It’s spring at Green Map and that means Earth Day is coming! Worldwide, we have some exciting events planned, including:
From Michigan, where Green Mapmakers at Monroe County will take part in the Earth Day Expo on 4/14/2018 to Geneva Switzerland where our mapmaking colleagues at Earth Focus will debut their mobile experience, the Sustainabus! to California, where James Fish of the St Louis Green Map project will present a talk on Open Green Maps for an audience of Chinese and American scholars at the 12th International Forum on Ecological Civilization Conference in Claremont, CA - Apr 27&28. Everywhere, Earth Day offers a fresh opportunity to engage new audiences in thinking green and taking action for healthier, more lovable communities
In New York, Green Map System will be tabling on Broadway as part of the Earth Day DOT Car-free Celebration on April 21 - we’re collecting opinions on new icons and applications. Look for us near Herald Sq and let us know you are our Global Giving friend! Details can be found here.
On the 22nd, our director is taking part in a Brooklyn Waterfront Bike Tour hosted by Human Impacts Institute - details here. We’ll also be stopping in the Spring Awakening in the East Village!
Since we think Every Day is Earth Day, we’ll invite you to this too: Our May 6 Jane’s Walk doubles as a Lower East Side History Month walking tour - Past. Present. Future of the LES is a free event - join us at 11:30 am for a 2 hour walk that starts and ends at the Stanton Building. Details here.
In March, Green Map Jayapura hosted a beach clean up in Papua Indonesia! Our board member, Barent Roth is teaching 3-D Printing techniques to Parsons students and testing out some new game and marker concepts with us. In April, we hosted Tokyo Green Mapmaker Masahiro Horiuchi, who presented his Share Hub and Share Map at MORUS NYC. We'll soon be posting a better video on Facebook.com/GreenMap, a great spot to follow our most recent actions.
To date in 2018, groups from the US, Colombia, UK and Guineau have joined us a new Green Mapmaking projects. On behalf of the ever-growing Green Map network, Thank You! Have a meaningful Earth Day, where ever you live.
At Green Map, our work to engage people at the local level is more important than ever!
• 21 new Green Map projects were started around the world this year. From Jayapura Indonesia to Gainesville Florida to Seville Spain, these projects are tackling greater complexities and bringing more people to the table, in support of healthy, resilient communities in 65 countries. Follow the ever-growing list at GreenMap.org/home.
• The SDGs are a new United Nations framework. These 17 Sustainable Development Goals) are matched with Green Map Icons at http://bit.ly/SDGGM.
• In New York in 2017, our director’s TED Residency was a great experience! Watch Wendy’s TED Talk, and read about her 14 week experience in our blog at bit.ly/TEDgm17.
• We took part in a thoughtful conference on ecosystem services in Oaxaca Mexico this fall, along with youth stewardship project leaders from Irapuato- enjoy our joint report. Green Map joined the Intermapping and explored the circular economy in Florence, in spring, too.
• Locally, our talks, walks and community partnerships (like this fall's Climate Week, New School and Grassroots Alliance events) connected us with new audiences. Green Map is part of a neighborhood effort to restore a park building and contributes to an 'infrastructure reuse' project in Queens, as well.
• Our open trajectory has more coming up:
New Stories-based open website
Mapping our Common Ground, book, third edition
Creation of Green Map Icons as Icons as digital stickers (SDG-linked)
Check out our summer intern's terrific “Learning Tech for Sustainability” and see how Esri’s Story Map platform complements Green Mapmaking
• Awards in 2017 include:
The (En)Rich List, Honorable Mention, Post Growth Institute
NYC Service Certificate (see WendyBrawer.com/awards)
Green Mapmaking is a concrete action that promotes local agency, addresses climate and political fears, and helps build a better future. Thank you for your support!
We invite you to contact us anytime with your ideas to help shine a sustainable light on all of the 982 communities that we serve. Our best wishes for 2018!
With all the unprecedented climate change-related catastrophes occurring across the US and around the world, climate action is our gravest challenge. How will all of us face this existential crisis?
At Green Map, we provide a direct means to communicate local options for more sustainable, lower impact living and towards a healthier, more lovable and just city. As we give people the tools needed to engage in making a local assessment, we equip them to change perspectives about community assets and liabilities.
