Green Cities Sustainability Corps 2010
Program Manger: Lori Gaido Project Dates: Feb 2010 - Dec 2010 Email Address: lgaido@thesca.org
August: Miriam Parson
SUSTAINABILITY CLIMATE FELLOW
Green Building Alliance
Summary:
In August 2010 a main priority has been working with the Pittsburgh Climate Initiative Partners to redesign its messaging and branding to unify our four sectors for publicity and recruitment. I have also focused on continuing progress on the second Pittsburgh Climate Action Plan. The higher education chapter is complete and sent out for review. There is significant progress on the government chapter, and I am continuing to work with the City’s Authorities to include recommendations for their operations as part of government. The community chapter is outlined, and the business chapter is being discussed by the Business Climate Coalition. I am also organizing a service event with the universities for mid-October and working with GBA to secure funding for PCI in 2011 and beyond.
August: Loralyn Fabian
SUSTAINABILITY COMMUNITY FELLOW
East Liberty Development, Inc.
Main Projects / Summary:
ELDI
Rain Gardens: The rain garden projects continued into August and there was significantly less work on this project than in previous months; because they’re almost complete! One garden location still needed a new downspout installed at the house. The installation at this property was too tricky for volunteers to implement, so the hunt was on for a professional contractor. After meeting with the homeowner to come to develop a plan, our ELDI co-worker hired his contractor contact. Installation will be in the beginning of September.
I also needed to make sure that every homeowner was registering their rain garden on the Rain Garden Alliance website; ELDI would get invoiced from RGA if the homeowners didn’t do this. They were able to use me as a resource to get through the registration.
Rain garden informational signs were acquired from RGA to put at the homeowner’s gardens to educate passerbys.
Elm Street District: After the big shrub planting on East Liberty Blvd. in July, I took care of the invoice and budgeting in August. A watering plan was developed with Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest, and my co-workers and I are out there watering each week.
The next project with Elm Street dollars is tree plantings in the neighborhood. Throughout August, I contacted many people to see if they were interested in trees, or if they would help to get their neighbors on board with them. I wrote a letter and edited a tree form so that block group members could send it out to their block. While some people were easy to contact, a lot of time has been spent trying to follow up with contacts that will not reply; even though I know they are interested.
National Night Out: National Night Out occurred on the evening of August 3rd. The couple days before the event in August was dedicated to last minute planning and assistance for the events. I arranged for Police 5 Bike Patrol officers to visit the sites and for Target representatives to stop by with sidewalk chalk. I got the tables and tents to all of the locations, and I assembled boxes of informational materials on ELDI/East Liberty so that residents could view them. In general, I was a resource for the leaders of these events; I constantly checked-in and made some promotional materials. The events went really well!
SCA
Community Day: In August I continued to edit the event flyer as needed. I took on the responsibility of getting food donated for the day. After contacted Councilman Doug Shields office, and many bagel shops, I eventually was awarded donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts! Throughout the month, there were several conference calls and meetings with the Fellows to touch base about our progress. On August 21st, the event day, I helped with set-up, supervised the sign-in table, created give away bags, worked at the Food Forest site, and helped with clean-up/tear-down. We ended up having a nice turn out that morning. Those that volunteers I wrote thank yous to in email, and I wrote hand written thank yous for our partners and donors.
August: Jamie Eberl
SUSTAINABLE COUNTY FELLOW
Allegheny County
Greenhouse Gas Inventory
- Starting Phase two of Greenhouse Gas Inventory with County Authorities
- Discussed moving forward with inventories for County Authorities with PA Environmental Council
- Drafted a list of all data that will be required to complete a Greenhouse Gas Inventory
- Reviewed PACT steam data from County Inventory and the ICLEI guidelines for Steam and District
Heating. This included going over the steam calculations from County report and determine methodology used for calculation, re-running the data through CACP and verifying the results by hand calculations as directed in INCLEI protocols.
- Drafted document detailing the process used to determine carbon emissions from steam use and the kilowatt equivalent associated with steam production
Recycling
- Worked on County Recycling Resource Guide
- Followed up with parks after recycling bins were received.
- Visited White Oak and Round Hill Parks to talk to park managers and discuss recycling, determine if bins delivered, recycling pickup schedules, bin placement and if anything else is needed.
Grants
- Reviewed and updated grants spreadsheet with new opening and deadline dates.
- Reorganized and categorized the list for easier reading and to organize based on types of projects to be funded.
- Signed up for notifications for various grant programs.
Green Nurture
- Attended conference call for explanation of Green Nurture Program
- Made a list of interested County Employees who would like to be a part of the program
- Responded to all initially interested County employees and upload these contacts to the Green
Nurture Database
- Communicated with Green Nurture staff to troubleshoot names and emails which were not working
- Responded to additional County employees who expressed interest in being part of Green Nurture and added these additional contacts to the program.
