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Summer of Solutions: St. Louis

We are excited to bring you Summer of Solutions: St. Louis! We encourage you to come join us to work on climate solutions this summer in the Gateway City.  Besides being a great place to spend your summer, St. Louis is a city that needs your help. St. Louis is an aging industrial city facing critical issues of urban sprawl and worsening decay of the city core, with long-standing issues with poverty and racism. However, there’s a broad-minded and exciting coalition of awesome people coming together to fight these challenges and revitalize our brick city. And obviously environmentalists have a place at the forefront of this crew.

The SOS-STL crew is excited to get to work tackling some of these issues this upcoming summer. Our projects will include an effort to bring cool roofs to the residents of Old North St. Louis, a historic neighborhood where community efforts are coming together to fight chronic problems of decay. We also hope to offer a more politically-oriented project: coalition-building and organizing around transit. Our transit system was recently featured in the New York Times as one of the most “endangered” public transportation systems in the country.

We’ll be living near the bustling Delmar Loop (one of the 10 best streets in America, according to the American Planning Association) and near Forest Park (bigger than Central Park!), in area that has easy access to public transit and is quite bike-able.

Questions? Contact us at sos.stlouis@gmail.com.

Meet the Facilitators:

Sam Fok is from St. Louis.  His SOS journey started with a membership in Engineers without Borders.  Sam found himself alone last summer with lots of cool projects to do but no one to do them with.  It was a sad, frustrating time.  Then came the call to join SOS and since then his adventures have taken him to across his native St. Louis to places he’d never been before, including to pyramid builds, light-up drum ceremonies, not-so-secret rain barrel operations, and not-so-secret cool roof operations.

From Los Angeles, Emmie Lai is currently in her sophomore year at Washington University in St. Louis pursuing a major in Biology and a minor in Economics. She is actively involved in various on-campus community services programs, as well as off-campus non-profit organizations which strive for sustainability and social change in the greater St. Louis community.

Melissa Legge is a junior at Washington University in St. Louis who LOVES St. Louis summers and is excited to get to work. She spends most of her time these days working on environmental issues with Green Action, a student environmental group at Wash U, and trying to save the Metro. When she’s not in class, where she’s majoring in Environmental Studies and American Culture Studies, she’s out exploring this fair city and eating copious amounts of vegetarian food.

Originally from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Anna Li is a sophomore at Washington University in St. Louis. She is an anthropology and biology major involved in the campus’ Green Action student group.  Terrified by the prospect of a dying public transit system, she fervently flyers the entire campus to let everyone know that MetroLink is in trouble.  Anna also flyers, plans tons of stuff, and would like to have a recyclable fashion show for Recyclemania as a member of the Student Green Council on campus.

Ryan Matos is a rising junior at Washington University studying Environmental Engineering who is passionate about living sustainably and cooking and eating delicious food.  He has been a member of Green Action for two years and has some experience with business and campaign management.  In his free time, Ryan enjoys singing, playing the piano, and the companionship of fellow human beings.