere and I am the director of the Sirona Cares Foundation. The SCF uses Jatropha as a tool to empower Haitian farmers giving them the ability to create, use and market Jatropha oil in Haiti. SCF and Project Jatropha’s work share many commonalities, and we are proud of our partnership with them and honored to post on this blog.

Recently a reader here posed questions about Haiti, specifically about the role of NPOs there and the charity vs. sustainable development issue. I’m happy to respond with regard to the SCF role in Haiti. Our primary reason for being in Haiti, and eventually in other countries, is to bring true sustainable development to the poorest people there, the peasant farmers. We are creating an industry with many jobs, and all of the profits from this work will be eventually be controlled by a Haitian for-profit entity, Sirona Haiti and reinvested into the participating communities. Our goal is to create possibility where none exists now, to create a machine that will continue to enhance life in rural Haiti long after we have gone.

It is impossible to work in Haiti and see the condition that our communities suffer in and do nothing to help. Without losing our focus on sustainable development we also work to support those who care for and educate children. This critical advocacy role gives our orphanage and school directors a voice where they had none before. We have successfully linked them to resources supplied by other NPOs and individuals/groups here that wish to help in this area. We do this because we believe that children are the future, and in Haiti the median age is only 20. If we can help support these children and harness the energy of the change-makers who are in their late twenties we will be able to rapidly see change in Haiti. Response to our work has been tremendous, hundreds of farmers have enrolled, and we are well received in their communities because we work both to empower them, and to support their children. We are proud of the model, and excited to have made the progress that we did this year in light of the earthquake and recent cholera epidemic.

Sirona’s name was taken from the Celtic goddess of healing. We see the crippling effects of long-term charity in Haiti on every trip, and we work very hard to reverse them through empowerment and education. Our work uses on the “teach a man to fish” vs. “give a man a fish” philosophy. A SCF blog entry addressing this very issue is found at http://tinyurl.com/2bxe4ec. I hope that this has answered your questions, and again, I respectfully thank the Project Jatropha team for asking me to post here on their blog.

Michelle Lacourciere
The Sirona Cares Foundation
mlacourciere@sironacares.org

Music Speaks 2010: Audition -- [ReChoired: Sounds of Silence]

Good Luck to the Senior Octet of the College Preparatory School: Music Speaks 2010 Audition

Dear Blog Followers,

The YouTube video posted above is from the Senior Octet of our school comprising of Jacob Wilson, Aaron Pang, Mitchell Leoung, Tatianna Rosenblatt, Maya Ramachandran, Karli Anderson, and Nick Spears. They are auditioning for the Charity Competition called Music Speaks 2010 and would like to share this video. Music Speaks is a charity concert to raise money and awareness about Autism. The competing groups also get to choose a charity to donate to, and they have chosen Project Jatropha. We are very grateful for their choice, and wish them the best of luck. Once again, many thanks to the Senior Octet.
From,
Project Jatropha Team

How to green your school from Cali to Minnesota

Dear friends,
I am re-posting Adarsha's Oct 6th blog entry from ACE's blog: Hot and Bothered. This will be a great opportunity for us to establish new contacts with environmental youth leaders from all over the USA. Good luck Adarsha!
~Apoorva

How to green your school from Cali to Minnesota

October 6th, 2010 by Adarsha

This month, I’ll be representing ACE at the Green Schools National Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Its goal is to engage high school students and drive them towards making their schools more sustainable.

There is a lineup of some pretty exciting-sounding speakers, including Phillipe Cousteau, the renowned environmental activist who is the voice and face of a lot of environmental education programs delivered online.

One of the programs – the National Youth Summit – focuses as an idea exchange for the youth interested in greening their local schools together and I think that the Green Schools National Conference Leadership Program interests me because I value efforts like this to spur greener schools.

This generation’s youth, through our action or inaction, will have a great impact on social, political, economic, and environmental issues.

It is vital to instill the importance of sustainability and the value of protecting the environment in the youth, who will keep those values and hopefully continue to act on them throughout their lives.

I hope to learn what schools from varying backgrounds can do to help green themselves and the surrounding environments as there is no one-size-fits-all approach to making local institutions more sustainable. By learning the various approaches other students are taking towards sustainable schools and bringing the knowledge I’ve acquired from working with ACE and my own project, I hope to learn about the various paths to sustainability, and help fellow students in their endeavors.

More to come after my trip north and east!

-Adarsha

How Did We Do: Labland Biotechs Perspective and Our Analysis

Dear readers,

As Apoorva wrote, we were excited about the 80 Kg(176.37 lb) seeds that the farmers collected in Thippalapura. However, when we met our Advisory Board members, Dr. Sudheer Shetty and Dr. Geetaa Singh of Labland Biotechs, they were kind of disappointed. According to their expert opinion, it should have been three times the amount that we got. They expected roughly around 525 lb.

Well, when I thought about this, I knew the reason for this difference. When we visited the villages this time, we saw lots of seeds that were on the plant or on the ground. The farmers have not collected all the seeds. The reason for this is, the conflict of time. The harvest time of tobacco and Jatropha overlaps. If we think about it, we know that their first preference is tobacco, that is their main cash crop. That leaves the seeds on their Jatropha plant unharvested. This is a problem that we anticipated, but not to this degree.

Some of the farmers who were adventurous enough to plant Jatropha on their regular land patch told us how much money they lost because of lack of that patch of land for tobacco cultivation. This is true. Jatropha will not reach its full potential for the first two years and if the farmers replace tobacco with Jatropha, they will lose their income for the first two years. This is the reason we are not asking the farmers to replace the only cash crop. We want this to be a slow transition. We want to give this as an option. It will be up to the farmers to decide after two years.

A Stove Run by Jatropha Oil at Labland Biotechs

However, we need to come up with a way to see to it that the farmers collect the seeds that their Jatropha plants' yield. If both plants are to be harvested at the same time, how can we do this? One of the ways we are thinking is encouraging the other family members like kids to get involved. This is where our Global Call to Youth comes in. As we have involved several rural schools in environmental education and tree planting, an idea hit upon us to see if we can ask them to get involved. This is our plan A for the moment. If any of you have other ideas, we are interested in hearing them. Right now, we're definitely open to suggestions.

Some pictures from the global call to youth!

Sincerely,
Adarsha