- Monitoring Green Nurture Message boards.
Events
Allegheny Green +Innovation Festival
Assisted event coordinator with various tasks
Attend event and worked at the Information Booth
SCA Community Volunteer Day in Hazelwood
Attended planning meetings with other SCA fellows
Updated facebook page for event
Walked around Hazelwood talking to residents and businesses about the event
Posted fliers around the community to promote the volunteer day
Attended the event
LEED for Existing Buildings
- Attended meetings to discuss possibility upgrading a County-owned building to achieve LEED-
EBOM status
- Researched other buildings similar to Allegheny County properties who have achieved LEED-EBOM status.
- Researched Energy Star portfolio manager categories and determined how Allegheny County properties could fit into these categories.
- Assisted in determining best candidate buildings for upgrades by determining ages of buildings.
Administrative Tasks
- Attended Green Action Team meetings and took notes
- Attended Pittsburgh Climate Initiative meetings
- Reviewed and edited articles from web intern for posting on the County website
- Assisted with County Demand Response program to reduce electrical demand
August: Katrina Brink
SUSTAINABILITY AGRICULTURE FELLOW
Penn State Extension in Allegheny County
The Pittsburgh Garden Experiment
Pittsburgh Food Policy Council
Summary:
The month of August was eventful for the local food scene in Pittsburgh. For Penn State Extension I completed a blog post for the Farmers at the Firehouse Market, The Bloomfield Farmers’ Market and a second installment of the Farmers at Phipps Market. I also attended the Tomato and Garlic Festival and Rachel’s Sustainable Feast in order to write about the events on our blog. There were some other various administrative tasks I completed as well. For the Food Policy Council I took notes during the meeting and also compiled information for an educational document about keeping chickens and bees in the city. This was sent to members of the City Planning Commission, which voted on the latest versions of the urban agriculture zoning code changes on August 31. My work with the Pittsburgh Garden Experiment consisted of attending a compost facility tour, planning for future events, attending PGE August events and digging test plots for our seed bombs. Jeff and I also attended a symposium to learn about grant funding opportunities. For the SCA I helped get the word out about our Hazelwood Community Day that took place on August 21. The day of the event I helped lead a crew that cleared brush and logs.
August: Jake Baechle
SUSTAINABILITY BUSINESS FELLOW
Sustainable Future
August was a busy month for Jake both in and out of the office. Early in the month he and his advisor Matt Mehalik met with Commuteinfo for the second time to discuss the Transportation Transformation. At this meeting it was confirmed that they would be present the idea to the Commuteinfo partners at a meeting in September. On a similar note Jake held two BCC subcommittee meetings to discuss the Transportation Transformation and the Green Office Challenge in further detail.
Each subcommittee meeting started off with Jake providing a brief background of the programs along with a status update. The groups discussed how they would like to see the events play out and what they could each bring to the table. The ideas were recorded and will be presented to the rest of the group at the next BCC meeting on September 7th. Jake spent the later part of the month at Sustainable Pittsburgh working on these projects along with preparing presentations for the BCC meeting and the board retreat which will both be taking place in early September.
The Community Day event that Jake and the rest of the Green Cities fellows had been preparing for finally played out on August 21st. The group met several times throughout August to iron out the details for event. Jake specifically assisted in communications with the Pittsburgh Food Forest and helped prepare the necessary tools for the sites. On the day of the event Evan and Jake lead a crew on the Food Forest site, where they leveled out a designated learning space. Before they started the area was on a hill and rather uneven and by the end it was both flat and cleared out. Overall the Community Day was very successful. There was good turnout from the community and on top of constructing four rain barrels there was clear progress was made on both the Hazelwood Urban Gardens and Hazelwood Food Forest sites.
Jake also worked with the Food Forest earlier in the month to prepare the site for the Green Cities event. Aside from the Community Day Jake had the opportunity to work on another big project with the Pittsburgh Food Forests this month; Hot House! Hot House is an event put on by the Sprout Fund to showcase the projects they have funded to their supporters and the community. The Pittsburgh Food Forests received funding from the Sprout Fund at the end of 2009 and would be presenting the project at the event.
This year’s Hot House had a carnival theme and each group was given materials to construct a small booth. Jake helped to paint, decorate, and assemble the booth. He also assisted in planning for the event. After concluding that “bobbing for local fruit” would be relevant to both the Food Forest mission and the carnival theme Jake helped decorate a rain barrel and purchased the fruit from local farmers’ markets. Jake was also given the responsibility of running the booth the entire night with the assistance of another volunteer. For five hours the two of them explained what the Food Forest was and what the group has, and hopes to, accomplish. Throughout the night there was a consistent flow of people learning about the program and having fun bobbing for local fruit.
