A night of music, food, fun—and water conservation

The green carpet band, Mausiki Scales and the Common Ground

Protecting the Earth’s precious water supply was the theme, and a night of music, food and fun was the mandate at Greening Youth Foundation’s 3rd annual Green Carpet fundraiser on March 18 at Atlanta’s Loudermilk Center.

At the sold-out event, the audience was given an overview of GYF’s impressive programs in Georgia, the Midwest and across the Atlantic in Ghana. GYF currently reaches more than 15,000 students in the Atlanta metro area through its CLEAN program and Eco-Force clubs. In Ghana, GYF is working with several schools in Accra to teach students about the dire need to recycle the city’s ubiquitous sachet water bags, in the hopes that the students will help spread the message across the city.

Dr. Victor Ibeanusi

The crowd of 120 was entertained by the funky, infectious music of Mausiki Scales and the Common Ground. Guest speaker Dr. Victor Ibeanusi, professor and founding chair of the environmental science and studies program at Spelman College, recounted his early days as a child in Nigeria, and how they led to his life-long passion for water conservation. Ibeanusi revealed details of his efforts to preserve water sources in Africa and the work he is doing with students at Spelman to create ways to remove toxic metals and volatile organic compounds from wastewater.

GYF Education Director Ruth Kitchen presented two Georgia State University students, Tyleka Moore and Mikenzie Lewis, with plaques to recognize the great work they are doing with students from Atlanta’s BEST Academy. Two students from BEST, Javian Walker, president of the school’s Eco-Force club, and Marcus Strickland, vice president of Eco-Force, told the crowd how much they have benefitted from working with Tyleka and Mikenzie. The BEST Academy team also displayed an experiment conducted by its Eco-Force club to study ways to remove toxins from wastewater using sand.

GSU interns Mikenzie Lewis (left) and Tyleka Moore

The Saturday night gathering had the feel of an upscale art gallery, thanks to the gorgeous work of artist Linc Bennett, whose pieces were on display in the lobby of the Loudermilk Center. One lucky attendee, Damita Holbrook of Keeping it Wild, won the GYF raffle to take home one of Linc’s fabulous three-dimensional multimedia paintings.

“I was moved to see many sponsors and guests passionate about our cause of increased environmental awareness amongst underserved youth around the world while understanding the urgency of the conservation and remediation of water—a depleting natural resource,” Angelou Ezeilo, GYF founder and executive director, said after the event.

GYF Founder and Executive Director Angelou Ezeilo

The event sponsors included REI, Cox Enterprises, CH2MHill, The Nature Conservancy, CERM and United Athletes Foundation.

At the event’s conclusion, GYF Board Chairman Anthony Gee sent the audience home with five simple things that each person can do to conserve water:

1.     Take shorter showers

2.     Fill up dishwashers and washing machines before using

3.     Turn off water when brushing teeth

4.     Water your lawn only when it needs it; it saves water and builds stronger roots

5.     Fix leaky faucets—a leaky faucet can waste 100 gallons a day!

close-up of lovely piece by artist Linc Bennett

Executive Director Angelou Ezeilo and Project Manager Mike Fynn listen to comments by GYF intern Mike Garza (left)

“Wow,” 19-year-old Josh Smith exclaimed in amazement, as he gazed across the wonders of the Chaco Culture National Historic Park ruins in New Mexico. The structures had been the center of a bustling economy about a thousand years ago. “And I’m getting paid to experience all this.”

Smith was part of a crew of 4 young adults and a Team Leader who were recruited by Greening Youth Foundation to participate in GYF’s G.R.E.E.N. project over the past 10 months. The G.R.E.E.N. Project is a partnership between the Intermountain Region of the National Park Service, and Greening Youth Foundation (GYF) (www.gyfoundation.org), a not-for-profit 501(c)3 federal organization with headquarters in Atlanta, GA. GYF’s mission is to engage and nurture environmental stewardship among underserved youth and young adults while exposing them to conservation careers.

The project was funded from the Intermountain Region’s share of $750 million in National Park Service (NPS) funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). That law, also known the Recovery Act, devoted $787 billion in federal money to fight the economic recession by creating jobs, promoting investment and stimulating consumer spending.

An end-of-project celebration was held in February at the REI state-of-the-art facility in Boulder, Colorado. John Wessels, regional director for the eight-state Intermountain Region of NPS, served as the guest speaker.

From April 2010 through February 11, 2011, a total of 16 at-risk young adults from the metro-Denver area between the ages of 18 and 24 were recruited, trained and provided with green certifications that would enable them to conduct energy audits and energy-efficient retrofits at national park sites. These young adults went on to identify and install retrofits that are saving a total of $45,266.37 in annual energy costs at 10 national parks. The parks involved were the Colorado National Monument, Great Sand Dunes National Monument, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and the Curecanti National Recreation Area (all in Colorado); Grand Canyon National Park, Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument, Wupatki National Monument, Walnut Canyon National Monument, Canyon de Chelly National Monument (all in Arizona); and the Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico.

