Alice Waters, Founder of Edible Schoolyard and Chez Panisse Foundation

In the depths of winter in Wisconsin, we like to dream of spring, seeds, and gardens. As I am just starting to plan a community garden with my neighbors, I've been looking at other models, and love seeing what Alice Waters has done with the Edible Schoolyard. Alice Waters is a chef who created Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, serving organic food in season. But she brought organic food down to earth when she launched the Edible Schoolyard on one acre of public school grounds, where the students are involved in growing the food they then get to eat in their school lunches. Here, growing and preparing healthy food is part of the school curriculum, and is incorporated into other lessons on science, history, and culture. What would our childhood obesity and diabetes rates look like if most of our schools offered this for their students instead of the highly processed packaged foods that are the daily fare?

Kat Laine, Deputy Director, and Peter Haas, Founder, Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group

As the crisis in Haiti unfolded, I received an update immediately after the earthquake about how the Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group (AIDG) was springing into action to help relieve some of the suffering. I'd been following this group since its founder, Peter Haas, got it off the ground with an Echoing Green Fellowship in 2006. With people in Guatamala and Haiti, AIDG "helps individuals and communities get affordable and environmentally sound access to electricity, sanitation and clean water." Imagine smart engineers and social entrepreneurs working to develop local technology solutions to poverty that improves people's lives, and you've got the picture of what AIDG is doing. Learn more by watching Kat Laine, AIDG's Deputy Director, talk about their work against the backdrop of Haiti two years ago when it was being wracked by hurricanes.

Dorothy Stoneman, Founder and President of YouthBuild

Living in Milwaukee I've been seeing lots of boarded up homes in need of renovations and youth in need of jobs. So when I heard Dorothy Stoneman's story of founding Youth Build, it resonated. After graduating from Harvard, Dorothy Stoneman lived in Harlem for 20 years amidst abandoned buildings, homeless people and idle youths. She founded YouthBuild to engage youth in a program that transforms their lives while building homes for low-income people. She says this program combines the power of "love and opportunity" to get people to believe in themselves, to complete high school, and to learn the building trades. Since 1994, they have employed 76,000 people to build 17,000 housing units in America's poorest communities.

Building a Local Economy

We're hearing a lot these days about what the federal stimulus may or may not be doing to get the economy going. This month's focus is on building a local economy after the manufacturing jobs have left town. Instead of focusing on a single entrepreneur, I'm featuring a small town that is creating a new community vision to build a local and sustainable economy. Don't let the beginning of the video put you off with the academic sounding introduction. It's a cool story. Calling all entrepreneurs to lead the charge to rebuild their communities!

Steve Donziger, Founder and Partner at Donziger & Associates

With the release this month of the movie, Crude Impact, I was brought back full circle to the start of my legal career, when I worked as a paralegal for a D.C.-based plaintiff's law firm and played a minor role researching a case against Texaco for contaminating the Amazon rain forest of Ecuador with numerous leaking oil waste pits. This work was a motivator that led me to law school, but I had largely left the case outside my peripheral vision since the early 1990s. Steve Donziger did not.

As the founder of his law firm in New York, Donziger & Associates, he has doggedly pursued Texaco (now Chevron) in courts both in New York and in Ecuador for almost two decades. He is now assisting on the $27 Billion lawsuit against the company for massive oil contamination in the Amazon rain forest of Ecuador. Thirty thousand people are suing over this legacy of toxic pollution that has damaged the ecosystem and so many human lives.

For a sneak preview of Crude Impact, check out the trailer.


For a more in-depth understanding of what's at stake, watch the 60 Minutes expose.

Luke Cole (In Memoriam), Founder and Director of Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment

Although the term "environmental justice" is somewhat commonplace now, twenty years ago when Luke Cole started the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, he was a pioneering attorney developing the concept and the law. Luke died last month - far too soon, but his mark on the world will not soon fade. Luke fought for low income people and people of color to have a seat at the table and to actively participate in decisions impacting their environmental health and quality of life. He helped people stop toxic waste and tire burning incinerators, clean up dirty oil refineries, and beat back mega-dairies in the Central Valley of California. He trained numerous aspiring lawyers (myself included) to remember that the environmental justice lawyer's job is to ride shot gun, provide good strategy, and not get in the way of the movement.

Unfortunately, I could find only two video clips of Luke, and neither tell his story well enough to be satisfying. He is and will be missed, but his spirit lives on in all who knew him and continue to fight for justice.

Gidon Bromberg - Founder of EcoPeace Friends of the Earth Middle East

Although the Middle East seems to be a hornet's nest of conflicts, the work of Gidon Bromberg over the past 15 years has been to find common ground through "the commons" -- mainly water and other natural resources that don't know anything about human-made boundaries. Friends of the Earth Middle East is a unique organization that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists to work collaboratively to resolve environmental issues. In fact, Gidon sees issues of water scarcity as a vehicle for bringing people together to come up with solutions. Watch one of his stories and let it inspire you to promote peace too!