Summer of Solutions Worcester: It's Art Garden Time!

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday April 18, 2010 · 7:21 PM PDT

2010/04/18 · 19:21

This post brought to you by James Kobialka, Summer of Solutions program leader in Worcester Massachusetts. Check out these amazing projects!

So there’s this giant community garden, right? And part of it is a huge plot filled with stalks of corn, but each ear is a can of spraypaint or a giant crayon or some sort of crazy crafty thing. The rest of the garden is full of regular plants, and there are people busily moving around, picking art and planting art and picking food and planting food. You look at it and you think to yourself “Wow, that’s some sort of amazing artgarden that spews fruit and beauty into the world. I want in on that!”

That’s how the SoS team envisions Worcester. It might not even be far from the truth. Worcester has quite a few hugely active community groups, whether they’re active in one neighborhood, the whole city, or throughout central Massachusetts. Last year, Summer of Solutions was one of those, working with gardens, spreading information on green job creation, and creating a Weatherization group that lives on to this day.

abbieplouff

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday March 31, 2010 · 11:12 AM PDT

2010/03/31 · 11:12

As Communications facilitator of Grand Aspirations, I am featuring local programs to paint a picture of the diversity of solutions young people are building across the country. Last week, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tim Krueger and Nora Graubard, two of the program leaders for Cleveland SoS. The other program leaders are Erika Zarowin, Ben Shapiro, and Phoebe Flaherty.

Leaders of Cleveland Summer of Solutions focus on connecting participants and interns with the broad network of organizations in Cleveland already working on issues of community development and sustainability.

The program’s main initiative is an energy efficiency project with the potential to effect change across the city.

abbieplouff

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday March 14, 2010 · 5:40 PM PDT

2010/03/14 · 17:40

As communications director for Summer of Solutions, I’m featuring every program to paint a picture of the diversity of solutions young people are building across the country. This post features the powerful work happening in Corvallis, OR, as related to me by Nathan Jones.

The Summer of Solutions is a summer program designed to empower youth to create self sustaining community based solutions to environment and social injustice, climate change and economic insolvency. We work to build an inclusive, local community that connects across the country that will propel us into holistic, renewable energy economy.

Oregon’s Summer of Solutions program is three years in the making. In the summer of 2008, Nathan and others led a summer program called the Northwest Institute for Community Enrichment. Throughout the summer, the NICE kept in touch with Summer of Solutions – Twin Cities, and at the end of the summer they decided to team up for summer 2009 to run their programs simultaneously on a national scale.

abbieplouff

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday March 04, 2010 · 6:59 AM PST

2010/03/04 · 06:59

The Summer of Solutions is a program run by Grand Aspirations designed to train youth activists to create, implement, and strengthen community projects in order to find solutions to climate change, economic recession, and environmental injustice.

This blog series is brought to you by the national media working group for Grand Aspirations. Each week we will be featuring a different local program. This week, we’re featuring the Twin Cities, MN!

abbieplouff

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday January 22, 2010 · 8:36 AM PST

2010/01/22 · 08:36

x-posted from It’s Getting Hot In Here and Solutionaries

This post is old - by about two weeks. But it is still relevant, and explains a lot of what I personally have been doing with my life n the activist realm. There will be more to come about the wonderful work of Grand Aspirations and Summer of Solutions, think of this post as a summary.

Over ten days in January, 19 youth activists involved in the Summer of Solutions converged in chilly St. Paul, MN to build a strategy for reshaping our economy from the ground up. We learned how to run an effective summer program dedicated to finding tangible, local solutions to the problems of climate change, the economic downturn, and environmental injustice.

The program began in the summer of 2008 with one program of 20 participants, and over the course of last year grew into 9 programs across the United States. Collectively, there were 150 youth activists involved around the nation.

That was this last summer. Now, we’re looking forward to next summer and the growth it has in store for us.

RSS

Summer of Solutions Worcester: It's Art Garden Time!

Summer of Solutions hits the streets in Cleveland, OH

Summer of Solutions: Corvallis Gearing Up for Another Great Summer

Twin Cities Summer of Solutions hits the ground running!

Reflections on a Grand Aspirations Leadership Gathering