“This project has far-reaching implications,” said GYF’s Mike Fynn, the LEED certified engineer who acted as the Project Manager. “We’re attempting to improve the lives of these young adults by removing them from the temptations of their environments and introducing them to green professions. At the same time, National Park sites are having their carbon footprints reduced significantly with the help of these newly trained people. This is as ‘win-win’ as you can get.”

Regional Director Wessels said the project proved to be successful on several levels. “By training and employing urban young people in this worthy task, the G.R.E.E.N. project also exposed them to the wonders of our national parks,” Wessels said. “At the same time, their work made those parks more energy efficient, with immediate cost benefits and savings. The results are impressive, and are a great model that we hope can be repeated across the Park Service.”

Project participant Marty Sias summed it up well: “The G.R.E.E.N. Project has made a huge impact in my life by exposing me to careers in the energy and conservation fields. I feel confident in going back home and helping my family and community save energy and money.”

That is exactly what the G.R.E.E.N. Project aimed to do. It seems to have succeeded.

One in an occasional series about Green Speakers visiting GYF schools.

Cartridge World comes to Brookwood Elementary School

Richard Green works with students at Brookwood Elementary.

Hello, my name is Richard Green, and I am the owner of the Cartridge World in Snellville, Georgia. We sell remanufactured ink and toner cartridges. Our store remanufactures about 12,000 cartridges a year.  Those cartridges that we can’t remanufacture, we ship to a company in Illinois. They collect about 2.5 million cartridges each month. If the cartridge cannot be remanufactured, the components are recycled into raw materials. They prevent 1.6 million pounds of plastic and metal from being dumped into a landfill.

How long does it take for the plastic to decompose? Up to 1,000 years!  It is estimated that 100 million laser printer cartridges and 400 million ink cartridges are produced each year. The idea is to reuse the cartridges instead of buying new cartridges. Reuse is one of the highest levels of recycling. Think about it! The cartridges that you buy new, where did they come from? Philippines, Malaysia. Your carbon footprint should be considered each time you buy a new cartridge. There are probably even aspects of getting the cartridge that you haven’t considered. For example, how much carbon fuel was used in transporting the cartridges to the U.S.?

Where can the empty cartridges end up? Places like China and countries in Africa. U.S. companies use these countries as dumping grounds. The people in these areas tend to be in poverty stricken areas where they are willing to do almost anything to make a few dollars. They use corrosive chemicals to separate the precocious metals from the body of the cartridge. The unused portions are thrown into a huge pile of trash. The rain washes the remaining chemicals into their streams and water supply.

It is a really good thing to recycle and reuse your ink and toner cartridges…DON’T YOU THINK?

A GYF intern reflects on his experiences as a ranger

HB Cho poses with a 1930s era automobile at the King Center

By HB Cho

More often than I’d like to admit, life just happens to me. It seems to enforce its own will and plot its own course, with seemingly no regard for my expectations or predictions.

My working at Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site through Greening Youth Foundation is a clear case in point. I didn’t expect to get the job as a park ranger, didn’t really know what it was when I got it, and now I think it was the one of the best things that could ever happen to me. When I first visited the site in 2008, I got to go into just one building and thought it was disappointingly small for commemorating the man who represented an important and proud chapter of American history. It in fact was small, but I didn’t realize how much of the site I was missing. So I had very low expectations at the beginning of my assignment.

Naturally, it didn’t take long for all that to change. First of all, there is much more to the site than just the visitor center, where my previous exploration had ended. Across the street is the King Center, where Dr. King’s body (and the body of his wife Coretta) resides in a tomb, and his artifacts, including the Nobel Peace Prize, are displayed. Across just one more street is Dr. King’s childhood home. Two rows of nearly twenty houses, through which a boy called M.L. would have rode his bicycle everyday, have been restored back to their 1930s state.

The highlight of my duties as a ranger was to give tours inside the house where Dr. King was born and raised. I got to talk to visitors from all over the world about the powerful message that is the foundation of a great leader. The immediate gratification that I got from the sincere gratitude and compassion of the visitors was a powerful motivator for me to keep learning and trying to improve their experience at the site.

The most precious gift I take from my time at the site is that of a role model. I always enjoyed reading biographies of people who achieved greatness and realized that nearly all of them had an extraordinary person in their lives who they could point to as their role model. I was often disappointed when I looked around and couldn’t find one of my own. Great men were plentiful in the books, but I couldn’t easily relate to them. But learning and talking about Dr. King and experiencing the world as he would have experienced it did precisely that for me. It was a thrilling opportunity. Not only was it fun to quite literally trace his footsteps in his childhood home, but learning about his family and the neighborhood, and being in his physical presence for me established a very personal relationship with him. I felt as if I were being reintroduced to a long-time friend who had grown up to become one of the most significant persons in the 20th century.

As Steve Jobs,the founder and CEO of Apple, once said, the dots in our lives will eventually connect. I can’t be more grateful to Greening Youth Foundation for providing me with this very precious dot and the experience of a lifetime.