Bonneville Environmental Foundation

The lights of the school came on at 1 a.m. and the Norway Town’s people began chanting and singing their praises for a job well done.  The solar panel installation on the school was complete and the super LED bulbs chosen for the project were lighting the whole building up.  The group of us representing Volunteers for International Development and Aid (VIDA) breathed a sigh of relief knowing that the intense planning put into preparing for the trip to eastern Sierra Leone had paid off.  The school can now be used twice as long each day, allowing for additional classes at night and further use as a meeting space for community leaders.

Norway Town was established six years ago to provide support to amputees of the civil war that raged from 1991 to 2002.  At the request of the community Engineers without Borders (EWB-SE) stepped in to build a school for the local children in the Hanga region while VIDA provided funding for the construction of the building and the addition of a solar array for lighting and phone charging.

Sierra Leone is a safe place to travel, but there is still a ways to go to get power to its 5.5 million inhabitants.  The major cities are without consistent power and beyond city limits there is no power at all.  Norway Town is like so many small towns and villages in the country where socializing ends when darkness comes.  Flashlights are common but most exist as built-in components of cell phones that are difficult and expensive to maintain.

The Norway Town School’s solar panels address both lighting and phone issues for the community.  The extended use of the building added new capabilities for the facility and the phone charging station saves folks money that they would otherwise need to charge their phone at a vendor downtown.  The money will be set aside for maintenance of the system of the solar array over time as well as for school material needs.

Many of the children had never seen light bulbs before let alone an LED bulb that uses only 7 watts but produces the lumens equivalent to a 100-watt incandescent.    They were mesmerized buy the technology, as too were many chiefs from around the region who paid visits to this one-of-a-kind installation in the region.  Perhaps the greatest power provided by these solar panels is the optimism and inspiration they offer to a nation just beginning to conceive of its energize future. Here in a place where just 120 watts can light an entire school and keep a community connected.

My family and I started a new tradition last year. We all participated in the Advent Conspiracy in order to get back to the real meaning of Christmas.  Advent Conspiracy is an international movement restoring the scandal of Christmas by substituting compassion for consumption. I don’t believe that giving of gifts is ‘bad’, but I do acknowledge that the commercialization of the holiday has gotten a little out of hand. So our family takes 25% of our Christmas budget that normally would have been spent on gifts and we donate it to Living Water International for the specific purpose of providing clean drinking water to those in dire need in rural Africa. It feels really good to give that gift!

This year we’re planning on including a lot of ‘personal services’ on our lists instead of ‘things’.  My sister and brother-in-law have ‘babysitting’ and ‘car washes’ on their list.  I’ve got ‘help painting my house’ on mine.  Ooooo, I hope Santa thinks I was good this year!

Somebody had a little too much fun on yearbookyourself.com. Here’s a few of our very own BEF staff!

Okay, so that last one is not a colleague of mine, but instead is Lynnae’s cute doggy.

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, we have been working with a local, start-up film company called Sandy Montana who are creating some amazing animated videos for us.  To view the first two videos, please click the links below:

About BEF video

Watershed video

In the next week or two, our Solar 4R Schools video should be ready to post online.  It’s so fun to see our stories brought to life through the animation work of Sandy Montana.  I had the opportunity to participate in the filming and voice over process the other day as we worked on three additional videos for BEF.  The voice over process is harder than you think!  Luckily Benedict (our main man in all of our videos) is extremely talented, along with the Sandy Montana folks who brought the scripts to life.  I was basically just there to make sure the tone of Benedict’s voice was accurate and to make last minute changes to the scripts.  Our only problems seemed to be background noises (planes, automobiles, phones, voices, etc.).  Other than that, I was extremely impressed with the amount of talent in the studio.
Here’s a few pictures from our video shoot on Wednesday:

As members of the BEF Safety Committee, Heidi pointed me to an article by Tara Parker-Pope in the New York Times Tuesday on surviving disasters. A journalist with Time magazine,  Amanda Ripley has just come out with a new book “The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes — and Why” (Crown), gleaned from the many survivor stories she’s covered. According to the article, people who survive have practiced and act quickly. But read the article for yourself to see why.

Our very own Rob Harmon, Sr. Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer, was featured in an article that was first published in the May edition of Wind Power Monthly, a print magazine.

Did you know that the first retail REC trade took place between Bonneville Environmental Foundation and the Environmental Protection Agency in the fall of 2000?  Click on the photo below to read the article, or visit www.windpower-monthly.com to learn more about this industry.

