*EARTHWEEK*
Application
TGIF project grants 2007-2008
A. General Information
Project title: Earthweek
Total amount requested from TGIF: $15,000 (for a period of 5 years)
Partnering organizations, departments, or individuals (if any): ASUC Sustainability Team
TGIF Grant Application
Date: 6 Jan 2008
Primary and secondary contact names:
Name
/ Katherine BrittainTitle and department / Earthweek Project Coordinator
Phone / 858-449-3057
Email /
Name
/ Jonah LipsittTitle and department / Earthweek Grant Coordinator
Phone / 510-517-4501
Email /
Organization or campus unit through which the grant funds will be administered:
ASUC Sustainability Team
Account number where funds can be transferred if grant is approved:
30307600004860
B. Project Description
(The maximum total length for answers to all questions in this section is 300 words.)
1. Purpose
Describe the overall purpose of your project and its key components.
Overall Purpose:
The purpose of Earthweek is to unite faculty, staff, students, Bay Area organizations, and other environmentally conscious groups and individuals in educating, inspiring activism, encouraging individual changes in habit (from using CFLs instead of incandescent to reducing individual carbon footprints), and overall promoting environmentalism.
Key Components:
In order to achieve this overarching goal we have several events planned including:
-MONDAY Bay Area Resource Fair:
-Ecology Center, Food First, Berkeley Organization for Animal Advocacy, Engineers for a Sustainable World, Urban Releaf, East Bay Municipal Utility District, Bay Area Air Quality Management, Greenpeace, Berkeley Worms, Redefining Progress, Rainforest Action Network, Union of Concerned Scientists
-TUESDAY UC Berkeley Resource Fair:
-Climate Change Education (Jim Callahan), Office of Environmental Health and Safety, Residential Sustainability Education Coordinators, TGIF, Students for a Greener Berkeley, Green Campus, CalPIRG, Society for Agriculture and Food Ecology, CalSSAN, Forestry Club, BEAN, Re-Use, CACS, Chemists for Peace, College of Natural Resources, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, Overflyeration Committee, Student organic Gardening Association, Berkeley Roots and Shoots, BERC
-WEDNESDAY Green Picnic
-Phoenix Pastificio, Redwood Hill Farm, Café Zambala, Flacos, Blue Bottle, Curry Leaf Cuisine, Crepe maker, Bennett Valley Bread and Pastry, OctoberFeast, Andy and Cindy Thai Cuisine, The Local, Cal Dining, Strauss, Cliff Bar
-THURSDAY Transportation Fair
-California Center for Energy and Transportation, Transportation and Land Use Coalition, East Bay Bicycle Coalition, AC Transit, Carpool (Facebook), Fide Share/Flex Car/City Car Share, Berkeley Energy Alliance for Renewables Biodiesel Collective, Cal Clean Fleet (Tim Pine), City of Berkeley Energy Office, Alliance to Save Energy, Flex Your Power, Green Cars Electric Car Company, Mike's Bike's, Missing Link Bicycle Co-Op, University Athletics Critical Mass
-FRIDAY Personal Initiative
-Trash Audit, Green Room Tours, Solar Panel Tours, Carbon Footprint Pledge, Meditation Circle, Art for Activism display (www.arteartheachother.org), Art Miles Mural Project (http://www.the-art-miles-mural-project.org).
-ALL WEEK STeam Tabling
-selling Klean Kanteen, CFL exchange, selling Chico Bags, selling organic cotton Earthweek T-shirts
-EVENING EVENTS:
-Mayors Panel (including Mayor Newsom, Mayor Bates, Mayor Dellums), Governor Schwarzenegger, BP Panel (including professors, graduate students, undergraduate students, local activists) or an Alternative Fuels Panel, Film Festival (with six local films), Planet Earth Film Showing, Sustainability Workshop
2. Sustainability Goals
Which aspects of campus sustainability will your project address, and why is addressing these sustainability components important?
Our event is difficult in the sense that the sustainability it promotes is difficult to quantify and measure. Our ride variety of educational environmental events from a transportation fair to passing out CFL light bulbs can change behavior from simply changing light bulbs to inspiring individual initiative.
Although it is difficult to quantify the impacts of our event, the sustainability components it addresses are still very important and essential to encouraging sustainable behavior. Change is not only institutional or top-down, it is most importantly change through bottom-up and individual changes. If even just of our events encourages one person to change their lifestyle, like turning off the lights when leaving a room, or even considering using a bicycle instead of a car, than we have succeeded in spreading a message of sustainability.
