ShoreBank Blog
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Archive for July, 2010
Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
Have you ever played “I Spy” on a car trip through the Midwest during the summer? It is so hard because not only are your color options minimal but there are also abundant answers to “I spy something green.” Tree? Soybean Field? The road sign? My brother’s pallor after a winding road? The options are still endless! So endless, that I am still constantly keeping an eye out for the greenest solution! Green is my Grandma’s Kansas backyard. Green is a flock of bicyclists. Green is a baby who recycles. Or green is how you survived the summer of 2010 without air conditioning.
ShoreBank Facebook Fan Steve took a really green approach to keeping cool during the East Coast heat wave sans an air conditioner. Steve freecycled his air conditioner 3 years ago. Why? According to Steve, “my wife says that it’s because I’m ecological and she’s cheap. We prefer to say frugal. We think that frugal is choosing to be economical with yourself and cheap is being economical with others. A few years back, the combination of high electricity bills and wanting to green our behavior around the house led us to our experiment of apartment life without AC. We’re in a 4th floor walk-up and it was a real leap of faith. Hot air rises and seems to pool in our little 2 BR unit.”
How does one cope in a heat wave without AC? Steve’s response: wet shirt contest. I thought he was joking. No! Not joking! His family uses the following tactics to make do without the AC:
- Draw heavy curtains. “Sun pouring through windows in a heat wave is not your friend. We draw heavy curtains during the day to reduce the amount of energy heating the inside of our house.”
- Use ceiling fans and window fans to circulate the air. “Window fans these days have multiple settings for drawing in air from outside, sending out air from inside and even exchanging air (one fan blows in and the other simultaneously blows out). Experiment with what cools your place the best.”
- Use wet shirts to keep cool during the day. “Dunk a t-shirt in cold water. Wring it out. Put it on. It’s a little cool and clammy at the outset, but it works on the same principle as sweating. Your body heat is dissipated by working to evaporate the water. It really cools [Steve and his family] off.”
- Use a drying rack for laundry. “It seems to cool the bedroom the same way. Drying the clothes takes heat energy. When our bedroom is hot, hanging the laundry seems to cool it off. (We haven’t experimentally checked the results to see if the temp actually drops, but anything that contributes to the mind-over-matter method is good for us!) A nice bonus is that the drying rack also saves energy and money.”
- Take frozen water bottles to bed. “You might want to wrap it in a hand towel before bedtime or it could give you a puddle of condensation. It really works. A small bit of cool on any one place of your body (torso, neck, etc.) makes your whole body feel cooler.”
I admire Steve’s dedication to not cave to air conditioning convenience and his ability to keep his cool while saving green. We all might not have the ability to save and survive sans air conditioner, but anybody can spot green. And spying a green object or lifestyle like Steve’s could help you win a 6-speed folding bike!
Enter ShoreBank’s “I Spy Something Green: What is the Greenest Thing You’ve Seen This Summer?” 100-150 word micro-essay contest starting August 2, 2010! The winner will receive a Tokyo Citizen 16-inch 6-speed Folding Bike with Ultra-Portable Frame and more. Visit Facebook.com/ShoreBank for contest entry and voting guidelines, rules, and additional information. So get ready, get green, and write a micro-essay! We can’t wait to read about the green things you’ve spied this summer.
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Tags: ecological living, environmental sustainability, essay contest, freecycling and being frugal, green lifestyles
Posted in Outreach | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
Mission driven financial institutions in the developing world, like those in the United States, are beginning to explore creative ways to use energy finance to encourage sustainable economic development. Recently, I attended a conference on energy financing at Yale’s School of Management where representatives from microfinance institutions, energy service companies, and governments from around the globe all convened to explore the opportunities and challenges presented by small-scale alternative energy systems.
Insights from this conference include:
- The talent pool examining energy financing is astounding and it extends from one corner of the earth to the other. Very smart, tech savvy entrepreneurs are creating an array of exciting tools to help deploy alternative energy systems in very remote locations. By using mobile technology, GPS systems, and internet applications, businesses are utilizing sophisticated new technologies to facilitate loan payments, track carbon savings, and monitor energy performance from every corner of the Earth.
- The problems confronting wide-scale adoption of small-scale, alternative energy systems internationally are familiar to those of us working on deployment of these systems domestically. The issues range from technology risk, to the economic viability of the energy systems, to concerns about installation and maintenance, to the difficulties of dealing with the relatively large transaction costs that come with deploying alternative energy.
The business models being developed to tackle the issues outside of the US are similar to those gaining attention in the U.S. For instance SELCO, a leading solar technology firm in India, employs a business model similar to Solar City, the fast growing PV installer in the Southwest. In both cases, these companies have simplified the process for their customers by offering solar packages that include financing, extended warranties, and long-term service contracts. These firms have pre-selected specific solar applications, offer pre-packaged financing, and provide in-house installation and maintenance over the life of the systems.
