Green Jobs For Students

Marketing and Development Volunteer Intern

Join the Chicago Furniture Recycling Center (CFRC) start up leadership team!

Assist in development and execution of marketing plans for CFRC activities, assist with operational activities of programs, program calendars, attendance rosters, etc. , Conduct interviews and gather stories for quarterly printed newsletter, Assist in publishing weekly electronic newsletter, twitter updates, web site updates and maintenance, etc.

Keywords for this position will be: Organization liaison, fund raising, marketing, organization development
Duties:
Scheduling Meetings, Coordinating Committees, Carrying Out Duties

1. Coordinate with board marketing leader to develop branding strategy and ensure that branding strategy reaches all events planned
2. Work with marketing board member to develop CFRC initial marketing strategy
3. Develop fundraising and event planning committee; develop marketing plan for each event
4. Reach out to media on behalf of CFRC, collect stories, write newsletters, etc.
5. Organize Technology and New Media committee/board member to write e-newsletter, upkeep Twitter, and Facebook ensuring overall marketing strategy is actively utilized across social media channels

There will be three meetings per month. There will be 2 committee meetings per month (1 hr) and a weekly Sunday business management meeting (1-2 hrs). Other tasks will be completed outside of meetings (7-13 hrs). So total time spent weekly will be approximately 5-15 hrs per week.

Minimum Requirements: Need to be mature, reliable individual who is able to work on projects with and without supervision, have some marketing experience, computer proficient (internet research, Microsoft Word Microsoft PowerPoint, Publisher, and creative programs), excellent oral and written communication skills, organized, and self-motivated.

Start Up Operations Volunteer Intern

Chicago Furniture Recycling Center (CFRC) start up leadership team. Essentially, the founder and CEO of CFRC is looking for partners to start up this organization. You should be driven and possibly want to work with the team full time upon graduation.

Chicago Furniture Recycling Center (CFRC) mission is to provide recycled furniture to those less fortunate in the Chicago Community. As a start-up we are looking for interns to help in many areas: volunteer coordination, organization liaison, grant writing, fund raising, program research, networking, program development, and more.

Some Specific Tasks Include:
Duties:
1. Fund raising: Carry plan to hold major/minor events, communicate with possible locations, come with ideas, organize volunteers to carry out plans
2. Budget and Finance Committee: Grant Writing--Manage the Grant Writing Process--Ensure solid completed products and date completion, Communicate with foundations, research foundations, bring CEO in on developments when needed
3. Keep CEO abreast of progress during the week. Set regular work times and check-in with CEO through e-mails for any prioritization, additional needs, duties, or follow up.

Interns will learn what it takes to start a small business as well as the challenges nonprofits face. Weekly internship schedules are very flexible and most tasks can be completed off site.

There will be three meetings per month. There will be 2 committee meetings per month (1 hr) and a weekly Sunday business management meeting (1-2 hrs). Other tasks will be completed outside of meetings (7-13 hrs). So total time spent weekly will be approximately 10-15 hrs per week.

Minimum Requirements: Need to be mature, have examples of leadership (fraternity, sorority, student groups) reliable individual who is able to work on projects with and without supervision; computer proficient, excellent oral and written communication skills, organized, and self-motivated. Candidate preferably will be a sophomore or junior college student. First year MBA students will be considered as well.

Positions open immediately. Interested parties should contact Darein Burton at dburton@mycfrc.org

Five Step Chicago Chickens

An excerpt from Eco Columbia:

Step 1: Decide you want chickens.

Step 2: Call your Alderman to see if chickens are legal to own in your city's ward.

Step 3: Select a breed, I recommend 'Storey's Illustrated Guide to Poultry Breeds' by Carol Ekarious. This will let you know what chicken's best for you and your climate. In Chicago, a cold weather hardy and warm weather hard bird is best.

Step 4: Find a hatchery that will ship to you, yes, ship. I enjoyed 'Nature's Hatchery' in Naperville, IL. Also, 'McMurray Hatchery' in Webster City, IA. They will deliver as little as 2 chicks.

Step 5: Do your homework on raising chicks. It's easier than you think. I recommend 'The Chickens Health Handbook' by Gail Damerow on everything chicken health, you can never read too much about your chickens. I brooded (raised as chicks) my 3 hens myself by purchasing a used 25 gallon fish tank/terrarium and a red heat lamp. My chickens are now full grown at 10 months. I have 3, 2 barred plymouth rocks and 1 buff orpington. They started laying light brown eggs after 20 weeks and they each lay about 6 eggs a week. They are the best eggs I've ever tasted and my girls have such great personalities. And no, you do not need a rooster for eggs!!