Does your project tie into any broader campus sustainability initiatives? If so, how? (For example, CalCAP, activities by CACS, etc.)
Our project is working hand in hand with the Chancellor’s Sustainability Summit, as well as CACS funding. The Sustainability Summit will occur the Monday of Earthweek and we will be presenting a poster on Earthweek at the Summit. We’re advertising with each other and promoting each other’s events.
3. Project Benefits
How will this project benefit your fellow students? How will your project benefit UC Berkeley as a whole?
This project will benefit fellow students because as an educational event, it targets a wide spectrum of environmentalism. We’re incorporating more institutional aspects, such as Mayors and Professors into Earthweek, as well as more grassroots aspects, such as local activists and student groups. By supporting the entire range of environmentalism, we reach and impact a wide crowd that not many events usually do. Because we target a large group, it will benefit UC Berkeley as a whole by educating and encouraging sustainable behavior in the entire student body.
4. Approvals for Project Activities
Do any aspects of your project require approval from an entity on or off campus? If so, please explain. (For example, any project which affects a campus building must be approved by the appropriate campus facilities personnel.)
The transportation fair requires approval from Parking and Transportation to bring buses and cars on Lower Sproul. The Green Picnic requires food permit and temporary event permits that are being completed through the Office of Environmental Health and Safety.
What is the status of these approvals, as of the date you’re submitting this proposal?
These approvals are all in the process of being completed and turned in to the proper personnel. They will be approved by the beginning of Earthweek.
C. Project Goals and Quantifiable Impacts
(The maximum total length for answers to all questions in this section is 300 words.)
1. Metrics and Measurability
What quantifiable sustainability impacts will your project have? (This might be kWh of electricity saved, gallons of water saved, tons of carbon emissions avoided, specific area of land preserved, etc.)
Earthweek will empower those who attend, to save energy, as well as to help preserve their local and global environments. Although this may seem to be an imaginary quantifiable impact, we can however estimate the number of attendees that will be influenced by Earthweek.
-1500 people / day (indoor events, e.g. lectures/film screenings)
-~5000 people / day attending other planned events
Earthweek plans to have many available resources for attendees to access which will help them make the choices necessary to have lower environmental impacts. Such resources include:
-Compact-flourescent Lightbulb handouts (75% less energy usage / lightbulb over standard incandescent.
-Organic Clothing (reduce natural resource consumption)
-Organic Food
-and many many other resources.
These resources will allow attendees to make the decisions necessary to change their own individual sustainability impacts, many of whom would not have had the know-how or the resources to do so previously.
How will you measure these impacts after your project is implemented in order to see if you met your goal?
Post-Event Survey after each Earthweek major event, as well as an all-encompassing Survey on Friday of Earthweek. These surveys will ask attendees if the event(s) they have attended have had a positive impact on them, and what they plan on changing in their daily life in order to have a lower environmental impact (more sustainable).
How do these impacts fit into the larger campus context? (For example, what fraction of campus electricity use does your savings represent?)
We anticipate and hope that Earthweek will bring larger awareness AND action to our community—both University and City-wide. If enough people attend Earthweek we hope the community will see positive sustainable changes across the board—including lower energy consumption, etc.
2. Additionality or Marginal Benefit
If your project involves doing something that UC Berkeley does anyway (meeting minimal green building standards or basic environmental regulations), how does your project go above and beyond these minimal requirements?
We are expanding on the University's desire to have an "Earthday" in correspondence with the National Calendar. We hope that UC Berkeley can once again be the epicenter for the environmental movement, and that Earthweek can showcase the University's leaps and bounds in the community.
3. Cost Savings and Repayment to the Fund
If your project will generate costs savings to the University, please estimate them here.
We are encouraging lifestyle changes which may influence many UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff. These lifestyle changes may result in saving the University costs on many levels, including: energy consumption, water consumption, waste, etc..
Will any of the savings be available to pay back into TGIF?
Most likely not.
D. Project Team
1. Project team members
Please fill in a table like the one below for each team member. Three blank tables have been provided for you. You may copy and paste a blank table to create additional entries for project teams larger than three.
Name
/ Katherine BrittainTitle and department / Earthweek Project Coordinator (Earthweek, CACS)
Address / 2204 Channing Way, Apt. 6. Berkeley CA, 94704
Phone / 858-449-3057
Email /
Relevant experience or knowledge for this project / Experienced with Project Planning (e.g. Si Se Puede Peace Summit, YWCA Shadow Day, TGIF campaigning).
