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Focus Roots 2008
Focus Roots 2008:
Maya Donelson: Graze the Roof The Glide Foundation Rooftop Garden Project
About Maya:
Maya Donelson is a recent graduate from Syracuse University. She is dedicated to creating sustainable spaces and making our cities more livable. Since graduation she has undertaken a cross country cycling adventure, worked as an architectural designer at a ecological architecture firm, and currently interns with Oakland based nonprofit, Bay Localize, where she is exploring and contributing to the development of urban agriculture, living rooftops, rainwater catchment and solar power. Aside from interning with Bay Localize she is creating graphics, designing websites and working at Café Gratitude serving local, organic food. Maya resides in San Francisco and enjoys being outside, bicycling and exploring the Bay Area.
The 2008 Focus Roots Fellowship pilot, Project Slingshot, was made possible by our partner Clif MOJO, the sweet and salty trail mix bar.
About Graze the Roof:
Graze the Roof, San Francisco, CA, will demonstrate soil-less and container gardening methods on the rooftop at Glide, a San Francisco church and nonprofit located in the Tenderloin District. The project eliminates the use of fossil fuel consuming production and distribution methods typical of modern agricultural practices while saving energy in the building and reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Students from Glide's Training and Employment Services Youth Build Program will construct and maintain the garden which will produce 1,440 lbs. of food in its first year. The rooftop will provide a natural sanctuary and a space to relax, inspire, educate and empower 200 homeless and low-income children between the ages of 5 and 18.
Where Are They Now?
Graze the Roof is currently a working project of Glide’s Training and Employment Services Youth Build Program. They hold community work days every second Saturday of the month, garden tours every first Sunday of the month, and FYCC Rooftop Garden Classes on Mondays and Thursdays. Maya is currently the Project Organizer and Educator.
Jesse Hough: Northwest Institute for Community Energy (NICE)
About Jesse:
Jesse Hough is a junior General Science major at the University of Oregon. He has led and formed multiple groups that are actively working for a sustainable future. He has served as the chapter chair of the UO OSPIRG group, co-directed the UO Survival Center, worked to bring a bike library to the UO campus, sat on the UO Environmental Issues Committee and started the Sustainability Coalition on campus. Jesse is not only active on his campus; he's also working to engage other campuses in the youth climate movement through the Cascade Climate Network, which he co-founded in 2007. Jesse has extensive experience organizing large events and especially enjoys empowering others to make positive change.
About the NICE:
The Neighborhood Institute for Community Energy, Portland, OR, runs a continual summer "think-and-do tank" institute that engages students to help advance an innovative, community-owned, thermal district energy system utilizing low carbon energy supplies to provide space heating and cooling and domestic hot water to a mixed residential/commercial neighborhood of Portland, Oregon. In partnership with Portland State University, Midtech Energy and the Cascade Climate Network, the project identifies and tackles obstacles to implementing a sustainable neighborhood energy system.
Where are they now?
The Northwest Institute for Community Enrichment Summer of Solutions 2010 program will run for 8 weeks, starting in the last week of June (the 28th) and lasting through August 28th. This program will be one of fifteen Summer of Solutions programs hosted around the country by Grand Aspirations. Planning leading up to the program will be done by the Corvallis Community Energy Project, the NICE Summer of Solutions 2010 planning team, and NICE Summer of Solutions Coordinators once they have been selected at the beginning of May. The NICE is also moving into Portland this summer to renovate an unused workspace, offer community organizing trainings, and bring Portland neighborhoods together.
Richard Graves: Fired Up Youth Action TV
About Richard:
Richard Graves is a climate activist, social entrepreneur, and online journalist. He founded Fired Up Media to help youth leaders from around the world tell their stories in the fight against global warming and for a more just and sustainable world. He thinks that young people can use new media to create the revolutionary change necessary to solve global warming and has told people that at the World Bank, UN, CNN, and other stuffy institutions.
About Fired Up Youth Action TV:
Fired Up Youth Action TV, Washington, D.C., produces news segments covering youth issues ranging from education, to politics, to jobs and the economy, to entertainment and culture. It does this through the lens of the most important challenges facing young people: the impact of global warming and the construction of a cleaner, more just economy and society. With contributors from around the country and traditional and new media distribution, Fired Up Youth Action TV reaches a broad audience of youth with stories they relate to, thus helping build the climate movement.
Where are they now?
Fired Up Youth Action TV is currently in its 3rd year of operations. It has evolved from a media outlet, to an online training boutique, to a campaign consulting company whose clients include Friends of the Earth, Green Homes and TckTckTck. Richard Graves is still the director, he employees Shadia Wood, Program Director, Project Survival Media, Madeline Kovacs, Program and Development Associate and Robert vanWaarden, Photographer. Fired Up Youth Action TV is working on a project called Project Survival Media. Project Survival Media (PSM) is a collaborative global network of journalists using video, photography, and blogs to report from the front lines of the climate crisis. In the lead up to the landmark UN Climate conference taking place in Copenhagen in December of 2009, Project Survival Media will help assemble and launch seven global new media teams. The purposes of these teams: to report on the most compelling climate stories from around the world, to amplify voices underrepresented by traditional media, and to breathe life into the facts and statistics of this modern crisis.
