Spring Greening

Majora Carter In the News

Great story in yesterday’s Times-Picayune about this year’s keynote speaker, Majora Carter:

“With millions of federal dollars in the pipeline for coastal restoration and levee-building projects, New Orleans faces a tremendous opportunity to foster environmental stewardship and build a new workforce, a environmental justice expert said Monday.

Majora Carter, a Bronx native who helped create jobs and better quality of life in her impoverished neighborhood, spoke about the power of environmental justice as an economic and social development tool at a lecture in the Lower 9th Ward. The event was hosted by Historic Green, a nonprofit that brought hundreds of volunteers to work on green-building projects in the city during spring break.”

Read all of “Environmentalism can produce jobs, social uplift, expert says” here.

Big Time News Coverage: The AP Story

An excellent piece appearing on the AP news wire yesterday. "Student Volunteers Make a Break for N.O." begins:

"The spring break snapshots coming out of the Big Easy aren't of tabletop dancing and beer-drinking contests. No, the photos making it onto student blogs and personal Web pages this spring show hard hats and hammers.

Hundreds of students from across the nation are streaming into New Orleans this spring break to lend their time and an air of hope to a city where years of repair work remain.

One after another, students said they've come because they haven't forgotten about New Orleans and how 80 percent of the city was flooded when the levees broke during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

'The 20-somethings – we're a lot more aware politically, socially, culturally,' said Melissa Licastro, a New Jersey architecture student helping out Friday in the funky but flood-wrecked Lower 9th Ward neighborhood of Holy Cross. Clad in a T-shirt and blue work trousers, she pulled crooked and blackened nails from old cypress planks, just a few blocks from Fats Domino's house.

She paused, hammer in hand. 'I don't think the older generation gives us enough credit.'

Licastro, who attends the New Jersey Institute of Technology, joined ranks with about 500 other students from Ivy League colleges and big state campuses on an all-out "spring greening" campaign to make the hard-hit Lower 9th more energy efficient and green, or, as activists want, 'the nation's first zero carbon community.'

Over the past week, students painted houses in bright pastels with nontoxic paint, salvaged historic homes undergoing deconstruction, painted fences and cleaned up a bayou."

Read the full story here.

In the News

Appearing in this morning's Renewable Energy World:

A nice piece. Read the full story here.

Dwell Visits Historic Green

Michael Cannell, editorial director of dwell.com, visited the Holy Cross Neighborhood to see what Historic Green is all about. In his "New Orleans Report: Greening the Ninth Ward" in the Dwell Daily Blog, he writes:

"The Ninth Ward suffered the worst of Hurricane Katrina, with more than 10 feet of water puddled in the neighborhood for weeks. This month, a loose affiliation of architects and builders calling themselves Spring Green has gathered some 200 volunteers to repair Ninth Ward homes and restore its playgrounds and public spaces. The effort, called Historic Green, coincides with spring break. Students account for half the volunteers. The group’s goal is to make the neighborhood carbon-neutral by 2030."

He also sat down with Ryan Evans, one of the HG organizers, in the Greater Little Zion Baptist Church to learn more. You can listen to his 'Blogcast' here.

Big Green News: TreeHugger

We're making the news – again. Interviews with Dwell Magazine, NPR, RenewableEnergyWorld, and others are happening. Check out "The Big Easy Rebuilds Green" appearing today on TreeHugger.com.

Making the News

Historic Green is already making the news! Saturday's Times-Picayune ran a nice feature by Molly Reid, titled "Spring-Breakers Pouring in to Help 'Green' Holy Cross". Her piece begins:

"Before Katrina, New Orleans enjoyed a lovely, lazy period of spring downtime between the hubbub of Carnival and, in late April, the joy of Jazzfest.

Post-Katrina, however, another busy period has sprung up in the mid-March to mid-April time slot: It's spring-break volunteer season.

For the third year in a row, volunteers young and old are expected to descend upon New Orleans, armed with donated tools, matching T-shirts and plenty of goodwill. And this year, a substantial chunk of them will be volunteering specifically on green-related projects.

More than 300 young professionals and students in design and construction, along with faculty chaperones, will work in Holy Cross for a two-week event called Historic Green, which starts today and runs through March 23. Historic Green is the inaugural event of a long-term initiative called Spring Greening, which is working with the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association and the Lower 9th Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development to meet their goal of making the rebuilt neighborhood carbon-neutral by 2020 and climate-neutral by 2030."

Read the full story here.