Happy Laying!

Natalie H Wojcik

nataliewojcik@att.net

www.chicagofarm.blogspot.com Check out this blog for the whole experience!

Art Installation Call For Work

Remember these? Hint (Columbia Chronicle Stands)



Want to help shape the focus of our next art installation? Have something to say? Send in a design!

Call For Work!

Submission Deadline for upcoming installation: 12:00 Midnight March 19^th

Posters will be displayed after Spring Break-End of the Semester

Theme: “The Food Industry: Efficiency or Deficiency?”

Posters must be designed to be printed 11” x 17”

Students are free to interpret this theme however they would like and create a visual (flat image) representation of it. You may use text (facts, quotes, or anything else that might help).

We will be using these themes in the Chronicle stands and in our online promotions (blog, social networking, etc.) You will be credited with your name and contact information (if you would like) on the installation. Looks great for the resume!

Submissions should be sent to Neale at nbaldyga@colum.edu Or can be dropped off at The Columbia Recycling Program 916 S. Wabash 5th Floor

The Green Biz Channel Has Begun

Since its inception in 2002, I-GO has worked to catalyze a set of transportation innovations that make it feasible and desirable for Chicago residents to get around conveniently and economically without having to own a car and, at the same time, reduce vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions.

While growing the car sharing market is an important objective, it is only one part of a larger and more important goal: the development of a robust, regional, sustainable mobility system in the Chicago area. I-GO promotes walking, bicycling, public transit, and finally car sharing for trips that are not feasible using the other options. As a part of this overall strategy, car sharing brings important benefits to area residents and to the community at large, including:

• Significant savings in transportation costs
• Access to a car without the cost of car ownership
• Reduced traffic congestion
• Reduced greenhouse gas emissions and improved air quality
• Promotion of healthy lifestyles and neighborhoods

"Put your money where your morals lie"

Peace,
Neale

The Raw Milk Crackdown

The article is a few years old but the debate is still extremely relevant:
Do we have a right to consume as we choose?
When does the government overstep their bounds or can it be justified?

Richard Hebron, 41, was driving along an anonymous stretch of highway near Ann Arbor, Mich., last October when state cops pulled him over, ordered him to put his hands on the hood of his mud-splattered truck and seized its contents: 453 gal. of milk.

Yes, milk. Raw, unpasteurized milk. To supply a small but growing market among health-conscious city and suburban dwellers for milk taken straight from the udder, Hebron was dealing the stuff on behalf of a farming cooperative he runs in southwestern Michigan. An undercover agricultural investigator had infiltrated the co-op as part of a sting operation that resulted in the seizure of $7,000 worth of fresh-food items, including 35 lbs. of raw butter, 29 qt. of cream and all those gallons of the suspicious white liquid. Although Hebron's home office was searched and his computer seized, no charges have been filed. "When they tested the milk, they couldn't find any problems with it," says Hebron. "It seems like they're just looking for some way to shut us down."

People have been drinking raw milk for a long time, of course — at least since sheep and goats were domesticated in the 8th or 9th century B.C. Raw milk is rich in protein and fat, and milk from cows became a staple of the American diet in colonial times. When milk leaves the animal, however, it can also contain any number of pathogens, which is why most doctors consider pasteurization — subjecting milk to a short burst of heat followed by rapid cooling — one of the great public-health success stories of the 20th century. By eliminating most of the pathogens that cause disease, including E. coli, salmonella and listeria, they say, pasteurization has helped lower infectious-disease rates in the U.S. more than 90% over the past century.

Raw-milk enthusiasts have a different perspective. They insist that along with the bad pathogens, heat-treating milk destroys beneficial bacteria, proteins and enzymes that aid in digestion. Some people with a history of digestive-tract problems, such as Crohn's disease, swear by the curative powers of unpasteurized milk. Others praise its nutritional value and its ability to strengthen the immune system. "I have seen so many of my patients recover their health with raw milk that I perceive this as one of the most profoundly healthy foods you can consume," says Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician and author who rails against the medical establishment on his website, mercola.com.

