Help Us Green America's Schools!

The Green Schools Investment Guide (aka the Toolkit) is getting ready for Greenbuild 2013 Philadelphia where Architecture for Humanity will, in collaboration with the USGBC's Center for Green Schools, lead a charrette-style workshop that introduces the Toolkit and provides working tips for key members of the school community to guide school building investment decisions on their own school turf. 

During this session, participants can expect to gain an introduction and insight into innovative ways to:

1. Outline and champion a path for schools to finance and implement healthy building retrofits, from a pre-retrofit student and school community engagement process to post-upgrade commissioning, operations and maintenance
2. Address various school decision-maker concerns around the costs of building retrofits by incorporating insights into student performance, health and energy efficiency.
3. Easily identify and share successful models for school improvement finance, including key paid-from-savings and traditional school funding approaches, like bond measures and loans
4. Appropriately leverage existing industry-leading resources and tools, such as the LEED Reference Guide for Green Building Operations and Maintenance and relevant LEED Study Guides.

This guide marks the first collaborative product between Architecture for Humanity and the Center for Green Schools at USGBC.  Fundamentally, our vision is simple: to make sure every kid in the United States attends a healthy and inspiring school. Our organizations are working together to create and apply easy-to-use resources that help communities to find ‘right-sized’ investment strategies to transform their schools into clean, safe and resource efficient learning environments.