August: Adam Fedyski
SUSTAINABILITY COMMUNITY FELLOW
Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy
Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy
In anticipation of August always being a hot month, there were very few outdoor activities planned to take place. In turn, that meant I had time to buckle down in the office and achieve some great strides in completing tasks that were set out as main objectives for me at the beginning of my fellowship. I created a site numbering system for the Urban EcoSteward (UES) program, which will help us to not only keep track of paper files, but also make the transition to a geodatabase, which will link our GIS files and Excel files together, easier. I facilitated a meeting of the UES park coordinators, explaining the changes to the system and working towards establishing more unified methods of recordkeeping across all of the parks. We also discussed keeping better track of the materials that we plant on the UES plots so we know not only what is being planted, but what is surviving and thriving. I am hoping that by the time I am finished, there will be several measures in place to help quantify just how successful the program has been since it started in 2005. Some other highlights of the month:
August 16: Facilitated volunteer event planning meeting to discuss volunteer opportunities and resources for the fall season. Due to a lack of TreeVitalize funding, we will not be able to do as many activities as we had initially hoped to do, but we will still keep busy anyways.
August 20: Introduction to volunteering with the PPC with freshmen from Carnegie Mellon University- We worked with 27 students, mostly incoming freshmen, to explain what the PPC does in Schenley Park, give them an overview of watersheds, and do invasive vine removal along the trails.
August 26: Urban EcoSteward meeting- presented hard work that I did, worked with coordinators to figure out next steps with the program
Also, that afternoon I represented the PPC on a conference call with the Urban Ecology Collaborative education working group, a regional collection of environmental educators who communicate with each other to share information. This call was focused on model sharing of evaluation methods. I shared how we evaluated our high school UES program and gathered feedback for how to improve results, as well as other methods to use in the future.
SCA COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER DAY
On August 21, the Green Cities fellows helped to put on a volunteer event focusing on the Hazelwood neighborhood. We worked with Hazelwood Urban Gardens (HUGs), the Hazelwood Food Forest permaculture project, and installed rain barrels on the Hazelwood Initiative building. Including our group, we had close to 40 volunteers come out to work for three hours with us on these projects. We made great progress on both the gardens and food forest and were able to demonstrate how to construct and install rain barrels. We had perfect weather for the day and everyone who came out had a great time. It was great to see the culmination of the Green Cities outreach and coordination efforts to put this day together.
August: Sarah Palmisano
SUSTAINABILITY CITY FELLOW
The City of Pittsburgh
Sarah’s work as an SCA Sustainability Fellow in the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Energy Efficiency generally falls into four categories: education and outreach, continuing personal education, internal work, and volunteering.
Education and outreach work includes things like hosting or tabling at appropriate events, symposiums, or conferences as a representative of the Mayor’s Office or the SCA. Education and outreach for August: Helped organize the SCA Green Cities’ group project (Community Day) in the neighborhood of Hazelwood. My responsibilities included volunteer recruitment, community awareness, information gathering/obtaining a permit, as well as general logistics on the day of (e.g. ensuring project leaders have the necessary supplies, signing in volunteers, helping with the raffle, and general set-up).
Continuing personal education includes attending various conferences, symposiums, workshops, or classes to increase awareness and understanding of a wide variety of sustainability and environmentally-related topics. Personal education for August: Attended the Allegheny Green and Innovation Festival to learn about local sustainability initiatives/organizations.
Internal work describes work being done within the Mayor’s Office to incorporate sustainability into City operations and services. Internal work for August: Met with a General Services representative to help better understand how to implement the environmentally preferred purchasing policy; made significant progress on recycling in the City-County Building (e.g. ordered new recycling bins, created signage and a recycling guide for the City intranet, drafted memo to City employees); led the Sustainability Commission meeting to discuss language/finalize recommendations for the second version of the Pittsburgh Climate Action Plan; started gathering information/conducting interviews for a series of case studies on the City’s environmental projects to share with surrounding municipalities/general public.
Volunteering is anything that she finds fun and worthwhile to help a good cause or a good friend after hours! Volunteering for August: 2010 Hothouse (Sprout Fund benefit) – ticket sales and admission
Loralyn Fabian
Loralyn was born and raised in the northwestern region of Pennsylvania. Because of her many years in this location, she has always been very familiar with, and intrigued by, this green (yet rustbelt) city of Pittsburgh. When she was young, she began developing a deep passion for the environment through her rural PA exposure to many parks, trails, streams, and woods in her own neighborhood. She also gained these interests through many camping, hiking, and biking trips with her family and friends. Loralyn grew up with a great love for art as well, and with that, she decided to attend the Pennsylvania State University, main campus, in Landscape Architecture, to combine these two passions, the environment and the arts, into a career. In college, she took a great liking to her design studios that incorporated ecological restoration and conservation work. She was more interested in a native planting plan or management strategy that had an environmental benefit, verses an ornamental, aesthetics-only residential design. Her ultimate career goal was, and still is, to continue work that balances the built environment with the natural environment. In other words, it balances humans with nature.
