Beginnings
Regardless of when or where one begins life, there will be problems. The June 6 Green Building Alliance Inspire speaker series featured three people telling of how they are turning problems into solutions.
Stephen Ritz started out in the South Bronx in a neighborhood with heavy industrialization, severe pollution, violence, and other related problems. Presenting to us about how the poorest schools are turning around with growing plants for beauty, food, medicine, and building materials - outdoors, indoors, low-tech, high-tech, for money, for free, on walls, on roofs, in basements, in towers, in apartment buildings, in backyards and front yards, Stephen gives us faith that Yes, Si, se puede, we can. Having worked with the Obama White House and also Hawaiian farmer Oprah Winfrey, Stephen is now going international, educating about using plants to heal and feed.
The second speaker, Raqueeb Bey, came up in the Uptown or Soho section of Pittsburgh. She dealt with similar problems. Working with Uptown Partners http://www.uptownpartners.org , Landslide Community Farm, Hill House, the Larimar Green Team, and inspired by the work of Will Allen in Milwaukee http://www.growingpower.org/about/leadership/will-allen, Queeb is another mover turning big problems into big solutions. Moultrie Street Garden, Monticello Street Garden, YMCA Homewood Garden, Mama Africa's Green Scouts, Black Urban Gardeners and Farmers of Pittsburgh Co-op and others are partly due to her efforts. She is involved with Phipps HomeGrown Project and is also involved with the building of a 31,000 square foot urban farm. Raqueeb makes her living in the financial services industry. Her children are not interested in junk food, and they enjoy working in the gardens. Now she is getting involved with Hazelwood greening.
Will Allen | Growing Power
Uptown Partners
Karen Washington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Washington worked at New York Botanical Garden. She co-founded
Karen Washington
Rise & Root Farm http://www.riseandrootfarm.com/ and Black Urban Growers http://www.theroot.com/7-urban-farmers-you-should-know-1790859576 "I feed peoples' bodies and minds," she said. "Forget about a seat at the table," she says, "We makin' our own table, and our own seats."
Spring Plant Sale Welcome
The speakers spoke of: children; poverty; pollution and the environmental changes; the interconnection of all our problems; and the integration of all our problems into wholistic solutions. They spoke of food from the points of view of planting, growing, preparing, cooking, eating, preserving, and recycling organic waste back into the soil. Of people learning urban agriculture and making good money at it. Of all kinds of people getting along in a healthy society.
There will always be problems. There will always be solutions. There will always be new beginnings.
Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher 412-421-6496
Stephen Ritz started out in the South Bronx in a neighborhood with heavy industrialization, severe pollution, violence, and other related problems. Presenting to us about how the poorest schools are turning around with growing plants for beauty, food, medicine, and building materials - outdoors, indoors, low-tech, high-tech, for money, for free, on walls, on roofs, in basements, in towers, in apartment buildings, in backyards and front yards, Stephen gives us faith that Yes, Si, se puede, we can. Having worked with the Obama White House and also Hawaiian farmer Oprah Winfrey, Stephen is now going international, educating about using plants to heal and feed.
The second speaker, Raqueeb Bey, came up in the Uptown or Soho section of Pittsburgh. She dealt with similar problems. Working with Uptown Partners http://www.uptownpartners.org , Landslide Community Farm, Hill House, the Larimar Green Team, and inspired by the work of Will Allen in Milwaukee http://www.growingpower.org/about/leadership/will-allen, Queeb is another mover turning big problems into big solutions. Moultrie Street Garden, Monticello Street Garden, YMCA Homewood Garden, Mama Africa's Green Scouts, Black Urban Gardeners and Farmers of Pittsburgh Co-op and others are partly due to her efforts. She is involved with Phipps HomeGrown Project and is also involved with the building of a 31,000 square foot urban farm. Raqueeb makes her living in the financial services industry. Her children are not interested in junk food, and they enjoy working in the gardens. Now she is getting involved with Hazelwood greening.
Will Allen | Growing Power
Uptown Partners
Karen Washington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Washington worked at New York Botanical Garden. She co-founded
Karen Washington
Rise & Root Farm http://www.riseandrootfarm.com/ and Black Urban Growers http://www.theroot.com/7-urban-farmers-you-should-know-1790859576 "I feed peoples' bodies and minds," she said. "Forget about a seat at the table," she says, "We makin' our own table, and our own seats."
Spring Plant Sale Welcome
The speakers spoke of: children; poverty; pollution and the environmental changes; the interconnection of all our problems; and the integration of all our problems into wholistic solutions. They spoke of food from the points of view of planting, growing, preparing, cooking, eating, preserving, and recycling organic waste back into the soil. Of people learning urban agriculture and making good money at it. Of all kinds of people getting along in a healthy society.
There will always be problems. There will always be solutions. There will always be new beginnings.
Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher 412-421-6496
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 2:26 PM
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