“Make A Community Impact, Local Volunteer Organizations Spotlight”
Program Description:
The USGBC-Inland Empire Chapter is committed to being the supporting organization for all environmental nonprofits in the Inland Empire and to helping them achieve their important missions and programs that are needed more than ever. Please join the USGBC-IE as we kick off 2012 in a big way with a focus on three innovative nonprofits i the region and learn how you can get involved to make a positive impact locally and globally helping others in your community and the environment as a whole.
Presented by: Maritza Solis, Habitat for Humanity, San Bernardino Area, Inc.
Habitat for Humanity, San Bernardino Area, Inc. is a non-denominational Christian organization dedicated to addressing poverty housing in the San Bernardino Valley from Fontana to Yucaipa. Habitat works in partnership with local companies, governments and concerned citizens to build or renovate decent affordable homes. These homes are then sold at no interest to carefully selected families in need. There are still thousands of families in our community that lack adequate affordable shelter. Habitat for Humanity is determined that everyone will someday have a decent place to live.
Volunteers are the heart of Habitat for Humanity. Hundreds of volunteers lend a hand to build and rehabilitate homes with us each year. HFH San Bernardino brings together individual and group volunteers to ensure that everyone can live in safe, decent and affordable housing .Our homes are built almost entirely by volunteers, both skilled and unskilled. Whether you are a contractor or have never picked up a hammer in your life, we can use your help. We depend on volunteers daily to help us at a job site, our Restore, or in the office. Our mission would not be possible without volunteers they are the foundation of all our work.
Bambi Tran, GRID Alternatives
A. Bambi Tran is the Inland Empire Regional Director for GRID Alternatives. GRID Alternatives is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. We train and lead teams of volunteers and job trainees to install solar electric systems for low-income families throughout California, in partnership with both nonprofit groups like Habitat for Humanity and local governments.
Since 2004, GRID Alternatives has trained more than 7,200 community members and installed over 1,200 solar electric systems for low-income families, saving them approximately 75% on their electric bills. The installed systems will generate over $30 million for low-income families struggling with high energy costs, while also offsetting more than 103,000 tons of CO2 emissions.
Michael Peel, Uncommon Good
The mission of Uncommon Good is to work for healthy families, healthy communities, and a healthy planet. Uncommon Good’s activities are carried out through educational, health, jobs and environmental programs. At the heart of the organization is the Connect to College program, which works with economically disadvantaged children and youth in the region to help them break the inter-generational cycle of poverty through succeeding in school and achieving a college education.
However, young people cannot be successful students if their families are hungry, ill, homeless, and otherwise stressed by poverty. Consequently, Uncommon Good assists the families of its Connect to College students through jobs and health programs. These include an organic farm, PEACH, a green jobs development program, Building Blocks, and a program that supports young doctors who provide health services to low-income communities in Los Angeles, MED Relief.
In addition, Uncommon Good is constructing the first-of-its-kind public Superadobe building in the United States. Superadobe is a method of construction that uses only on-site earth for 90% of its construction material. The ground breaking on Earth Day 2011 for this building, which will be the new office for Uncommon Good, received press on every continent except Antarctica. Uncommon Good believes that by working out of a radically green building, it will demonstrate how to conserve the earth’s resources so that there is enough to share with all, including the poor.
