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SWEET!!!  CARES won a $75K seed CITRIS grant to start a CARES center at Berkeley to codesign & build green it & energy systems for Native Nations.

The center will be called Native American Community Assessment for Renewable Energy and Sustainability (Native CARES) and will include Native American partners such as the Pinoleville Pomo Nation, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Sandia National Laboratories.

Thanks to everyone that's supporting our efforts to helping  communities improve their overall level of sustainability and meet their triple bottom line requirements!

CARES has seen much success since we won the E Team grant in 2007 from NCIIA.  I believe that this grant is a another key step in establishing CARES as a major force in the sustainability arena.
 
 
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The 3rd Annual Gathering of the Pomo Nations for Higher Education will take place Friday, March 5th 2010 in Redwood Valley, CA.

It is a chance for junior and high school students to meet college representatives and get to know a little more about the exciting challenges that await them in higher education.

The conference will be located in the Consolidated Tribal Health Project, 6991 North State Street, Redwood Valley, CA 95470.

If you need more information, please contact 
Angela James at 707-463-1454 or at her email address: angelajames2276@yahoo.com
 
 
This year, I spoke at the 2009 Greenbuild Conference in AZ on the panel "OR02: Reviving the Oldest Approach to Sustainable Design - How Cultural Values and a Sense of Place Leads to Green Building Designs"

The panel included myself, David Edmunds from the Pinoleville Pomo Nation (PPN), Michelle Baker from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Kimberly TallBear from UC Berkeley.

During our panel we spoke on about the partnership amongst CARES, PPN, and UC Berkeley and how the utilization of  Co-Design methodology lead to the creation of the culturally inspired  housing design adopted by the PPN.

Overall, Greenbuild was an outstanding success!!.  We got an standing ovation at the end of our panel and we made good contacts with representatives form LEED and USGBC.

Currently, we are planning for another panel and paper on the subject of LEED and Native American Nations for the summer as well.

Until then, check out some other comments and blogs about our presentation here and here.
 
 

The Pinoleville Pomo Nation will be having their 14th Annual Big Time Celebration July 17th - July 18th in Ukiah, CA.

The Big Time celebration will have Bear Dancers as well as arts and crafts from numerous Native American tribes in the Northern California area. 

During the Big Time celebration, the Gathering of Pomo Nations for Higher Education Conference will take place as well.

This will have speakers and educational sessions to discuss the future educational opportunities for the junior high and high school students.

Please make plans to attend Big Time if you can. :)

Download Big Time and Educational Conference flyer.

 
 
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The 2009 Greenbuild International Conference & Expo’s program has been announced.

This conference is the largest dedicated to green buildings and their design.  This year the conference will take place in Phoenix, AZ from November 11-13 2009. 

I will be at the conference this year to serve on a panel to discuss the partnership between CARES and the PPN to build cultural inspired, sustainable.  housing.

You can read more about our session here. 

 
 

CARES got two news articles posted on the Mechanical Engineering Department's homepage!!!!

The articles talk about our win at the 2009 Bears Breaking Boundaries (BBB) and the recent Forefront publication of our work with the Pinoleville Pomo Nation.

Here is a link to the BBB and CITRIS competitions.

2009bearsbreakingboundariesfactsheet.pdf
File Size: 50 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File
 
 

UC Berkeley's Forefront magazine released an article today that describes the work that the Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability (CARES) is doing with the Pinoleville Pomo Nation.

CARES has partnered with the Pinoleville Pomo Nation (PPN) to co-design culturally inspired, sustainable homes for the PPN. 

The homes resemble a yurt and will utilize grey water capture systems, rainwater capture systems, natural lighting, solar water heaters, PV systems, and geothermal heat pumps. 

The yurt design will also incorporate passive heating and cooling systems such as high thermal mass and solar heating as well.

The construction of the home is set to begin this summer.


 
 

I will be presenting at this conference in a few days.  The full program can be found here.

The focus of the talk will be on The Pinoleville Pomo Nation – UC Berkeley Partnership to Co‐Design Culturally Informed, Sustainable Housing.

 
 

Out of over 400 submissions at the Bears Breaking Boundaries competition, the Pinoleville Pomo Nation project won honorable mention in the Curricular Innovations category and CARES (Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability) was a finalist in the Information Technology category.

We did not win the main prizes, but we made good contacts!!

See everyone again next year at BBB.

 
 

I got more good news: 

The Greenbuild 2009 Program Committee informed me today that proposal I wrote with the EPA and PPN: Reviving the Oldest Approach to Sustainable Design: How cultural values and a sense of place lead to green building designs has been accepted.

There were 1300 submitted and our proposal was one of the 112 that got in. 

The proposal talks about the co-design process CARES used to work with the PPN to co-design culturally inspired, sustainable housing.

I write so many of things things that I completely forgot about this one. :)