GRAND ASPIRATIONS
Project Description - download
a .doc of this page
ARISE is a coalition of students, labor organizers, various nonprofits, and city planners who have been generating a green re-industrialization plan for the Twin Cities Ford Plant (set to close in 2009). Our scenario envisions the plant as a green manufacturing facility which will use renewable energy to produce essential clean-energy goods, such as wind turbines and solar panels, and which supports and sustains a working-class urban community.
Youth involved with ARISE as a summer project will gain valuable experience by working with coalition members to create over 2,000 green jobs and learning to translate ARISE's framework for sustainable re-industrialization to projects in their own communities. With the help of summer participants ARISE will link with other existing green economy programs and spread the framework for green re-development across the country.
Cooperative Energy Futures
This summer, participants will work with community members, energy auditors, contractors, utilities, and investors to implement this model throughout the Twin Cities and learn how to replicate it nationwide. We will gain practical experience in sustainability finance, social entrepreneurship, community-based social marketing, and the ability to make sweeping changes to our infrastructure that create green job opportunities and help everyday people get by.
Community-Based
Wind Energy Development
The
Midwest is rich in wind energy
opportunities, yet the rising demand for wind turbines and an inefficient energy
infrastructure inhibit the
development of a wind-powered region.
The Community-Based Wind Energy Development project works
with a variety
of institutions to invest in wind energy and fund the construction of
wind
farms across the Midwest.
Summer
participants will learn
finance structures, policy tools, and the state of the wind industry,
giving us
valuable skills to engage in local renewable energy development
projects and an
understanding of how to establish profitable and self-sustaining
community
energy initiatives. We will also explore the nuances of a renewable
energy
transition - including community-based energy development, a
distributed
electrical grid, and local production of turbines.
Building
on the many
intersecting but independent initiatives around economic, racial,
environmental
and climate justice work, a
youth
Environmental Justice Network will establish
collaboration between community groups to create a
sustainable and just
society.
Participants
will work
to ensure that “sustainable” urban development does not destroy
low-income
communities, connect fair housing and job creation initiatives to the
Climate
Movement, and expand a youth hip-hop alliance around social and
environmental
activism. Participants will gain
experience working with
diverse communities, build alliances across issues and help strengthen
the
environmental justice movement.
Experimental
College
A
community education model, EXCO is
free and anyone can teach or take a class.
The Minnesota Climate Positive Team has facilitated
courses on home
auditing and eco-spirituality, among many others.
This evolving school is a space for us to share
skills and ideas and explore
environmental
education with the broader community.
In addition to participating in the EXCO
course “Climate, Development and Energy: Renewing our future,” Summer
of
Solutions youth may teach a class or workshop of their own.
A
student-designed web-based
networking tool, WeCAN has the potential to be the
online organizing space for the climate movement.
It is based on the climate positive
philosophy that shared resources empower everyone.
Participants will delve into the theories of
social networking and work to understand the networking needs of the
climate
movement, while simultaneously creating the online network that will
provide
those tools.
Fired Up
Media
Launched by young people around the
nation, Fired Up Media is an emerging national news source which
empowers the
climate movement to tell its own story and mobilize the public behind
the
climate movement. Summer
participants
will work to make Fired Up Media more accessible to the general public
through
college and local media sources, and will gain concrete experience
working with
media outlets and gain the tools to create, access, and generate buzz
around
succesful and important stories. A
new
media source will have a key role in telling the story of our future.
No New
Coal!
All across the nation, youth have
risen up and demonstrated that new coal-fired power plants are unwise
and
unjust investments. Participants
will
partner with organizations such as the
and local communities and other organizations to prevent
the
construction of wasteful and dirty coal plants, such as Bigstone II and
Mesaba. They will
create innovative
campaigns, gain networking skills and learn how to expand and build
upon
regional initiatives.
Community
Gardening
nt local food economy and
demonstrate that
community-sustainability is possible in all areas of life, rural and
urban. Participants will work with local CSAs and in the ECO house and MULCH gardens
as well as our plot in the backyard here at 1769 Grand ave.