Minneapolis, MN - Sasha’s exposure to issues of environmental equity and racial justice began at an extremely young age as she spent most of her early life immersed in both the American Indian Movement and the growing environmental justice movement. She grew up deeply concerned about issues such as nuclear waste storage on Indigenous lands and by the time she entered elementary school, she was struggling (unsuccessfully) to engage her peers around these issues. Sasha grew up living in a subsidized housing cooperative in South Minneapolis with her mother, an environmental activist. Her dad is Dakota from the Santee Sioux Reservation in Nebraska, where he now lives and despite his abject poverty, is still fighting for social and economic equality for Indigenous peoples. She was lucky to receive full scholarships to a college prep high school and private college in Minnesota, where she continued her own learning and engagement around racial justice and environmental protection. Sasha graduated with a BA in Sociology/Anthropology from Carleton College in 2009. She has interned and volunteered with a number of non-profit organizations, including Honor the Earth and the Sierra Club, and has been active in her own community, specifically on issues of food justice. She is excited to have the support and network offered by Green for All as she continues her journey to make a difference in this world.

Buffalo, NY - Zoe Hollomon is a Community Economic Development practitioner living in Minneapolis, MN. She has worked to develop social enterprises with non-profit organizations and has over 7 years of experience in food justice and food systems development with the Massachusetts Avenue Project in Buffalo, NY. Zoe has a B.S. in Urban Planning from Cornell University and an M.S. in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University. Zoe has been a community organizer and activist trainer for many years and has worked with youth and adult leaders, national organizations, foundations, academic institutions, elected officials, faith leaders, cooperatives and others to build equity in local communities. Zoe is a fellow with Green for All, with the Center for Whole Communities and currently serves on the board of Rooted In Community, a national network of youth and food policy organizations working to create more local and equitable food systems in the US

Awards

Recipient of the Fellows Fund micro-grant award for: 
Feed the Roots, Growth trickles up: Connecting Young Leaders of the Food Justice Movement (Community Exchange)
Buffalo, MA- Massachusetts Avenue Project

With support from this Micro-grant program we will bring 5 youth and 2 staff from the Massachusetts Avenue Project/Growing Green to the RIC Summit July 27th-31st. There Growing Green youth, along with other RIC member youth, will plan a collective action campaign on food policy. RIC member organizations will leave the Summit with specific objectives and plans for local organizing to carry out in their communities over the next year, according to the policy agenda set at the RIC Summit. From July2011-October2011 RIC staff and MAP/Growing Green staff will help coordinate communication and planning regarding the RIC regional gathering in Buffalo and assure marketing and outreach is done to RIC members organizations for the Fall Regional Gathering in Buffalo October 14th-16th. With support from the micro-grant MAP/Growing Green will offer scholarship funds for at least 15 RIC member youth and adults to attend MAP's award winning Urban Agriculture and Food Policy Training. At this training youth from the northeast region will also meet to revisit the campaign goals and activities that were established at the RIC2011 summer Summit, address opportunities/challenges and do additional evaluation and planning for their campaign and for future RICs 2012 national gathering. 

Bakersfield, CA - Uduak Ntuk is an engineer in the Gas and Oil Department at the City of Long Beach. He is a technical professional that believes the economy and the environment are not mutually exclusive. Committed to protecting the environment and promoting sustainability, he has volunteered with the non-profit Alliance for Climate Protection since 2006 where he was personally trained by Nobel Laureate Al Gore to deliver dozens of technical presentations on the science and solutions to Global Warming. In 2008, Uduak was selected as a Startingbloc Fellow for the Institute for Social Innovation at the London Business School where he studied sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and social entrepreneurship. He now serves on the Board of Directors for Environmental Charter High School and the Pacific Gateway Workforce Investment Network Youth Council. He earned his BS in Chemical Engineering with a minor in Entrepreneurship from California State University, Long Beach and MS in Petroleum Engineering at the University of Southern California. Uduak is the father of a 12 year old daughter and drives a hybrid. 

