Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society
Restoring and promoting the health of all life in the Chesapeake Watershed
through education and action projects organized by volunteers
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Good CHEAR and Happy New Year 2016 To All,
  
We are writing this note to ask you to make a contribution to help us continue our work. We accomplished a lot in 2015, and almost met our target of $20,000 in donations. However, some unanticipated expenses on a few of our projects and increases in costs for communications, insurance and bookkeeping have meant that we ended 2015 with a $7000 deficit in our income-expense balance sheet. Fortunately we had some reserves to cover these expenses this year. Our goal for 2016 is to raise $25,000. We have great ideas for 2016 but to achieve them we realize that we need to pay more attention to fundraising and to develop a much wider base of donors. CHEARS is a 501c3 non-profit with a collective impact mission to promote health of the Chesapeake watershed with volunteer projects in education, arts, and research ---and our societal mission is to work for an inclusive egalitarian beloved community as we do these projects together.
In 2015 we are very grateful to have co-sponsored ---with our great partners-- the completion of the 3 public art projects in the Three Sisters Gardens, and the Memorial Legacy Project honoring our elder peacemakers and activists who have passed. We are especially grateful to have had the opportunity to support establishment of the new Earth Squad project at Springhill Lake. Our plans for 2016 include continued support for the Earth Squad, Forest Stewards, Green Man Festival, GCAN, Chestory, Flows, Home Salons, Dynamic Governance, and the Three Sisters Demonstration Gardens and Food Forest (See some upcoming events listed below). In 2016, we're also planning to launch the Healthy Eco-Yards Co-op (HEYCO) an organic land care yard certification project with specific metrics in terms of number of yards, public lands, and businesses that we can get to commit to work together towards reducing polluted run-off into the air and waters. The project will promote best practices and follow the NOFA standards in organic land care. We also plan to work on the increasingly important issues of Climate Change related refugees --working with other groups to help sponsor climate refugees re-settlement in our community. To carry out these plans we very much need your volunteer work and your financial support.
To make a contribution, click the link http://chears.org/ to go to the CHEARS website and then Click on the Donate button in the lower left corner to make an online donation or send a Check to: CHEARS
PO Box 1841
Greenbelt, MD 20768
Thanks for all you do!
Happy New Year from
Maggie Cahalan, CHEARS Newsletter Editor,
and from the entire CHEARS Volunteer Board of Stewards.
The Chears Board of Stewards ( Convener, Carolyn Lambright-Davis, lambrightdavis@yahoo.com; Vice Convener, Bob Cahalan, Bob@chears.org; Treasurer, Kate Prager, kateprager@earthlink.net; Secretary, Joan Clement, joan@chears.org; Doron Antrim, doron.antrim@gmail.com; Maggie Cahalan, Maggie@chears.org; Bill Davis, williamdavis52@hotmail.com; Mary Ellsworth,Marysellsworth@gmail.com; Marcia Freeman, marciaff@aol.com; Eugenia Kalnay, ekalnay@gmail.com; Bennie Smith, benniejdmba@hotmail.com; Chandra Taylor Smith, drctsmith@aol.com)
If you have questions about CHEARS or would like to volunteer, contact any of our board members!
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Visit the calendar for a full listing of our events.
Did you know...you can update your contact information and CHEARS eNews preferences? Click here!
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...or text CHEARS to 22828
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Volunteering Around the Watershed! Thanks for All You Do and Will Do! 
Be Part of Community Tree Protection Events !
Two Dates Are Coming Up!
Monday, January 18 2016 10:30 AM -1pm in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service
WHERE? Buddy Attick Park, 555 Crescent Road, Greenbelt, MD 20770 REMINDERS:
*Wear warm clothes and boots, because service will take place outdoors.* *Bring a reusable mug and mess kit for FREE hot cocoa and bagels.*
*High school students: Bring a copy of your own service learning form.*
Contact: ejosephitis@greenbeltmd.gov or (240) 542-2168 
Thanks to the volunteers who promoted zero waste at the Festival of Lights Tree Lighting Ceremony at the Roosevelt Center on Friday, December 4, 2015! A total of 13.8 pounds of compostable cups and leftover cookies were diverted from the landfill to MOM's of College Park BiobiN. Interested in joining the zero waste circle? Email erin@chears.org for more details
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Three Sisters Demonstration Gardens and Food Forest Especially Needs Your Help in 2016!
If you can lend a hand at any of the tasks listed below contact Carolyn Lambright-Davis, lambrightdavis@yahoo.com or Maggie Cahalan at maggie@chears.org
We'll do some discussion of the garden plans at the potluck-film showing of This Changes Everything at Eugenia's on January 16 (see above). Look for a meeting date TBA in early February
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| Hand Drawing of the Plan for the Center Three Sisters Garden
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Now that we have such beautiful Public Art in the Three Sisters Gardens (see pictures below) Volunteers are especially needed in 2016 for each of the gardens and the food forest. We need help in: - Volunteer recruitment and co-ordinating workdays with existing groups such as University of Maryland students
- Serving as adult and older youth mentors for Earth Squad elementary school age volunteers
- Selecting a demonstration theme for 2016 and researching its implementation,
- Planning and implementing educational workshops on organic land care and permaculture
- Mapping the 2016 garden planting design for each of the 3 gardens and the food forests,
- Co-ordinating with Greenbelt Public Works on Design
- Seed ordering and seed starting
- Fruit Tree pruning and care,
- Planting annual veggies and flowers,
- Mulching, and summer weeding and watering,
- Raised Bed Building and Maintenance
- Building protections from the deer and wood chucks
- Compost bin care, education, and maintenance,
- Harvesting and Food Preservation
If you can lend a hand at any of the tasks listed above or any other things you can think of contact
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Dedication of the art in Three Sisters Garden-East at Schrom Fall Fest October 2015 .