For many years in school, Loralyn believed that she would continue to focus solely on ecological restoration work after graduation since this seemed to be the only design work that satisfied her career goals. For three summers during college, she had ecological internships in the field that complimented her restoration focus. The first was with ClearWater Conservancy, restoring riparian buffers, the second was with Penn State Cooperative Wetlands Center, surveying wetland mitigations, and the last was for Penn State’s School of Forestry, where she assessed the affects of climate change on forest ecology. But it wasn’t until later in Loralyn’s college career that she started to discover her new niche: Urban revitalization.
In 2008, Loralyn took an Urban Ecology design studio, focused on the Hill District in Pittsburgh, PA. In the same way that she loved restoring and bringing back natural lands through ecological restoration, she also enjoyed applying these similar principles of restoration to urban communities through design. She knows that it’s a slow process to restore a forest, and she also believes that it’s a slow process to revitalize an urban community. She has faith that both can eventually grow back if given the proper chance to heal from the past; and both scenarios need green to flourish once again.
From northwestern PA, to the center of the state, and now to the southwest region, Loralyn is currently the Green Cities Corps’ Sustainability Community Fellow, where she is placed with both East Liberty Development, Inc. three days a week and the Student Conservation Association twice a week. She now has the opportunity to be involved in urban revitalization work in the real world, such as with her current residential rain garden design and street tree work, that will eventually make it off the paper and into the ground! She wouldn’t want to start her career anywhere else; she finds the possibilities for an environmental designer to be plentiful here, and she believes that the close-knit community between environmental organizations, agencies, and firms in this city is very impressive.
If she isn’t geeking over green infrastructure or environmental design, then you can find Loralyn where the live music is playing within PGH, or wherever the vintage goodies are being sold. Over coffee, you will often find Loralyn raving about efficient modes of public transportation, how great it is when stores are in walking distance from her affordable Victorian apartment, and she will always be sharing her own philosophical concepts about life with you. Loralyn is well traveled throughout Europe, and that travel bug continues to grow. She is planning a trip to Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, for the end of September 2010 to check out the area’s progressive green infrastructure practices, hike in the Cascades, see the Pacific for the first time, and immerse herself in the northwest’s hip and healthy lifestyle.
June: Evan Endres
PENN FUTURE and CCI
Sustainable Community Fellow
PennFuture
June started with a bang as we led up to the World Environment Day Celebration. We began with an all-day tabling opportunity at the World Environment Day Water Matters Conference. This was a excellent opportunity to engage new constituents and Community Partners.
The Black and Gold City Goes Green had launched a Water Savers Competition amongst its Community Partners starting April 1st. This culminated in a celebration and awards ceremony on June 5th at the Carnegie Science Center. I assisted in the coordination and devised the programming for this event.
Since the theme for World Environment Day was “Water Matters” we partnered with the Conservation Consultants Inc. to provide door prizes of “Water Saving Kits”. It was a tremendous opportunity to introduce new constituents to the campaign.
June represented a multitude of outreach opportunities including a program at the Carnegie Library in Oakland. Continuing with the theme of water related actions I devised a program that linked water to carbon footprint. It was not particularly well attended but that gave us the opportunity to have a free from discourse on excessive water use and how that relates to carbon footprint. The program was recommended to other libraries.
Conservation Consultants Inc.
The CCI center ran into some facility issues involving the roof in June. Coordinating some logistics became my primary responsibility. These items included attempting to remove about 3 tons of items and soil from said roof.
CCI also conducted a teacher’s training workshop at the facility. I coordinated a neighborhood tour for this event that was well received by these educators.
Conducted several building tours involving at least 100 individuals.
May: Katrina Brink
SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE FELLOW
Penn State Extension / Food Policy Council / Pittsburgh Garden Experiment
Penn State Extension:
- Posted festivals, PGH restaurants that source local ingredients, and articles to Yumpittsburgh.com
- Facilitating registration process for course to start in May: Exploring the Small Farm Dream
- Ordered books for the above course
- Wrote letter inviting producers to take part in Farm Profiles to be used by Penn State and East End Food Co-op
- Made online surveys and sent them out to buyers and producers who attended the Local Food Showcase in March
- Summarized results of online surveys
- Met with Rob Baran of the co-op to discuss Farm Profiles
Food Policy Council:
- Did research on other cities' urban ag zoning codes (keeping chickens, livestock and bees in the city and the specific requirements to do so)
- Attended 2 FPC meetings and took notes and posted them to Google group
- Helped with beginning stages of event to be held in Homewood to show the film, Food Inc.
