• Home
• 2010 Summer of Solutions Programs
  • Asheville, NC
  • Austin, TX
  • Burlington, VT
  • Cleveland, OH
  • Corvallis, OR
  • Detroit, MI
  • Fayetteville, AR
  • Harrisburg, PA
  • Iowa City, IA
  • Santa Fe, NM
  • Twin Cities, MN
  • Worcester, MA
• Our blog
• Donate
• Apply to LEAD a local Summer of Solutions program
• Program Planning Tools
• History
• Partners

Links

It's Getting Hot in Here

What You Give and What You Get

The Summer of Solutions is a life-changing experience that helps you build a network of friends who are reshaping the world, a platform for supporting yourself while developing sustainable communities, and concrete ideas, skills, and experiences to support new projects, new leaders, and even new careers. This is not just a summer job where you get paid for doing stuff that may not matter to you. It’s not just an academic experience where someone imparts knowledge to you. It’s not just hanging out and having a good time. Instead, it is learning-by-doing in ways that are life changing and create real results benefiting the community and growing your personal ability while demonstrating what is possible.

The tangible stuff:
If you’re a volunteer, you do work that inspires you and you feel good about and you learn skills and experiences that help you out in your future work.

If you’re a full-time fellow, you do a lot more work that is even more exciting and empowering, plus you get regular mentorship and valuable additional training and experience working with leaders in the green economy field. Working with others, you get to shape the course of what you are doing. Because you’re dedicating your whole summer to this effort, we work together to find the support you need to participate. As such, you have a role in defining what you’re need is and as a member of the team, you’ll be responsible for helping fill those needs. We will help you learn how to find monetary or non-monetary resources that can support the program, which is also a valuable skill for the sustainable community development work that we do. As program leaders, we raise a baseline of program resources that are augmented by the team effort. Based on your personal situation, this could include grassroots fundraising, helping out with grants or securing support from your academic institution, or helping find donations of space and housing.  Based on your needs, we’ll provide support for your personal participation that may include:

• A fellowship stipend – we are seeking grant funding and will work with all fellows to raise grassroots donations for fellowship stipends.
• If you’re in school, creating of a credit-bearing internship or independent research project that fills your needs.
• Providing free or low-cost housing, food, and transportation options.

The Soul:
We’ll unite a team of truly amazing people, work closely with inspiring and deeply rooted community leaders, and introduce solutions that redefine what’s possible. As a team, each of us will put our passion, brilliance, and insight into the process, and work together to empower, support, and connect each other, the other people in our local community, and other communities around the country. In the words of someone who took the leap of faith to join us for our first program two years ago:
"For me, Summer of Solutions was an incredible experience. It's hard to quantify or communicate all the ways in which it impacted me, and I'm sure that I will not know or understand all of those impacts until years from now. Suffice it to say that I was absolutely blown away...It is the empowerment that comes part and parcel with being part of building solutions that are really REAL, and knowing that those projects and initiatives were started by people my age – my friends and co-organizers. If they can do it, we can do it too.  And we will - because we can."
- Callista Perry, SoS Twin Cities ‘08 participant, SoS Worcester ‘09 leader.