Madera, CA - Yolanda Contreras is the second to the oldest in a family of five siblings. Furthering her education was not easy, but she has persevered. In 2006 she earned her AA in General Studies from Reedley College. Yolanda then majored in Social Work, and obtained a certificate in cross-cultural competency. Her long term goal is to earn a Doctorate in Educational Leadership. In 2008, she completed an internship with Community Action Partnership of Madera County (CAPMC), Victim Services Center, which is an agency that helps victims who have experienced in Domestic Violence, Victim/Witness, and Rape/Sexual Assaults. This experience compelled her to pursue a career in community work. She is currently working for CAPMC, at Madera Community Food Bank (MCFB) as a Hunger Campaign Coordinator. Her duties are to attend and participate in community collaborative meetings, develop food pantries, implement and supervise the 1-800-Finding Food Line, establish a data base system for emergency food referrals, and develop hunger education curriculum as well as a hunger campaign for Madera County. Yolanda is excited to be a part of the Green For All Academy Program and being able to contribute to food justice in her hometown of Madera, CA. 

South Bronx, NY - Inspired by her experiences as a single working mother living in a marginalized community, Tanya Fields founded the BLK ProjeK in 2009 as a response to sexist institutional policies, structurally reinforced cycles of poverty, and harsh inequities in wealth and access to capital that result in far too many women being unable to rise out of poverty and sustain their families. The group was nominated for a 2011 Union Square Award and Tanya has the honor of being a  Green for All Fellows, through which she connects with a national cohort of environmental justice change agents. With a Bachelor‚Äôs in Political Science from Baruch College, and a talent for public speaking, blogging and singing, Tanya has become a sought after speaker.  She provided a widely praised keynote speech at the 2012 Just Food conference, and served as a plenary panelist for the 2011 conference of the Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Working Group. Previous to the BLK ProjeK, Tanya worked with several high profile environmental organizations located in the South Bronx - Mothers on the Move, Sustainable South Bronx and the Majora Carter Group.  Tanya built upon the network, skills, resources and knowledge she gained through those experiences to create the BLK ProjeK. The BLK ProjeK is promoting women- and youth-owned enterprises that provide access to affordable good food, promote green open space, and support public and mental health.  

The BLK ProjeK approaches economic development holistically by empowering underserved women of color through political education, community engagement in support of the beautification of community spaces and urban farming, and women-centered preventive health programming.  For the last year the BLK ProjeK has run quarterly Bronx Grub community meals in which community members share healthy food, listen to speakers, discuss issues and build community. Tanya recently brought the Bronx Grub series to the BMW-Guggenheim Lab, a public arts space, and attracted over 125 visitors in the span of an hour.  Tanya and the BLK ProjeK are currently working with Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo to create an urban farm called the Libertad Urban Farm in the Longwood community of the Bronx. She has foraged a formal relationship with Wassiac Community Farm in upstate New York, providing local women with the opportunity to experience farming in rural New York. The BLK ProjeK has laid the groundwork to open a year-long community led local fresh and prepared food market in the Bronx,  the Green BLK Market, which has received funding to incubate site specific healthy food vendors.

Awards

Recipient of the Fellows Fund micro-grant award for: The Green BLK Market - Community Led Farmer's Market Bronx, NY- The BLK ProJek

The goal of the Green BLK Market is to further provide the Hunts Point/Longwood community with viable, accessible, affordable and healthy food options while giving the communities most underserved demographic economic and educational opportunities and helping to stimulate local economy. R. 1. Providing at least 75 families from the immediate community access to affordable, locally grown produce each week; 2. Providing underserved women and youth the opportunity to increase their monthly income by 12 - 40%; 3. Train a minimum of 6 women and 6 youth to cooperatively run the Green BLK Market; 4. Using the market to facilitate community based family activities and opportunities to build community; and 5. Utilize market as an educational tool for healthy holistic living. 

Richmond, CA - Tania went from at "risk youth" to community activist and organizer. Currently working as Program Coordinator with Urban Tilth, a Richmond non-profit manifesting a more sustainable, healthy and just food system. When she's not in the garden, Tania is working with Youth Movement Records and the RYSE Center, as a Media and Arts assistant program coordinator. In April of 2010, she participated with nearly 30 other activist and organizers representing various grassroots, base-building organizations from throughout California, in a two-week Liberation Permaculture Design Course, hosted by Movement Generation at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. At the largest youth led Eco-Music Festival in the Nation, she was awarded with the Youth Champion Award for her environmental activism. Conscious Youth Media Crew, located in San Francisco nominated her one of three youth to premier on the "Toxic Triangle" documentary. In January of 2010, the City of Richmond presented her with the Martin Luther King Richmond Community Leadership and Service Award, she one of two chosen by the Ryse Center. Tania is currently in college pursuing her B.A in Environmental Studies and Media. 