- Presented a small amount of research at one of the FPC meetings, then posted document to google group
Pittsburgh Garden Experiment
- Organized multiple events and if completed posted them to PGE website, google calendar and/or MeetUp group (Vacant Lot Remediation/Beautification Panel Discussion; Compost Happens;Large Scale Veggie Gardening Workshop; Wild Edibles Walk; Natural Vision Enhancement Walk - still in progress; Sweet Potato Harvest Party)(more events will be posted soon)
- Folded catalogs and distributed them to libraries/stores/cafes/coffee shops throughout ShadySide, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield and Squirrel Hill
- Picked up sawdust from Urban Tree Forge to be taken to Blackberry Meadows Farm and used for mushroom cave
- Picked up food waste from Quiet Storm to be used in industrial worm composter eventually - but dumped at Blackberry Meadows Farm for now
- Planted garlic in field and seeded flats in the greenhouse at BBMF
- Assisted Jeff in picking up seeds to fill catalog orders and fruit trees
Volunteer Days
- Panther Hollow Extravaganza - led crew picking up trash - awesome day
- Grant Makers for Effective Organizations - led a small group mulching, weeding and laying bricks for a path at community garden in Larimer - Way Fun!
Development/Education
- Pittsburgh Food Forest Workshop on April 17
-Attended CityLive with Claire on Land, Air, and Water on April 27
May: Sarah Palmisano
SUSTAINABLE CITY FELLOW
The City of Pittsburgh
Sarah’s work as an SCA Sustainability Fellow in the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Energy Efficiency generally falls into four categories: education and outreach, continuing personal education, internal work, and volunteering.
Education and outreach work includes things like hosting or tabling at appropriate events, symposiums, or conferences as a representative of the Mayor’s Office or the SCA. Education and outreach for May: tabled at Global Warming Conference for SCA (spoke to 10 people); Root for Trees Rally at Katz Plaza to support TreeVitalize and educate the community on the importance of street trees (1,000 trees given away); SCA Blues Festival meeting for a site visit and initial information gathering.
Continuing personal education includes attending various conferences, symposiums, workshops, or classes to increase awareness and understanding of a wide variety of sustainability and environmentally-related topics.
Personal education for May: attended a Road-mapping Simulation Tool workshop to learn about developing a plan for increasing solar technologies; attended solar panel installation informational workshop; attended Portfolio Manager Workshop to learn how to use the program to better track carbon savings; attended Green Pathways to Prosperity Summit to learn about the emerging green economy in Pittsburgh; attended Green Roof informational breakfast; attended Rachel Carson Biodiversity Conference with E.O. Wilson to learn about human impact on biodiversity.
Internal work describes work being done within the Mayor’s Office to incorporate sustainability into City operations and services.
Internal work for May: stormwater meeting; met with an Energy Savings Company meeting for initial information gathering; met with Sustainable Pittsburgh to discuss possibility of a Green Office Challenge; continuing tracking of hard-to-recycle bin (collected 183 alkaline batteries, 7ink/toner cartridges, 4 cell phones); clean construction meeting to discuss possibility of drafting an ordinance; started streetlight GIS/inventory for downtown and 50 Pittsburgh neighborhood business districts for streetlight retrofit.
Volunteering is anything that she finds fun and worthwhile to help a good cause or a good friend after hours! Volunteering for May: took the Tree Tenders class through Friends of the Pittsburgh Urban Forest to learn about tree care and tree biology.
April: Sarah Palmisano
SUSTAINABLE CITY FELLOW
The City of Pittsburgh
Sarah’s work as an SCA Sustainability Fellow in the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability and Energy Efficiency generally falls into four categories: education and outreach, continuing personal education, internal work, and volunteering.
Education and outreach work includes things like hosting or tabling at appropriate events, symposiums, or conferences as a representative of the Mayor’s Office or the SCA. Education and outreach for April: City-County Building Tree Giveaway to help TreeVitalize reach the goal of planting 20,000 trees by 2012 and to educate on the importance of urban trees (1,000 trees given away, 2,000 people attended event); Frick Environmental Center Earth Day Celebration Tree Giveaway (1,000 trees given away, 900 people visited our table, 40 signed up to receive sustainability updates from the City); tabled at Job Corps Sustainability Fair to share what the City is doing to “go green” and learn about what they are doing as well (20 organizations and 200 students attended); tabled at Party For the Planet at Pittsburgh Zoo and PPG Aquarium (300 people visited our table); attended Root for Trees Rally meeting to help organize the upcoming event.