This Friday is a beautiful sunny day in Portland and it’s got me thinking about the weekend, so I was thrilled to get an email from one of my favorite local blogs today, the aptly named Around the Sun. It’s a weekly round up fun, frugal and often earth-friendly activities happening all around town. I’ve pulled out a few of my favorites for this week, but don’t take my word for it. Click over and see the full list for yourself.

On Saturday, the Columbia Slough Watershed Council is hosting its 7th annual “Explorando El Columbia Slough” Bilingual Environmental Festival, celebrating the environment of the Columbia Slough with activities in both Spanish and English, including guided canoe trips, live music, rock climbing wall and more. Whitaker Ponds Nature Park, 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm.

On Saturday and Sunday, the annual Eastmoreland Neighborhood Garage Sale is on! I hit the Laurelhurst Neighbohood Yard Sale last weekend and picked up a portable coffee cup ($1!) and a salad spinner ($1!) — both things I needed — and a soothsaying Pirate “Ayeball” which is like a “Magic Eightball” if you remember those, and was included in Happy Meals a while back. Needless to say, I did not need that, but hey it was free, it looks good on my desk and it predicts the future! We got to Laurelhurst late so it was slim-pickins, but there was no end to the quality reusing and recycling going on, from a sofa set that went for $125 to a really nice bike I saw a woman pick up for $40. Word is that Eastmoreland is bigger and better, so I’m getting there early! See you there?

On Sunday, Portland is holding its first Sunday Parkways, during which six miles of North Portland streets will be closed to traffic so folks can enjoy the neighborhood car-free. Entertainment and activities will abound. What a great way for Portland to celebrate having just been the first North American city to host the Toward Carfree Cities conference June 16-20!

If you’re not in Portland, I hope the sun is shining on you this weekend too, and that you will find a fun, frugal, and earth-friendly activity to enjoy in your neighborhood.

I checked out the Virtual Energy Forum a bit yesterday and today between tasks at work and I have to say kudos to the organizers. In their own words…

The Virtual Energy Forum is a two day online-only event that will be held on Tuesday, June 10th and Wednesday, June 11th, 2008. The event is focused on how leading companies can adopt better energy management practices to cut cost, while at the same time adopting clean energy alternatives — presenting alternative energy technologies, policies, and best practices in a live, interactive environment. The event is designed to meet the needs of corporate energy executives in a way that is not possible with physical events, webinars or other means.

Now I’m not a corporate energy executive and I didn’t have a lot of time to poke around, but I was intrigued by the idea, so I thought I’d check it out for a few minutes here and there. Overall, I’d give my experience a B.

I had some technical difficulties with the speeches I tried to watch, but they’re archived and I’m hoping to see them in full when I can focus all my computer’s energy on the VEF site. I found the “exhibit booths” to be informative and I found a few resources I hadn’t seen before. The design was nice and clean and they had a interesting line up of speakers. Sure, the networking possibilities don’t compare to an in-person conference, but neither did the cost of money or time. With no travel to plan or pay for and no days missed at the office, not to mention no conference fee, the Virtual Energy Forum was a different kind of conference event that provided its own kind of value. Certainly there’s a place for such events in the mix. If you’re intrigued, check out the CNN coverage to learn a bit more about how it worked.

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Regular readers of the BEF Blog may already know that on June 2, 2008 we started a new BEF Rose Festival tradition of paying for BEF staff to be flung into the air while the rest of the staff watches and laughs at their expense. Abbey, aka “Wisco” from our fabulous sales team, constructed this beautiful donation can for the 2009 Annual Sling Shot. All BEF staff are encouraged to donate their spare change for next year’s big event. So who will “shoot for the sun” next year? Angus? Rob? Margie? Only time will tell. We are hoping to save up enough to afford the video tape for permanent future entertainment (read: black mail).

A number of BEF staffers headed out for lunch today at Portland’s famous Rose Festival just around the corner from our office. The plan was a corn-dog eating contest, but then we beheld the Slingshot! And a new tradition was born.

Our fearless Green Tag Consumer Program Manager, Lisa, said she’d ride it if it weren’t for the cost, and her fellow BEF staffers, always looking for the best return on our investments, decided throwing in a few bucks to see Lisa and our fellow colleague Robin, Associate Director of Watersheds, race toward the sun would be a far more exciting Rose Festival outing. Was it ever!

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After the ride, Joanna and Lisa each enjoyed a corndog also. It is after all a “BEF goes to RoseFest” tradition. A good time was had by all!