While overcoming the challenges limiting widespread adoption of small-scale alternative energy systems is a prodigious undertaking, the talented entrepreneurs dedicated to tackling the problem across the globe offer hope for a brighter future.
Tags: alternative energy, energy finance, global micro-energy finance, green banking, microfinance
Posted in Green Collar | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
Who doesn’t love free outdoor cultural activities, especially ones that provide value far beyond entertainment? It is no secret that free public programs makes the arts and their environment backdrop more accessible to residents and visitors. If exhibits and displays can help build a stronger community, why then are more free events not taking place in the underserved communities that might most benefit from them?
Local parks districts often do a great job evenly distributing their diverse free arts programming (movies, concerts, and dance in parks) through out various neighborhoods; however, that does not mean it appropriately serves every neighborhood. Underserved neighborhoods often have language and financial barriers that inhibit them from feeling a sense of connection to the greater community. The universality of the arts can bridge those barriers. For example, although opera is typically associated with high-income, when a former colleague of mine delivered free opera programs to low- to mid-income communities in Sacramento, she told me that her audience, many of whom spoke Spanish as their first language, more easily understood and related to the Italian opera than their English speaking neighbors. It just exhibits how this free program and others can remove language and financial barriers to create a sense of connectivity.
That sense of connectivity can serve as a catalyst of positive change for communities. For instance, when Chicago low- to mid-income neighborhood West Humboldt Park hosts events, which range from Chicago SummerDance in the Parks (let’s Bomba on 7/21/10) to Movies in the Park (let’s see Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’que to lo Sepas on 7/24/10) to En Movimiento (a program that combines salsa dancing, tai chi, basketball, bike riding, steel drum music, and muévete), it finds it reaps the following community benefits (1):
- A bridge over time where you can see and/or speak with people who you only see at that specific event every month or year.
- A community connection that allows people to run into neighborhoods and catch up on news and info.
- A safe environment created by crowds where many types of people can mix and get to know each other. And the more you know, the more you grow!
Plus, these programs have the capability to be effective tools for economic development. The more people that attend from outside the community, the greater the opportunity to generate new revenues from the money spent by visitors at local attractions and businesses. Programs also fosters civic pride in the area and respect for the neighborhood that makes it more likely to be where people will want to go to live and work. (2) And it just takes arts!
So amidst a period of declining resources, how can we help support more free cultural events in underserved communities?
- Support arts organizations that develop cultural programs for underserved communities.
- Enlist unemployed or part-time artist friends to volunteer their performance and teaching talents.
- Volunteer or donate your own talents and resources.
- Create artist housing in the most underserved communities.
- Write blogs or letters to the editor on arts advocacy in underserved neighborhoods.
- Recommend cultural event sponsorships to your employer.
- Check out a free event in one of these communities and to tell your friends.
You might be pleasantly surprised, delightfully entertained, and easily building a community, all without it costing you a dime. Who doesn’t love that?
Love ShoreBank Voices? Help me tell others that where they bank does make a difference and leave a comment or subscribe to the ShoreBank Voices feed.
(1) http://communitybeat.blogspot.com/2008/09/value-of-community-events.html
(2) http://www.railstotrails.org/resources/documents/resource_docs/tgc_economic.pdf
Tags: arts programming, buy local, community development, cultural events, free
Posted in Outreach | No Comments »
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
The education profession in America is under attack. School districts are laying off teachers, increasing class sizes, and cutting “frills” like art, music, and sports. Those teachers fortunate enough to have jobs are blamed when their classes fail to perform well on standardized tests. They are burdened with an ever-increasing load of paperwork, in the name of “accountability.” They are virtually prohibited from displaying initiative and creativity by administrators who have never been taught even the rudiments of management and are themselves evaluated solely by test scores.
Successful primary education is a partnership between parents, students, and teachers. Parents must provide a home environment that encourages learning. Students must take responsibility for their work. Teachers must motivate children to learn. Absent the first two, the best teacher in the world will fail. But in America today, only the teacher is blamed when students perform poorly. Why? Because, though both teachers and parents are voters, there are a lot more of the latter than the former. And, for reasons that are too deep for me to fathom, we can only see children as victims, not as contributors to their own success or failure.
Twenty-five hedge fund managers made $1 billion or more last year. I suspect that every one of them came from families that actively encouraged education, and that they all were ambitious in school. At the other end of the scale, in a weakening economy, where there are six applicants for every job opening, many would-be workers simply lack the skills to compete. What consolation is it to them, and what good is it to us a society, to realize too late that “bad teaching” is a false and futile excuse.
Tags: community development, economic predictors, education, teacher accountability, unemployment rate
Posted in Banking Industry | 8 Comments »