Continuing personal education includes attending various conferences, symposiums, workshops, or classes to increase awareness and understanding of a wide variety of sustainability and environmentally-related topics. Personal education for April: Women’s Health and the Environment Conference; Wet Weather Symposium; Western Pennsylvania Conservancy Gateway Island Medians brainstorming session to review ideas for redesign of gateway medians downtown Pittsburgh.
Internal work describes work being done within the Mayor’s Office to incorporate sustainability into City operations and services. Internal work for April: attended Environmentally Preferred Purchasing Post Agenda (outcome: ordinance passed); attended Sustainability Commission meeting (outcome: ideas for Climate Action Plan version 2 municipal recommendations); attended PEDA grant informational meeting; implementation and tracking of the hard-to-recycle bin in City-County Building (collected 284 alkaline batteries, 5 cell phones, 16 ink/toner cartridges).
Volunteering is anything that she finds fun and worthwhile to help a good cause or a good friend after hours! Volunteering for April: GTECH Larimer vacant lot clean-up to prepare for sunflower planting.
May: Jake Baechle
SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS FELLOW
Sustainable Pittsburgh
Jake organized an event to train businesses on how to measure their energy usage and energy reductions. This involved working with the EPA and their contractor Cadmus and securing rooms and meals through Point Park University, and promoting the event. A total of 32 individuals attended. This event may lead to a future Green Office Challenge in the Pittsburgh Region.
Recently Jake has written an article that is being published in Table magazine’s summer issue title “Water’s Role in Sustainability.” On May 27th he attended a meeting with Marc Mathieu of BeDo Inc and the Rachel Carson Celebration of Biodiversity. He has also facilitated meetings for the Business Climate Coalition and its subcommittees.
Outside of Sustainable Pittsburgh, Jake has continued to volunteer with the Hazelwood Food Forest. Here he has been helping the group clear a vacant lot, improve soil quality, and plant fruit trees. He also has met with Dr. Stoddard of Duquesne University to talk about the project his class completed in Hazelwood which involved assessing the community and helping them construct an outdoor classroom.
May: Loralyn Fabian
EAST LIBERTY DEVELOPMENT, INC.
Sustainable Community Fellow
ELDI
Rain Gardens
- A lot of my time was spent continuing to meet with Barton and Gary on site for measurements and
further assessment
- With rain garden assessments/dimensions in hand, determined which 5 of 6 sites were the best
- Budget
- Figured out kinks / got it up to date
-Tracked all new expenses / managed monies to keep garden designs under budget
- Met with Roxanne Swann from Audubon Society / Rain Garden Alliance to brainstorm rain garden
designs on site
- Inquired from homeowners what plants they preferred from rain garden plant list
- Most of my time involved brainstorming and drafting up plan views and sections for the rain garden
designs in AutoCAD
- Recruited volunteers through many mediums
- Recruitment of rain garden experts
- Sent designs to Barton and Roxanne to review
- Sent designs to homeowners via email and met with them in person to review
- A lot of time spent on Determining what all must be purchased to implement projects
- Purchased mulch/compost/soil amendments / calculated amounts needed
- Ordered plants through RGA
- Purchases through Home Depot such as gravel
- Other purchases, such as through second plant center, downspouts, etc. come June
- Had to reschedule date, and therefore, had to re-recruit volunteers
- Many more steps to come in June, including preparing the actual volunteer event day (work plan,
introductions, safety, tools/materials, etc.)
- Implimentation: June 12th and 13th, 2010
Car Free Fridays
- Most of my time involved promotion: creating many write-ups / press releases for community paper,
newsletter, e-blast
- Met in person with Jeff from Trek to confirm their presence at Car Free Fridays June 18th
- Free bike maintenace / free water bottles
- Took over Jenny's business position: Got voucher discount information to Lou
- Creating bike tour through East Liberty
- Contacted Venture Outdoors and met in person to have them lead tour
Elm Street District
- Met with Nate to work out budget kinks
- Met with Matt Erb; went to Elm St. planting locations together
- Assessed whether residential locations were good for planting
- Brainstormed shrub planting possibilities at East Liberty Blvd.
