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SUSTAINABLE LIVING COMMUNITY WORKSHOP

June 6, 2013, 6-7:30 PM

 

To register, please send us your name at info@taptn.org with a subject line "Workshop."

For more information contact Nell Levin (nellrose@earthlink.net) or Sue Ballard de Ruiz (aballard@tnstate.edu)

 

Workshop funded by a grant through the USDA. Presented by Tennessee State University
Department of Family and Consumer Sciences and Tennessee Alliance for Progress.

TAP's New Weatherization Hot Line

 

Please call 888-401-4060 if you own your home, live in Davidson County and want information on weatherizing your home.  Please leave a message and we will contact you to discuss several options that are dependent on your household income.

 Green is Alive in District 5 Launch!

 

 

The Green is Alive in District 5 Energy Efficiency Demonstration Project Launch on April 6 was a great success. Great turnout, enthusiastic support from neighborhood residents, uplifting speakers, beautiful day.  We had it all. Tell us what you think! Click here to take our Green is Alive in District 5 survey.  Find out how you can participate in Green is Alive below.  Here are some Launch photos.

 

Neighborhood activist Ben Jordan

 

Neighborhood member J. Crawford speaks.  Erik Daughtrey of E3 Innovate listens.

 

Luke Gebhard, Director of Nashville Energy Works program

 

TAP's Nell Levin and District 5 Councilman Scott Davis

 

Scott Wallace of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhoods and New Livingstone Baptist Church

 

Do you live in Metro Nashville Council District 5? (See map below.) Do you own your home? 

Find out how you can make your home more comfortable, save money on your utility bills, iincrease the value of your home AND help create jobs for District 5 residents!  Contact Jackie Sims at jackiepaulsims@gmail.com or 615-679-8388 for more information.  If you live in another part of Davidson County, go to www.gogreen-nashville.com for more information on weatherizing your home. Click here for information about The Housing Fund's low-interest rate, long term home retrofit loan program.

 

TAP volunteers & board members at Cleveland Park East Egg Hunt. L-R: Sam McCullough, Barbara Harper, Megan Lynch, Emily Richardson and Brenda Ross.

Nell's Blog: It's not sexy but it could solve our two biggest problems

"Retrofitting old buildings to make them more energy efficient may not sound sexy. But taking retrofits to scale could create hundreds of thousands of career-path jobs in America for the people who need them most, while addressing climate change and slashing utility bills." (PolicyLink newsletter, 12/4/12).

For the last three years, Tennessee Alliance for Progress has been linking retrofit/weatherization work to career-path jobs.  We are a key outreach partner for Mayor Dean's Nashville Energy Works (NEW) home weatherization program which has, thus far, reached only a small percentage of the 143,000 homes in Davidson County.  3,200 homes have had energy audits, 1,200 homeowners have done some work on their homes and 450 homes have reached the 15% threshold that allows homeowners to get the full $1,000 in NEW rebates.  And yet, Nashville is considered one of the top performing cities out of the 12 Southeastern cities that received Dept. of Energy funding to do weatherization work, largely because of the community outreach of TAP.  

Our vision of addressing climate change, slashing utility bills and creating good green jobs persists. We see the tremendous number of jobs that retrofitting old homes and buildings could create and so we continue to move this vision forward, despite the recession, despite living in a red state, despite the anti-environmentalists in our state legislature.

We gave up on the state legislature after the 2010 election. We have taken our work to the hood -- East Nashville's District 5, to be exact.  The goals of our Green is Alive in District 5 Energy Efficiency Demonstration Project are to weatherize 100 homes and 10 businesses in this majority-black, low- to moderate-income neighborhood and create green jobs for neighborhood residents.

GREEN IS ALIVE IN DISTRICT 5 ENERGY EFFICIENCY DEMONSTRATION PROJECT

 

TAP's Green is Alive in District 5 Project has two goals: 1) Weatherize 100 homes and 10 businesses via the Mayor's Nashville Energy Works program in this majority-black, low-to-moderate income East Nashville neighborhood; and 2 Create green jobs for District 5 residents.

We need volunteers! If you want to volunteer to help with this Project, please contact Jackie Sims at jackiepaulsims@gmail.com or 615-679-8388 for more information.   Check back here for updates on the Project.

3rd Nashville Women's Empowerment Workshop held on Saturday, March 16, 2013

 

Thanks to a grant from the Women's Fund of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, TAP was a sponsor of this well-attended Workshop. Go here for more information on the next Women's Empowerment Workshop, to be held in a few months. Below is Trazana Staples, TAP's former Women in Green Jobs Project Coordinator.  Trazana has a new book out, Ecopreneurship: 10 Steps in Creating Your Green Business.  Order your copy here.

 

WHY GREEN IS YOUR COLOR: A WOMAN'S GUIDE TO A SUSTAINABLE CAREER

Ensuring women are prepared to succeed in a 21st century changing economy is critical to the financial stability of women, their families, and our country. Why Green Is Your Color: A Woman's Guide to a Sustainable Career is a comprehensive manual designed to assist women with job training and career development as they enter into innovative and nontraditional jobs. The guide also provides vulnerable women a pathway to higher paying jobs, and serves as a tool to help fight job segregation.

HERE'S THE REPORT.

 

 

MUST READ!  Brilliant new article by Naomi Klein: Capitalism

vs. the Climate.

Here's a bio of Naomi Klein, best-selling author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

"Denialists are dead wrong about the science. But they understand something the left still doesn’t get about the revolutionary meaning of climate change."

 

 

TAP's 10th Anniversary Celebration

 

Please support TAP's ground breaking work.  Make your donation here!

TAP's 10th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION on Oct. 9, 2011 was a resounding success.  Here is a link to We're All In This Together, the new video on TAP's history.  Check it out! 

Here is a link to Vision and Values: The History of Tennessee Alliance for Progress by Gene TeSelle, TAP Secretary/Treasurer.

 

Nashville Women and Green Jobs Focus Group Report

Nashville Wormen and Green jobs Focus Group

 

TAP's Women in Green Jobs Project is designed to organize, inform and educate women about the issues of green jobs and the environment, as well as build their leadership and advocacy skills. A specific emphasis is on women from economically disadvantaged communities.  This report comes from a recent focus group with a diverse group of women who want to start their own green businesses.

Here is a link to the report.

 

 

 

TAP Executive Director Nell Levin and TAP Board Member Susan Shann with Van Jones

Members of the Tennessee Green Jobs Network and the Green-Collar Jobs Task Force of Nashville/Davidson County met face to face on January 15 with Van Jones, author of The Green-Collar Economy and former White House "green jobs czar. Here is a video statement from Van about the work of the Network.

 

 

Connecting Low-Income Youth to Green Jobs

A report has just been released by the Corps Network on connecting low-income youth to the growing green jobs economy. You can access it by clicking here