Detroit, MI - Sandra grew up in Southeast Michigan, then earned her SB and Masters in City Planning from MIT and taught high school for one year in Mexico before returning to the area to join Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice as the Build Up Detroit Program Manager. Her first encounter with environmental justice was in an international context, but since starting at DWEJ, she have come to understand how important a role EJ plays in major US cities. She strongly believes that the perceived trade-off between the economy and the environment is a false dichotomy, and is proud to be a part of the community creating sustainable solutions in Detroit through green workforce development (among other things). Sandra is too pragmatic to be called an idealist, and too idealistic to be called a pragmatist. Her approach is systems-based and detail-oriented, and she loves to create connections across people, programs, groups, agencies and bodies of work. 

Berkeley Springs, WV - Mike McKechnie owns Mountain View Solar & Wind, a renewable energy company located in historic Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. Mike is passionate about bringing solar to Southern WV using an on-the-job training model that he has proven in the Eastern Panhandle of WV – he utilizes under-employed/un-employed contractors and trains them on-site for gainful employment in the solar jobs sector. In 2008 Mike was awarded the Green Entrepreneur of the Year award from the West Virginia Environmental Council. Mike, his wife Faith, and their daughter Sofia reside in Berkeley Springs in a home that utilizes a Velux solar hot water heating system, a solar electric system and a Skystream 3.7 wind generator. He has spoken at building association meetings, environmental fairs, community teaching institutes, local schools, Shepherd University, the National Conservation Training Center in Shepherdstown, WV, Oblebay Institute in Wheeling, WV and local and state level government meetings. Mike's energy and enthusiasm are contagious as he engages the audience to be part of the energy solution that our country needs. 

Kymone Freeman was the director of the National Black LUV Festival (1997-2010) recognized as a Washington, D.C. Mayor's Art Award Finalist for Excellence in Service to the Arts in 2006 and received a Mayoral Proclamation in 2007. NBLF was the largest annual AIDS mobilization in WDC for six years and partially credited with the passing of Initiative Measure 62: Treatment instead of incarceration for non-violent drug offenders in 2002. Freeman has appeared along side Mark Twain and Harriet Tubman in newspapers and subway cars throughout WDC metro area as a Clinical AIDS Vaccine Trial Participant and NIH “Everyday Heroes” Ad Campaign Model to bring attention to this pandemic. 

He is a founding board member for Words Beats & Life, a Hip Hop Non-Profit and co-founder of Bum Rush the Boards the largest annual youth chess competition in WDC. He is the subject of one chapter of the book Beat of A Different Drum: The Untold Stories of African Americans Forging Their Own Paths in Work and Life (Hyperion). He interned at Common Sense for Drug Policy: A Harm Reduction Organization. Worked as a Consultant with the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA) and appeared in several cities across the country when he participated in the DPA's Breaking the Chain: The War on Drugs and People of Color Conferences, a scholarship received from American Friends Service Committee to spend the summer in Nairobi, Kenya for an international leadership conference resulted in him returning to the states as a playwright with three productions to his credit. He received the 22nd Annual Larry Neal Award for Drama for his successful debut play Prison Poetry that has sold-out the Historic Lincoln Theatre and Studio Theatre during the Hip Hop Theatre Festival; with additional appearances at THEARC Theatre, Oak Hill Juvenile Detention Facility and several college campuses where his work has been included in the Black History curriculum of Maryland’s Eastern shore.

He has conducted production workshops at the National Black Theatre Festival and Institute of Policy Studies. He is a 2010 Green For All Fellow and is co-founder of We ACT Radio 1480 AM DC's only independent radio station.

Awards

Recipient of the Fellows Fund micro-grant award for: 
We ACT Radio Do Something GREEN (Sustainability Initiative)
Washington DC- Social Art and Culture

In order to claim the title of DC’s new progressive radio station, not only will we embrace a Green renewable platform, but our broadcast studio itself will serve as a functional blueprint of sustainability for community members and listeners to follow. Funds requested will used for the following activities, to be carried out by We ACT Radio staff, volunteers, and community partners: 1. energy audit, 2. weatherized studio, 3. rainwater barrels installed, 4. community garden spearheaded, 5. entire staff participation est 30+, 6. promote community open houses to highlight work, share resources, & encourage duplication. 

Minneapolis, MN - Joseph Adamji works in informal education as the High School Program Manager in the Kitty Andersen Youth Science Center, an organization with the mission to empower youth to change the world through science. Joseph designs and facilitates programs that put youth at the center of making change. Through multi-year projects that connect social justice, community development, sustainability, art, media/technology, and science, young people are given the tools to lead and the space to create.