- Requested Blvd planting budget estimate from Matt Erb
- Emailed / met with Lisa Ceoffe, City's Urban Forester, to look at Blvd. and discuss permitting process
Storytelling Device
- Met with Nate to brainstorm ideas after I read through community plan, annual reports, etc. last
month
National Night Out
- Neighborhood wide block party in August, in the evening, to promote public safety
- ELDI to inform block groups of event, and let them know ELDI will refund their food
- Tiffany, my co-worker, managing project until she leaves end of June
- Meetings with Tiffany weekly on the project to offer feedback and stay up to date
- I am taking over when she leaves
SCA
Green Cities Blues Festival
- Many meetings with Lori and Ray; and Sarah joins the team
- Emailed all of my contacts
- Called all of my contacts who did not reply in email
- Strategizing new way to reach out to contacts
- Hartwood Acres tour / visit with the Food Bank
- Created Google Doc of all partners and contacts to keep team organized
Website
- Took website training
- Collect bios and pictures from Fellows / edit
- Created Google Map of partner locations
- Wrote my bio for site
- Created Green Cities Corps section of website
May: Miriam Parson
SUSTAINABLE CLIMATE FELLOW
Green Building Alliance
Summary:
In May 2010 my priority has been to finalize the 2008 Pittsburgh Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory: A Five-Year Benchmark; the report is being reviewed by several partners, it will undergo graphic layout in June, and our expected publish date is the beginning of July. I have continued to facilitate the PCI Partners in their work to finalize a vision, mission, and values statements as well as establish task forces to address funding, branding, and greater partnership between city and county government initiatives. Each sector has developed a plan to build new recommendations for the next climate action plan, and I am continuing my research in support of each chapter’s development as well as broader contributions including economic development and environmental justice. The Higher Education Climate Consortium is planning a workshop and a committee meeting in July, for which I’m providing planning and recruitment support as well as day-of facilitation to develop recommendations. Finally, I have helped with footwork and planning for our crew’s service project in Hazelwood, including volunteering with two gardening organizations that use vacant lot space.
April: Ray Whiteside
SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY FELLOW
Action Housing
- Weatherization applicant follow up and crisis data entry
- Attended Action-Housing’s community partners outreach events
- Learned the Community Outreach Event Data spreadsheet process.
- Transitioned into phase 3 of my creation of the Southwestern Regional Energy Efficiency Directory
I have already outlined the table of contents and what each chapter will consist of.
Next step is the continuance of research.
Last month I got the ok from my supervisor to form a meeting between the Action-Housing Energy Outreach team and Trail Towns. I am planning to have Trail Towns meet with the Energy Outreach Educators Nikki Moore and Flyod Sanders sometime this month. They will also meet with an Action-Housing inspector. The purpose is to educate them with more material and knowledge for their weatherization workshops. I had spoke with Ms.Elisa about collaborative efforts quite a few times.
Partner Description - GTECH Strategies
GTECH Strategies (http://gtechstrategies.org/) is a Pittsburgh based non-profit dedicated to building community, reducing blight and growing the green economy. Their mission is to reclaim vacancy and empower community through innovative green strategies. They believe that vacancy is a source of blight and the green economy presents opportunities for equitable, sustainable and innovative renewal.
GTECH's core values are:
• To enable, stimulate, and cultivate energy
• To engage, empower and realize community
• To promote and secure social economic and environmental health
• To conduct, develop, and refine responsible business practices
• To innovate, contribute, and measure value
• To practice, advance, and share resourcefulness
GTECH is partnering with the SCA to take on a Sustainable Community Fellow.
This Green Cities Corp Fellow will be responsible for:
- Project coordination of the Green Jobs Advisory Board managing the communication and
administrative duties for the 50+ member group.
- Program assistance for vacant land reclamation programs including volunteer coordination, database
management and communications
- Ongoing organizational development assistance including taking board minutes, stewardship of the
strategic planning process and staffing of multi-organizational collaboratives
- Job tasks also include: Meeting facilitation, note taking and follow up coordination, newsletter
writing, research volunteer coordination, and event planning.
Partner Description - Green Building Alliance
The Green Building Alliance (http://www.gbapgh.org/) is a non-profit organization that advances economic prosperity and human well being in Western Pennsylvania by driving market demand for green buildings and green building products.
GBA is partnering with the SCA this year to take on a Sustainable Climate Fellow.
This Green Cities Corps Fellow with be responsible for:
Supporting Green Building Alliance's work with the Pittsburgh Climate Initiative (PCI). PCI seeks to raise awareness and engage Pittsburgh's residents, businesses, government, and higher education institutions in taking actions that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on our local economy and human well being.
PCI has a Steering Committee of local partners and is financially supported through funding from Surdna Foundation. The GBA Climate Intern will have the following duties:
- Help implement the Pittsburgh's Climate Action Plan, Version 1.0.
http://pittsburghclimate.org/documents/PittsburghClimateActionPlan.pdf
- Update the PCI Action Plan and the PCI website
www.pittsburghclimate.org
- Assist in organizing community outreach activities.