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Dedication of the art in Three Sisters Garden-Center November 1 2015.
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Dedication of the art in Three Sisters Garden-West November 14 2015
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Earth Squad and University of Maryland Students Celebrate the Art at Springhill Lake Dedication November 14 2015
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Join us for a Potluck and Home Salon Showing and Discussion of the Film
This Changes Everything! When: Saturday January 16
6:30 PM Potluck--7:15 Film showing
Where: Home of Eugenia Kalnay
Avi Lewis
90 minutes
Filmed over 211 shoot days in nine countries and five continents over four years, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING is an epic attempt to re-imagine the vast challenge of climate change. Inspired by Naomi Klein's international non-fiction bestseller This Changes Everything, the film presents seven powerful portraits of communities on the front lines, from Montana's Powder River Basin to the Alberta Tar Sands, from the coast of South India to Beijing and beyond. Interwoven with these stories of struggle is Klein's narration, connecting the carbon in the air with the economic system that put it there. Throughout the film, Klein builds to her most controversial and exciting idea: that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better. The extraordinary detail and richness of the cinematography in THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING provides an epic canvas for this exploration of the greatest challenge of our time. Unlike many films about the climate crisis, this is not a film that tries to scare the audience into action: it aims to empower. Provocative, compelling, and accessible to even the most climate-fatigued viewers, THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING will leave you refreshed and inspired, reflecting on the ties between us, the kind of lives we really want, and why the climate crisis is at the centre of it all. Will this film change everything? Absolutely not. But you could, by answering its call to action.
Quotes
"Offering hope by indicating the power of game-changing grassroots activism" - Variety
"The realization that a solution is possible, well, that changes everything" - Globe & Mail
"Unsurprisingly I spent the film crying" - The New York Times
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GCAN UPDATE
MEETINGS
Our next GCAN Meeting is on Wed, Jan 6, 7:00-9:15 pm.
Come hear about the Sierra Club Maryland Chapter's state Legislative Priorities for 2016, which include:
* Extend and expand the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act * Increase the share of renewable energy in the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) to 25% by 2020 * Drop the renewable energy credit in the RPS for dirty combustion sources like trash incineration, dirty biomass combustion, and burning of black liquor * Pass a beverage container deposit bill ("bottle bill") that will triple the recycling rate for cans and bottles and reduce litter, incineration, and landfilling * Protect honeybees by labeling nursery plants treated with toxic bee-killing pesticides and by restricting their consumer use * Ban the prophylactic
use of medically-important antibiotics in livestock production
After an overview of the six bills, the guest speakers will lead in-depth discussions of the legislation to "clean up" of the Renewable Portfolio Standard and to adopt a beverage container deposit program in Maryland.
Marion Edey is leading the Sierra Club's campaign to take the dirty energy out of Maryland's Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). A long time environmental activist, she serves on the Sustainable Planet grants committee of the Threshold Foundation, and was the founder of the national League of Conservation Voters.
Martha Ainsworth is the Chair of the Prince George's Sierra Club Group, a member of the Maryland Chapter Sierra Club Executive Committee, and one of the Chapter co-leads on the bottle bill. Zero waste - reducing, reusing, and recycling - has been a Prince George's Group conservation priority for the past three years, and has now become a state-wide Sierra Club campaign.
As always, we will use the last portion of the evening for local announcements and updates on Greenbelt sustainability projects.
DISCUSSION CIRCLES
GCAN "ACTIVISTS"
We continue to have a broad-spectrum focus.
CITY: We had a very successful petitioning of the City Council on Nov 23rd. Stephanie Warner requested that they write a letter to President Obama, regarding the upcoming Climate Talks in Paris. They agreed to put us on the agenda for the same evening, and a letter was sent the following week! We are also very proud that Mayor Emmett Jordan signed on to the Compact of Mayors: http://www.compactofmayors.org/cities/greenbelt-md/
We also continue to support the city's Green Team Zero Waste Circle, headed up by Susan Barnett.
COUNTY: This fall/winter, we are working with CCAN and PG-Sierra Club on a Prince George's County Ban on Fracking. The bill should be introduced into the County Council in January. Council Member Todd Turner has already expressed his support when a group of us met with him in October. Lore Rosenthal was lucky enough to catch County Executive Rushern Baker for a private chat on Dec 12th and was able to share some info with him. Please email lore@simplicity-matters.org, if you would like to join our special Advocacy Team.
STATE: This fall, we are also working with CCAN on the re-authorization of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act (GGRA) and the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). Both bills will be introduced in Annapolis in January. Details are here: http://chesapeakeclimate.org/maryland/climate-action/
FEDERAL: Our December focus was the Paris Climate Talks (COP21), Nov 30-Dec 11. Eight GCAN members attended a rally in DC on Sun, Nov 29th. Seventeen people attended a successful workshop by Millicent Allenby, simulating the Paris Negotiations. More info at: https://www.climateinteractive.org/world-climate-project/
SPECIAL PROJECTS
The Greenbelt Cooperative "Incubator" Group continues to meet. Current coop ideas are an Early Learning Center in Franklin Park, a Composting Co-op to make organic soil, A Worker Co-op for the Old Greenbelt Theater, A Kids Co-op to do printing and copying, and an Edible Landscaping Co-op. Our next meeting will be on Sat, Dec 19, 2-4 pm, in a private home. Contact greenbeltcoopincubator@gmail.com for more info.
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Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society
P.O. Box 1841 | Greenbelt, MD 20768
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