Economic Growth United States Project #17482

Native American Green Entrepreneur Fund

by Trees Water & People

Project Report | Jun 6, 2016
Green Business Development Final Report

By Molly Geppert | Marketing Manager

We at Trees, Water & People (TWP) have been so fortunate to have your wonderful support over these past months. TWP's business development training for Native Americans has had a huge impact over the past year, in large part due to friends and donors like you. In 2015, we hosted enough workshops and demonstrations to train 783 local people! We could not have had such success without you.

This summer, we will be ending the Green Business Development program. This break will allow us to improve the program and forge relationships with other Tribes for possible business development programs in the future. We will continue our regular solar workshops and demonstrations, however.

The Green Business Development program has been a great success. We helped Tyler with his company, Cloud Nine Recycling, which is now an LLC. He is currently in the process of buying a box truck so he can have the freedom to decide when and where he will take his recycling inventory, rather than paying high rental prices for a truck. He is an inspiration to others who want to wade into entrepreneurship and make a difference in their communities to be clean and green! He also is a “Green Business in Indian Country Start-Up Award” winner!

Cloud Nine Recycling

Besides helping Tyler with his company Cloud Nine Recycling, TWP has continued to develop the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center as a national facility for introducing tribal members to renewable energy and alternative building technologies. We also had the honor of welcoming the documentary film crew from This Changes Everything to the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center in March of 2013 where they documented one of our solar energy workshops for Native Americans. It was hosted in partnership with Lakota Solar Enterprises, Solar Energy International, and the National Wildlife Federation’s Tribal Lands Conservation Program.

Native Business Development Graduates!

Your support has been invaluable and you have helped changed the lives of so many! Thank you!

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Mar 8, 2016
More than just job skills...

By Richard Fox | Executive Director

Solar - a new way to honor the old ways

Trees, Water & People's business development training for Native Americans has had a huge impact in the last year, in large part because of friends and donors like you.

Besides helping Green Business in Indian Country Start-Up Award winner, Tyler Tawahongva, with his company Cloud Nine Recycling, TWP has continued to develop the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center as a national facility for introducing tribal members to renewable energy and alternative building technologies.

While Native American students come to the Center for a particular workshop, they then have the opportunity to be introduced to applications for a whole host of other renewable energy approaches like solar electric, solar heating, solar radiant floor heating, solar water pumping, and solar mobile stations. Our students see buildings that use cellulose insulation, and buildings made of straw bales and compressed earth block (CEBs). And they get to eat tasty organic food from the Solar Warrior Farm while meeting students from many different tribes.

For 2016, we are working on the details for a solar electric workshop and installation on the new three bedroom CEB house we built this last year for Paul Shields and his family. And we are making arrangement for another Canning and Food Preservation workshop and a Foraging for Native Foods workshop.

We are also partnering with We Share Solar to introduce Native American high school students to solar energy and get them thinking about opportunities for green jobs in their future.

Because it's more than just learning job skills; it's about learning principles of sustainability, fostering improved economic circumstances and encouraging Native Americans to consider starting green businesses of their own!

Thank you for being a part of this effort!

Kind regards,

Richard W. Fox

Solar PV workshop

Links:

http://www.solarwarriors.org

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Dec 9, 2015
This Changes Everything

By Megan Maiolo-Heath | Marketing Manager

Filming at RCREC for This Changes Everything

Director Avi Lewis’ new film, This Changes Everything, asks the question, “What if confronting the climate crisis is the best chance we’ll ever get to build a better world?” The film attempts to “reimagine the vast challenge of climate change.”

The documentary was inspired by award-winning author Naomi Klein’s critically acclaimed bestselling non-fiction book, This Changes Everything. Published in 2014, it debuted at #5 on the New York Times list and was named to multiple Best of 2014 lists, including the New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2014.

The film based on the book presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines of climate change, from Montana’s Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond.

We had the honor of welcoming the film crew to the Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center in March of 2013 where they filmed one of our solar energy workshops for Native Americans. It was hosted in partnership with Lakota Solar Enterprises, Solar Energy International, and the National Wildlife Federation’s Tribal Lands Conservation Program.

Students from the Cheyenne River Tribe expanded on their knowledge and interest in solar energy. They gained hands-on experience in the installation of solar PV systems, learning how harnessing the power of Mother Nature can provide independence from our current energy system.

With Klein narrating the film, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there, the film weaves together these students’ stories and other stories of struggle, culminating with the idea that, “we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.”

Naomi Klein says, “when I finally stopped looking away, traveled into the heart of the crisis, met people on the front lines, I discovered so much of what I thought I knew was wrong. And I began to wonder: what if human nature isn’t the problem? What if even greenhouse gases aren’t the problem? What if the real problem is a story, one we’ve been telling ourselves for 400 years.”

For more information about upcoming screenings please visit http://thefilm.thischangeseverything.org/seethefilm/

This Changes Everything

Links:

About This Changes Everything

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