- Coordinate the PCI Steering Committee, PCI Working Group meetings, and conference calls.
Provide meeting support and follow-up.
- Help develop metrics associated with the Pittsburgh Climate Action Plan and Inventory.
This includes familiarity with ICLEI's climate software, on which training will be provided.
May: Claire Miziolek
GTECH STRATEGIES
Sustainable Community Fellow
Volunteer Planting days. As part of the GTECH fellowship, I have been busy planting sunflowers for bio-fuel gardens. We planted:
--Uptown planting with 7 volunteers, 6 high school students in a mentoring program and their adult mentor
--Beechview with about 30 volunteers, kids and adults
--Shecona (at E. Liberty and Collins Ave) with about 12 residents of all ages
--Peabody HS lot with over 40 volunteers from Peabody, the neighborhood, and a Jewish congregation
of volunteers.
--Millvale all day planting and fence building, with multiple volunteer groups, about 25 volunteers
total.
--Jeanette St in Wilkinsburg for a two-day volunteer event, day 1 spreading compost with about 7
volunteers, day 2 planting sunflowers with about 12 volunteers.
Community/project meetings. As a representative of GTECH, I often go to different communities and talk to them about projects. This month, I:
--Met with the Green Up Lawrenceville team.
--Talked to about 10 residents of the Alpha Terrace block group on Beatty St. about involvement with
the Peabody lot.
--Met with the Larimer Green Team to take a walking tour of vacant lots in Larimer
--Met with the Oakland Planning and Development Corporation about a new project in S. Oakland
--Met with a group in Beechview who are planning summer activities.
--Met with an SCA representative and a Parental Stress Center representative to help plan a summer
garden tour.
Green Economy Initiatives. This month was a busy one with our Green Economy Initiatives. We:
--Met with the UGGC’s Regional Task Force twice to plan our Summit
--Had a monthly Green Jobs Advisory Board meeting
--Helped organize and execute the Green Pathways to Prosperity Summit. The goal of this summit was
to educate community leaders about opportunities and efforts in the green economy. At this
summit we had 14 speakers, over 80 attendees, and an awesome time! Some of my responsibilities
included coordinating the speakers, sending out invitations, reserving and figuring out location
logistics, preparing evaluations and sign in sheets, and coordinating the day-of.
--Sat in on a radio interview in anticipation of the Summit that my colleague Khari did with KQV News
Radio
Administrative Actions. Another responsibility I have at GTECH is to help with administrative efforts. This Month I:
--Helped 4 new interns get acquainted and acclimated to GTECH.
--Took notes and prepared documents for our May Board meeting.
--Took notes and action items for our weekly staff meetings.
--Took notes and action items for our weekly reclamation project meetings.
--Worked on the GTECH Newsletter which is due to be sent out today.
Other Education:
--Took a Tree Tenders Course for 3 weeks. Am now officially a Tree Tender!
May: Adam Fedyski
PITTSBURGH PARKS CONSERVANCY
SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITY FELLOW
I have started to step into a more independent role at the PPC, working to organize volunteer events with groups from schools, universities, corporations, and the general public. I have started to lead bi-weekly volunteer event planning meetings with Marijke and our field staff, where we present new event ideas, decide what projects should be addressed in the parks, and plan out new activities. I am helping to expand our potential to reach out and work with new groups and schools, taking a proactive approach to setting up events.
Volunteer events:
May 1st- Assisted with the Hat Lunch, the Parks Conservancy’s largest annual fundraiser. It was quite a spectacle, with 670 people attending in their finest hats! Pictures can be seen here: http://pittsburghparks.wordpress.com/2010/05/05/2010-hat-luncheon/ .
May 12th- Annual planting at Schenley Plaza with nine tenth-grade students from City High Charter School. Check them out if you go by there!
May 13th- Daffodil deadheading with the Jewish Community Center and Hip Mamas. We had ten parents and their young children come out to help us. You can find a couple photos at the top of the page here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/melissappc/page3/
May 19th- Helped the Frick Environmental Center Staff with the final session of their Habitat Explorers program, where about 25 first graders from the Environmental Charter School came out to help us restore stream bank vegetation by planting fascines (bundles of dogwood branches that can take root in soil). They helped us to bundle the branches together, dig trenches along the stream bank and bury the fascines there. We also found a super cool black salamander!
May 20th- Garlic mustard sweep with 24 ninth-graders from City High in Schenley Park near the Bartlett Playground. It was an introduction to service learning projects for them. All tenth-graders at City High engage in service learning projects throughout the year, one of which is through the High School Urban EcoSteward program with the PPC.
May 25th- Another garlic mustard sweep, this time with 16 ninth-graders from City High in Riverview Park near the Chapel Shelter.
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