This awareness contributes to positive, cross-cutting actions with across the board benefits. Our global work continues to grow, most recently adding Incheon South Korea, a Spanish green business project and Bergen NJ to our roster of locally-led Green Map. We’re looking forward to reaching new audiences in Mexico in November, when we are presenting along with Irapuato Green Map at the Ecosystem Change conference.
In addition to mapping green places, we are making them - the Stanton Building in lower Manhattan is an example. An underutilized park building can become a new kind of community climate action center that is socially resilient and much needed in these uncertain times. Join us on Wednesday, October 25th from 6:30 - 8:30 PM at The New School, Wollman Hall (65 West 11th St) to help further this vision. Please RSVP! There’s an overview of recent Stanton Building progress at http://bit.ly/SB1p917. Your thoughts and Likes are welcome at http://fb.me/stantonbldg, where events, articles and more are posted.
With intensifying fires, hurricanes and floods on our mind, over the last month, we’ve conducted several tours on local energy, bio-design and social community-based solutions for climate experts, university students and the public. We made a short video of our tours in 2013 in English and Chinese, as we think this is a great way to engage an authentic exchange that inspires and informs. We'll include some images here for you.
Wishing you all a good season ahead! Thank you again for your support.
Links:
This year, the Green Map Advisory group has been meeting via email and Skype. It's been exciting to hear more about local development - these communications also contribute much to our ongoing planning. Together we are identifying priorities that will accelerate our work together. We have an exciting possibility to meet, to be announced as it's confirmed. Thanks to Janet Felsten of Baltimore Green Map and Philip Todres of Cape Town Green Map for stepping it up!
In New York, with the help of Jake Greenberg, our summer intern from Brandeis U, we have taken part in various fairs and public events this season. It's amazing how many people we encounter have heard of and used Green Maps! We take a break during the hottest weeks, and will be announcing our Autumn events soon on GreenMapNYC.org, starting with Climate Week in September.
Lots of great work underway in Wales, where Sustainable Swansea has printed their latest edition. It's their 6th printed Green Map and there's another 9 that are interactive Open Green Maps - terrific work! Follow them on Twitter for more news.
Our director's TED Residency was completed, shortly after all 23 participants gave their talks, live on the big red dot! It was a great experience, and now, everyone wants to know when the talks will be online. It takes months to process them all, of course, we will let you know. Residents can continue to use the TED office and take part in welcoming the next round of residents in the fall!
Wishing you a wonderful summer!
We promised exciting news in our last newsletter, here it is: Green Map’s Director is now a TED Resident! Through mid-June, Wendy Brawer will be based at TED, famous for the TED Talks and conferences. “Every day, there is an opportunity to expand skills, meet potential partners and ‘think outside the box’ along with a remarkable cohort”, Wendy notes. A TED Talk is one of the culminating activities, and you can be sure, we will let you know when it’s posted online.
Youth Take the Lead!
In the central Mexican city of Irapuato, Guanajuato, "Keepers of the Silao River" is an environmental educational intervention for teenagers. Led by Signos Irapuato AC-Ágora de cultura ambiental Guanajuato AC, the process is carried out in two secondary schools through workshops and field trips. Students use Green Map resources to promote, in an equitable and critical way, sustainable green areas, areas at risk or dangerous, as well as socio-environmental challenges in which they can intervene through knowledge, diagnosis, and action plans.
“Teenagers are an opportunity for our cities” explains project leaders Paulina Uribe Morfín and Nathalie Castiaux. ”They are in a transformative stage of life and can introduce cultural changes that flips the developing model of Irapuato toward a more sustainable one”. Integrating their findings on the collective Irapuato Green Map stimulates dialogue and favors the construction of their identity in the city, while promoting social participation and a better exercise of their citizenship. Follow the project's social media at the links below.
We need many more projects like “Keepers” to inspire and mentor the largest generation of youth in human history.
Earth Day takes place this weekend and all over the world, people are pitching in at local parks, gardens, and green spaces – in the US, we are also marching this weekend and next to support scientists and to confront the challenges of climate change. Take a stand for the environment – take action today! Sign petitions, call your representatives and make your presence known at Town Halls and then pitch in to protect the air, waterways and land that you love and on which our children and all future generations will depend.
We invite you to contact us anytime with your ideas to help shine a sustainable light on all of the communities we serve!
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
Support this important cause by creating a personalized fundraising page.
Start a Fundraiser
Make a monthly donation & get 