Conservation and Resource Studies Major.
Hours per week for this project / 5-7
Name
/ Alison GauthierTitle and department / Earthweek Intern, CACS
Address / 2004 University Ave #202
Berkeley CA 94704
Phone / 909-282-8879
Email /
Relevant experience or knowledge for this project / Second year Sustainability Team intern and Earthweek participant member for 2007
Hours per week for this project / 5-7
Name
/ Alison ToivolaTitle and department / Earthweek Intern, CACS
Address / 4426 East Third Ave
Napa CA 94558
Phone / 707-287-0464
Email /
Relevant experience or knowledge for this project / First year: Event planning for humanitarian organization throughout high school
Hours per week for this project / 5-7
Name
/ Jonah LipsittTitle and department / Earthweek Grant Coordinator, Committee Member
Address / 1981 Bywood Drive, Oakland CA, 94602
Phone / 510-517-4501
Email /
Relevant experience or knowledge for this project / Environmental Philanthropic Committee Leader
Environmental Leadership Program Intern 2007
Geography (Climate Science/Physics) Major.
Hours per week for this project / 3-5
Name
/ Christina OatfieldTitle and department / STEAM Co-Director
Address / 3525 23rd St., SF, CA, 94110
Phone / 415-828-5627
Email /
Relevant experience or knowledge for this project / EarthWeek ’07 Committee Chair, Co-Director of Steam (07-08), member of the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability, Environmental Sciences Major, ERG Minor
Hours per week for this project / 2-3 [will act as advisor to future EW teams, rather than take on a leadership role]
Name
/ Katie MerrilTitle and department / Earthweek Committee Member
Address / 2527 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94709
Phone / 831-359-8420
Email /
Relevant experience or knowledge for this project
Hours per week for this project / 3-5
Name
/ Katie HeinemanTitle and department / Earthweek Committee Member
Address / 2708 Ellsworth St Berkeley, CA 94705
Phone / 818-903-1286
Email /
Relevant experience or knowledge for this project
Hours per week for this project / 3-5
2. Additional Team Info
If your project team is partnering with other organizations, departments, individuals, or other stakeholders, please explain their involvement. (100 words max)
We plan on having numerous -campus and off-campus organizations, businesses, clubs, politicians, keynote speakers, and agencies attending our week-long event. Their involvement will range from lectures, to information booths, to food stands, to activities and tours. In other words, we hope that with our vast array of scheduled participants, Earthweek will have something of interest for anyone who chooses to attend.
Which person or persons on your team is ultimately accountable for ensuring that the project succeeds? (i.e., who is the project manager?)
Katherine Brittain, Earthweek Project Coordinator
Note: A new Project Coordinator is elected each year for that year's Earthweek.
Which person or persons will be responsible for reporting project status and accomplishments back to TGIF? (For example, if your project goal is to save a certain amount of fuel each year, who will measure the savings and report the number to TGIF each year?)
Katherine Brittain, Earthweek Project Coordinator
Please be specific about the ways in which you can ensure that your team will have this time available. (For example, students might choose to take fewer classes in order to have time to devote to the project. Staff might receive permission from a supervisor to devote X hours per week to the project.) (50 words max)
We have an intricate network of volunteers and paid interns who are made accountable for the tasks allocated to them.
3. Student Involvement
Will your project involve students other than those listed on this application? (For example, a project might involve recruiting student volunteers or hiring student interns.)
Yes. Earthweek not only has volunteers and paid interns specific to the event, but we also have access to a larger network of student volunteers through STEAM (The Sustainability Team, which Earthweek is a subset of).
If so, how many students? What kind of students? How will they be involved? (100 words max)
There are 17 active members of the Earthweek committee. They are all undergrads of the University. Each student has had events or administrative tasks allocated to them related to Earthweek's success. Each committee member will also be responsible for being present during Earthweek to help insure its smooth success. As explained above, we also have direct access to all of STEAM's members (~30 undergraduates) all of whom will gladly take on other Earthweek tasks before and during the event.
E. Project Education, Outreach, and Publicity Plan
Note: This section is about letting the campus know what your project has accomplished after you’ve met your project goals. If outreach and education are actually the primary goals of your project, please describe them above in the section entitled “Project Goals and Quantifiable Impacts.”
(The maximum total length for answers to all questions in this section is 100 words.)