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Greetings!
Greetings from Yestermorrow! Every few months we
bring you updates on what's happening on campus,
upcoming classes, instructor profiles, and stories from
Yestermorrow alumni.
| Yestermorrow Wins Vermont Governor's Award |
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The Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Warren, VT,
was awarded a 2005-2006 Vermont Governor?s Award
for Environmental Excellence and Pollution
Prevention. The award, specifically for Environmental
Excellence in Education and Outreach, recognizes
Yestermorrow?s Certificate Program in Sustainable
Building and Design. Associate Director, Kate
Stephenson, received the
award from Vermont Governor James Douglas at a
ceremony at the statehouse in Montpelier on
Monday, January 29th.
The Governor?s Award is presented annually to
organizations, schools, businesses and individual
youth that initiate projects which: Reduce or
eliminate pollutants and wastes; provide measurable
and direct benefits to air, land or water; conserve
resources and minimize resource consumption; and
inform and educate others about environmentally
responsible practices.
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| Yestermorrow Steps it Up on Global Climate Change |
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Yestermorrow has signed on as a sponsor and
participant in Step It Up 2007: Communities Uniting
for Climate Action Now! The brainchild of
environmental author and activist Bill McKibben, Step
It Up is an invitation to individuals and organizations
across the United States to create events that
resonate at a local level, but that together, make a
loud, impassioned plea to state and federal officials
demanding real action: Immediate cuts in carbon
emissions, and a pledge for an 80% reduction by
2050. Step It Up will take place on Saturday, April
14, a date that has been dubbed National Day of
Climate Action. McKibben hopes for thousands of
grassroots rallies that, together, will spur the
creation of a movement.
With two relevant classes -- Super-Insulation for
Zero Net-Energy Homes and Re-Defining
Pre-Fab -- already
on the Yestermorrow schedule for the April 14
weekend, the school found itself in a natural position
to open its doors for a greater community gathering.
Partnering with Efficiency Vermont, the Mad River
Sustainability Group, and Green Mountain Global
Forum, planning is now under way for an inclusive,
enlightening, educational ?happening? for the Mad
River Valley and surrounding communities. We?ll keep
you posted on the specifics as they unfold. If you
are in the area, we hope you?ll join us. If you are
further afield, why not consider hosting your own
event?
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| Featured Course: Re-Defining Pre-Fab |
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The notion of "Pre-Fab" or modular housing often
carries negative connotations of being cheap or
ugly. But with housing prices making it difficult for
even middle-class, double-income families to afford
homes, coupled with calamitous natural disasters like
Katrina and the Pacific tsunami, the term "Pre-Fab" is
gaining momentum in architectural circles for being a
trendy, new way to build.
In our new Re-Defining Pre-Fab course, taking
place
from April 8-20, 2007, participants will redefine the
term "Pre-Fab" into one of "Design/Build Efficiency,"
and begin the process of re-considering the
possibilities of pre-fabricated structures as
attractive, affordable, and even "green."
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| Linda Lloyd: Student, Instructor, Board Member, Benefactor |
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Linda Lloyd is the type of person non-profit
organizations love: someone who
gives back. In 1993, Linda arrived at Yestermorrow
to take her first of -- to date -- seventeen classes.
Four years later, with a Penn State Master's in
Planning degree on her wall, she was
asked to join the Yestermorrow Board
of Directors. Last year proved to be a momentous
one -- finishing her nine-year stint on the Board,
making the shift from Yestermorrow student to
Yestermorrow instructor by co-teaching a Home
Design/Build course, and making a
life move, leaving her Virginia home and re-locating to
Warren, where she is building a new house
just down the road from Yestermorrow.
Linda has gained much from her Yestermorrow
experiences; utilizing her skills to build green homes
and develop an
ecovillage. Giving back to Yestermorrow has been a
natural
extension of her positive expriences at the school. In
addition to her volunteer efforts on the school's
Board of Directors, Linda has donated to
Yestermorrow
the profits from a green spec house she built. She
has also included the school as a beneficiary in
her will. Thank you, Linda, for all you've done on
behalf of Yestermorrow.
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Yestermorrow Students to Bring Skills to Africa |
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They came from opposite sides of the globe, but their
stories are remarkably similar. They
met in Yestermorrow?s January Strawbale
Design/Build
course. They realized they have identical goals: to
help people in need. And for both of them, the
destination is Africa.
Anthony Broese traveled to Vermont from Central
Australia, looking to supplement his studies in
sustainable development at the University of
Queensland. For him the strawbale course, along
with the sustainable business development workshop,
Thinking Like Cathedral Builders, provided
useful skills
and information that he can utilize as he travels to
Ghana and other African countries beginning in the
summer of 2007. His intent is to empower
impoverished communities to organize and develop
their skills so that they can be less reliant on the
industrial agricultural and mining powers that
devastate local resources, displace communities and
leave people destitute. He hopes that a derivative
of strawbale might be beneficial as a low cost
building methodology to replace the substandard
structures in which many people have been forced to
live.
Mwaura Ngoima currently lives in Vermont, but has
relatives in the Kiambu district of Kenya. He is
looking to bring his design and building skills back to
his family?s home village, Githega, where the average
income is $100 per year, and most people live in
wattle-and-daub, thatched roof huts. Mwaura hopes
his knowledge of strawbale construction, in addition
to the skills he's gained in four other Yestermorrow
courses, will enable him
to rebuild a stone structure on his family?s property
that was left bombed-out after Kenya?s fight for
independence from British colonialism. He plans to
turn the building into a school and clinic, as well as
create a demonstration site for sustainable living on
the surrounding property. ?I want to let the villagers
learn that modernization is not necessarily better,? he
said. ?We need to give people a voice in how their
community changes and normalize some of the
traditional agricultural and building practices.?
The Yestermorrow community wishes Anthony and
Mwaura all the best in their endeavors to make a
difference. Yestermorrow is proud to have played a
small part in their efforts.
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