August: Ray Whiteside

CCI
Sustainable Community Fellow

SCA Community Day

During the month of August I was a part of the community outreach for SCA's Hazelwood Community Day held on August 21, 2010 in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Hazelwood. The community day was a volunteer service project with activities such as helping with urban gardens, food forests, and building and installing rain barrels. In preparation for the event I along with the other Green Cities Fellows recruited Hazelwood residents to join the service project. To raise awareness and get Hazelwood involved we spoke at community meetings, passed out flyers throughout Hazelwood, went to speak to the pastors of local churches for recruiting, the local YMCA, and The Hazelwood Initiative.

Conservation Consultants Inc. (CCI)

At CCI, I have been creating a building tour script for performing tours for groups that visit the CCI Center, a gold LEED-EB (existing building) certified building. CCI engages communities with outreach programs to schools and community groups by using their green building as a teaching tool in energy conservation and responsible energy use.

As part of my responsibilities at CCI I will be conducting these building tours. With no experience of giving a building tour I decided that creating a guide would be an effective way to become comfortable with giving a tour and learning all the green building details of the CCI Center. In preparation for the guide I went on two more building tours with my supervisor and listed in what order she visited each floor of the CCI Center and recorded all the information she presented. Included in the guide is a Q&A activity for each visited area of the tour to engage both a youth and adult audience. This guide is to be used as a rehearsal resource and ideally the guide will not only be used by me but also other staff who have not conducted the building tour. Hopefully I’ll be able to practice giving the building tour alone to get more comfortable with the presentation before delivering it to a large group. I hope to make this an easy and creative way for not only myself but also for other CCI staff and interns to learn how to give the CCI Center Green Building Tour.