You might think raw milk would be a tough sell after the Taco Bell and bagged-spinach E. coli scares. After all, even the healthiest grass-fed cows tromp around in mud and fecal matter and carry all manner of bacteria with them into the milking parlor. Between 1990 and 2004, U.S. health authorities traced 168 disease outbreaks to dairy products; nearly a third were linked to unpasteurized items, according to the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. But in fact, demand for raw milk seems to be rising faster than cream in an unhomogenized gallon jug. Hebron's dairy co-op has no shortage of customers willing to pay a premium for milk that hasn't been processed. A California dairy producer estimates that 100,000 Californians drink raw milk every week.

All of which has created a simmering problem for health officials. While the U.S. has no laws against gulping milk straight from cows, the government's stance on controlling the sale of raw milk is far murkier. The Food and Drug Administration, which recently determined that it's safe to drink the milk of cloned cows, takes a tougher stand on unprocessed milk. It banned interstate sales of raw milk 20 years ago but left it up to individual states to decide what to do about commerce within their borders. The result is a hodgepodge of conflicting rules and loopholes big enough to drive a milk truck through. While 23 states, including Michigan, officially prohibit raw-milk sales for human consumption, the rest allow money to exchange hands under certain conditions. In California, raw dairy products are available in grocery stores, while Illinois consumers can buy them directly from farms if they bring their own containers. An increasingly popular arrangement designed to circumvent state restrictions is a so-called herd-sharing program, like Hebron's, which requires members to, in effect, lease a portion of a cow — for $20 a year, in his case — and sign an agreement opposing "all governmental standards for food, preparation, storage and safety." The $6.25-per-gal. charge is technically not a sale but compensation to cover board and transport costs.

Some raw advocates believe it's the emergence of these cow-sharing schemes in the past few years that has prompted state agriculture officials to crack down. Columbus, Ohio, attorney David G. Cox says he has represented six raw-dairy producers over the past year for alleged illegal sales, some of whom have been in business for decades without incident. "There seems to be an orchestrated effort to dry up the supply," he says. "I suspect that conventional dairy producers are concerned that if [raw milk] were widely available and people got sick, all milk would get a bad name and the whole industry would suffer."

What raw milk fans most resent is stepped-up efforts to crack down on a personal choice that wasn't doing anyone else any harm. "There are 65,000 child-porn websites," asks indignant co-op member Nancy Sanders, a pediatric nurse and mother of five from Des Plaines, Ill. "Why doesn't the government go after those?"

Meanwhile, farmer Hebron says he won't be spooked by Michigan authorities. Back in business a week after his goods were seized, he's become a cause celebre of the raw movement. After an Ann Arbor retailer he worked with was served a cease-and-desist order, a co-op member offered her nearby home as a new pickup site. Meanwhile, some of Hebron's clients in Michigan and Illinois have been flooding the fax machines of state agriculture officials to protest the treatment of the mild-mannered dairyman. In Feburary, the Amish farmer who supplies Hebron's co-op with raw milk received a warning letter from the FDA about potential interstate commerce violations. Hebron met with federal officials in Detroit on March 6th to defend the legality of herd-sharing arrangments, and is adamant about continuing his milk runs.

Recently, Hebron parked his truck in front of a North Side Chicago health-food store and began carrying crates filled with brown eggs and pasture-raised beef and pork into the shop for co-op members. He had to distribute the milk, however, out of the back of his truck — a rule the store's owner, Paula Campanio, reluctantly imposed after the raid. "I'm trying to be discreet," she says. "When I see a police car go by, I'm convinced they're coming for me." Demand from her customers for the milk is strong enough that she's willing to take the risk, but she's hoping that keeping the stuff out of her premises will make her a tad less culpable. Got raw milk? Shhhhh.

Peace,

Neale Baldyga

Source: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1598525,00.html

Check this out! Lots of great information to combat the ongoing argument against the plastic bag. If you're not already bringing reusable bags to the store with you, maybe you will now! Also, while we're on the subject, check out reuseit.com not only do they have some awesome reusable bags for sale, but a lot of other eco-friendly and sustainable products.

Happy Wednesday!
Danni

http://www.poconorecord.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080506/MULTIMEDIA02/80505016

Art Installations at Columbia College

If you’ve been on campus the last few days you may have noticed a change to the Columbia Chronicle newspaper stands. With the Chronicle’s gracious permission we have begun our first installment of themed “art installations” in the plastic cases right above the newspaper rack. These are in nearly every lobby on campus. The current theme is “The cost of coal”. Here are a few designs created by Simon Cervania....




















































You can check em out all over campus until Spring Break!

Peace,
Neale Baldyga