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Summer of Solutions Middleton (aka Growing Food and Sustainability) is running an Indiegogo campaign until May 1st!  Learn more and donate on their Indiegogo page!

One of Growing Food and Sustainability’s core goals is to train and inspire a new generation of youth leaders to create their own solutions to the world’s challenges.  Our Indiegogo campaign is focused on raising money for stipends so that we can train youth through our summer internship program.  Last summer, two local college students participated in our internship.  This summer, we plan to select five interns to participate in this leadership development experience.  Interns learn through peer-lead trainings as well as by taking an active, hands-on role in our organization. They learn how to plan curriculum for the summer garden camp, serve as camp counselors, workshop leaders, and meeting facilitators, coordinate community workdays, harvest days, the weekly compost pick-up, and the weekly produce delivery, and will learn green entrepreneurship skills by helping to run our farmers’ market stand.   Our goal is to make sure that every graduate of our internship program leaves with the skills and knowledge to start an initiative of their own.

I was finishing up my junior year in college, organizing on my campus, and doing a dozen other things in my community (sound familiar?), when, one day, a life-changing email landed in my inbox. It was the chance to go to the fateful Copenhagen climate negotiations (COP15), which seemed like a historic opportunity to see the world coalesce around a common goal to protect humanity from the worst of climate change. I applied right away.

At the end of March, an ExxonMobil tar sands pipeline ruptured in Arkansas. Since then, around 300,000 gallons of oil have spilled. And this isn’t conventional crude we’re talking about—it’s diluted bitumen, which is heavier and harder to clean up because it sinks in water. An all-too-familiar deceptive media campaign from Exxon has made things even more complicated.

Here are the essentials. I’d encourage you to follow the links for more background.

Appalachian citizens and allies from across the region are having a unified day of action at the regional EPA offices in Philadelphia and Atlanta to tell EPA that the state governments of Central Appalachia are failing to protect communities against devastating water pollution caused by surface coal mining. The EPA has the power to stand up and protect the people of Central Appalachia.