Clean-up!

On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Colin, who’s been helping us out a lot, organized a clean-up. I posted the flyer earlier. Anyway, it was a big sucess!! We had over 50 people show up to pick up trash and paint over graffiti. We got a ton of truckloads over to the Transfer Station, for sure over 5 truckloads of trash and conquered north-side, south-side, east-side and by the high school. Also the bridge looks great with only one new tag since the clean-up.
Great job everyone!

What’s Going on Now?

Sorry, it’s been a while since we last updated. But that’s not to say we’ve been twiddling our thumbs.

Monday, we’re teaming up with Americorps for a MLK Shiprock Clean up. I’m super excited to be organizing a service event, and this is the start to a good trend!

Last Wednesday, we launched What’s Your Story? at Shiprock High. More turned out than expected, which was awesome!! We had 12 students who had a lot of fun acting out motivational emotions. We’re doing it again next week and hopefully we’ll have pictures too!

We’re getting ready for a youth community dance at the end of this month. The first non-high school, non-country western dance for the youth here. Check out a flyer that one of our friends made:

We Got It!

Rethink Dine Power was up for a $5,000 grant from Brighter Planet. Brighter Planet seeks to foster local leadership and seed worthy community projects that will help people fight or adapt to climate change. We applied in good faith that our friends, family, and networks across the country would see the sincerity, urgency, and importance of our project and support it!

We won the grant because of the dedication of the amazing leaders from Shiprock and our allies across the nation. We owe all of our thanks and gratitude to this patchwork of individuals that made sustaining this project possible. The $5,000 will be used to fund upcoming visioning events and workshops, stipended roles within our leadership structure, and community art projects.

We are so excited and hopeful for the future and this opportunity not only provided fiscal resources for the project, but it developed a deeper sense of ownership over the project with our local leaders. This is not Amanda’s and my project anymore, this is truly the communties’. This was the intended goal of Rethink Diné Power, and Brighter Planet as well as everyone’s support has made this possible. Thank you.

What’s Your Story? First Session!

Our first session of What’s Your Story? happened today! It was a great success, with a turn out of seven middle schoolers. Our deal with Ms. Miller, an English teacher at the local Tse’Bit’Ai Middle School, proved useful as she’s giving her students extra credit to come to our sessions. While it was tough to get the group to open up and pay attention, they really identified with what we were talking about. Our program started off with explaining why stories are important. Then describing how each person is a hero on their own journey, full of challenges to overcome. Then we brainstormed emotions that stop us from taking action and facing those challenges, which a lot of the kids could identify with, and even learning new words, like “apathy”. After we got those emotions, we figured out what helps us get over those, breaking through the wall created by fear, self-doubt, apathy, isolation, and inertia. Then they got to do some skits that reflected moments in their life when they felt these emotions, going back to the challenge, choice, outcome structure of stories. All in all very successful, so next week we’ll see how these teens can use their life story in this structure while keeping these emotions in line.

Our First Event!

The Art Rally was pretty amazing. During our stay here, Erin and I have had to adjust to “Navajo Time”, meaning people are generally late, minimum half-hour. And this event proved no different. We barely finished setting up before people started coming in, but volunteers had a lot of fun spray-painting and drawing before they came.

The spray paint station was a big hit, lots of kids skateboarded in to do that and the sidewalk chalk.  The drawing and painting stations got a lot of creative inputs as well! Colin, one of our volunteers, started a piece called “What do you want Shiprock to look like?” and lots of kids put their ideas into the mural.

Our ideas board slowly became filled with people’s thoughts ranging from waste management to internet, solar power to animal shelters, and coffeeshops to parks. We’re now going to track down the Chapter House officials, show them this board and then get a meeting with them for the youth of Shiprock.

At the renewable energy table, I had a lot of great conversations with parents, kids, former coal mine employees and even the former Chapter House president! I told them some interesting facts about how a new coal mine would impact the community in terms of job creation, carbon emission, water impacts, and price per kilowatt hour verses a renewable source mix of wind and solar. One parent changed her mind about how the coal plant would benefit the community and the former employee agreed, after a long conversation, that it was up to our generation to make the transition.

Transitioning

This week, it feels like we’re really getting into the swing of the campaign. Finally done with visioning and planning, we have everything set up and ready to go for our first program and first event. Now is the time for gathering our team and doing massive outreach. Our first volunteer meeting was a disaster, only two people came, but it ended up being a great conversation about what we really want to accomplish here, what we’re inspired by and basically letting loose all the information we’ve learned over the past two months. After that, Erin and I pulled it together for a second volunteer meeting, getting 7 people there! Plus we met with another who couldn’t make that one. Now we’ve got 8 volunteers for this event, plus a commitment from them to get 8 more. Team building accomplished.

Now for outreach, Sierra came with Erin and I to meet with the principals and counselors of all the middle schools and high schools in Shiprock. There’s five and all were very excited and enthusiastic about our projects. They’re offering for us to come to classes and speak, hang flyers around, and even speak in front of the whole school assembly! Not surprising, we looked like dorks, but that’s ok because the response was great. Here’s a video of Erin, Sierra and I at Shiprock High:

UPCOMING EVENTS!

What’s Your Story?

Be the voice of our generation! Learn how to craft your personal story to motivate others.

Monday, Nov 16th. Boys and Girls Club. 4:30pm – 5:30pm.

ReEnergize Art Rally

What do you want Shiprock to look like? Come paint, tag, make beats, and re-envision the future of our community.

Saturday, Nov 21st. Diné College Gym. 12pm – 5pm.

At the Halloween Carnival!

Erin and I had a booth at the Boys and Girls Halloween Festival. Packed with community members, we “face-painted the future!”

 

Take a look at this:
http://www.youthnoise.com/playcity/blog/view/19761

Collaborate!

We’ve gotten to talk to a few groups working in the Navajo Nation and here’s what we’ve learned:

Dooda Desert Rock: Rallying the community against the proposed plant Desert Rock. Real commitment to sustainability.

Diné CARE: Pushing for renewable energy on the chapter level. 20 resolutions passed!

San Juan Citizens Alliance: Kicking Sithe Global’s butt by filing lawsuits and analyzing their permit requests.

Great job, everybody! We’re using our projects to create that renewable energy buzz and garner more support for their efforts.