Urbano

During the summer of 2012, HCC (Haitian-American Community Coalition), The Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health at SUNY Down State and TBL collectively participated in a summer internship program. The program consisted of twenty-five groups of interns that were spread throughout local CBO’s to work towards a case study on a health disparity within the local community.
While many of interns chose heart disease, diabetes or obesity; TBL interns chose a social disparity, incarceration and recidivism. The two interns, Gregory Rousseau and Davis Jacques collectively worked to gathered surveys, compile data, conduct interviews and researched statistics on their case study. The young men were completely vested, as the weeks progressed, so did their work. Each week, they demonstrated the data on a project board that would be presented at the end of the program at Brooklyn Borough Hall.

With only the top five being selected to present, Gregory and Davis were not only selected to present at Brooklyn Borough Hall August 3rd 2012 (YouTube Video: http://youtu.be/CXVRjGo2qZ), however they were the only group of interns that had a video documentary that supported their thesis.

An example of how my venture will make an impact is by having a system that event planners and organizers would follow to minimize waste at their events. These could be student, staff, or parent events. This would include a set of event planning guidelines for event planners, a pre-designed waste management system, and a small school library of reusable event materials. The guidelines would include a flow chart style section, helping organizers pick the best products to buy, the dos and don'ts of event planning, a list of materials in the school event material library, and will go through all the steps of "green" event planning. The waste management system would have soft plastics and hard plastics bins, a food scraps/compostables bin, and a smaller garbage bin, manned by a volunteer instructing which items go into which bin, in order to maintain clean waste streams.

The small materials library would develop over time, but to start with, it would have around fifty sets of dinnerware, tablecloths, and other common materials needed at events, such as biodegradable garbage bags. If a school was hosting a particularly large event, it could ask to borrow materials from other schools. Event planners would be able draw upon all these resources when planning and executing their events. Having these resources at hand will greatly decrease waste produced at events, help maintain clean waste streams, and will also reduce costs.

We started with a group of 16 ex-recidivists to create a local waste disposal service (the area was previously not covered by city disposal service, community used to dispose their garbage to the nearby river). The venture serve local neighborhood (RT- community neighborhood smallest unit), with a population around 150 households and a weekly waste collecting fee of Rp 2000 (USD 0.2) per household. From the fee, and other income (such as night watch), neighborhood committee has a community fund of Rp 2-3million per month.
This community fund becomes the base for the neighborhood safety net. The venture group actively sniffs problems faced by each household. E.g. upon school enrollment season, they promote how families can borrow from community fund to pay registration fee. When a community member is critically ill, they organize a pick-up to local health center and assist the care financing.

We will grow and harvest vegetable crops on front and back lawns in Vancouver. We ask landowners to let us use their space, and in return they will receive a discount on our vegetables. The vegetables we grow will be used to fill community shared agriculture (CSA) shares. CSA is a program where shareholders pay for a share the beginning of the growing season and are provided a weekly box of vegetables until the end of the season (18-20 weeks). Shareholders and community members are actively engaged in understanding the risks that farmers take and the lengthy process of food production.

We do not want to exist as a for-profit business. Our goals as an organization are to reduce barriers to "just" food, encourage people to have a connection with the food they eat, and do this in a way that reduces our environmental footprint. We encourage shareholders to visit our gardens and participate in the process, in order to build a community of people in Vancouver who understand the importance food plays in our lives. We will coordinate a network of landowners and gardeners; there are far too many people waiting for community garden plots in Vancouver. We hope to negotiate with landowners to develop their space into "community plots," using profits to add nutrients to the land and offering workshops on small-plot gardening.

1. Youth members of slum are initiated to joint liability groups (JLGs) that are bank linked and oriented with the trade.
2. Capacity building and technology transfer for JLGs to set up micro recycling units for paper mache and paper molding based on low cost green engineering.
3. The urban paper waste segregated at source in public and corporate sectors get donated to JLGs working as producer’s organizations of microutility household products for daily usage made out of disposable paper waste.
4. Mainstream these producers organization through financial inclusion, state of the art marketing strategy and communication skill.
5. E-sensitization for urban stakeholders to promote the trade with cyber tools. Calling for corporate partnership through CSR & in-house sales of products.
6. Place based event management for exhibition cum sale, silent auction & web-auction for selling products.
7. Revenue return is used as working capital, microinsurance and profit share showing fare break-even.

Example 1: GCR organized an event called The Metro Vancouver Indian Arm Disposal Event. In September 2010, Green Coast Rubbish in partnership with Metro Vancouver offered the residents of Indian Arm a one-time, water access only, free debris disposal and recycling drop-off event.
This first of its kind event enabled Indian Arm residents to recycle and dispose of waste responsibly, conveniently and economically. This initiative recovered and recycled nearly 5 tonnes of metal and garbage, 90 litres of paint, 18 litres of used oil and 32 industrial and marine batteries.
This clean up event coincided with the national Great Canadian Shoreline Clean-up and was held at the Cates Point Park dock facility in the District of North Vancouver. Cabin owners had the opportunity to bring in various types of debris by boat where it was appropriately sorted and disposed, and recycled.

Example 2: Following the City of Vancouver’s Summer Live Festival, held July 8-10th in Stanley Park, Green Coast Rubbish was called in by the City of Vancouver to dispose of 1155 pounds of polycoat milk cartons, in addition to approximately 45 pounds of plastic that had been left behind by party goers the day before. We are please to have been able to divert and recycle 100% of the material we hauled.

Buksh Foundation being a MFI is providing a holistic 360 degree solution to fulfill the energy needs of its clients making the solar technology affordable and accessible.
Example:
Buksh Foundation disbursed its first clean energy loan to Fatima Nazeer and her son Mubashir, who manage a small rented mobile repair and sales shop. Mubashir faced daily blackouts of 10-12 hours that were negatively impacting his sales and income generation. He was previously using a small electric torch for lightening purposes which provided minimal support. Clean energy loan was a perfect match for his needs and helped him augment his business by operating for longer hours after dusk.

Primary Activities:
Buksh Foundation’s innovative approach includes the following activities:

a. Technical Trainings:
Our technical partner, Buksh Energy Pvt. Ltd helps in training our staff about the products, and regularly provide after sales and maintenance services for the products our clients get.
b. Community Engagement/ Awareness:
Since solar energy is a new phenomenon, to make the client comfortable with this energy shift Buksh Foundation holds interactive street demos in all rural and urban areas of operation.

c. After Sales:
After sales services and client monitoring is carried out to make sure the products operate at full capacity giving maximum benefit. Any Technical complaints can be made which are resolves within 2 days.

Gathering Scotch Broom is linked in with highway removal efforts. Raw material is passively processed in vats for a few weeks then community celebrations are hosted for processing. Live music, food, public participation in "dancing the broom" removes the outer bark layer, exposing the fiber which is then washed, sorted, dried and carded for spinning and weaving. Community members assist in each step, learning a new skill and appreciation for how cloth is made. A worker cooperative model could be established for payment in spun fiber to key participators of all steps for personal art production.