The past couple of months have been a challenging time for our team. Our team members have faced personal challenges, as we all do, which brought us out of the groove. However, we are excited to share what we have accomplished!
We started the build out of the platform. We have also created our Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/DrainDefendersLFT/). Please like it and fill out the survey (https://forms.gle/7UeishEK5jaF2K2h7) regarding where our pilot program should be. We want to make sure we are prioritizing locations the community is invested in supporting. We are proud of this being an open community project. We look forward to including everyone who wishes to be involved on this project.
We have estimated out technical needs, and look forward to inviting your support to help us program, if that’s your cup of tea! We are anticipating about 160 hours of development work. We will also need front-end development in CSS, HTML, and React. For those who don’t code in the above languages, we also need help with creating educational materials around storm drain maintenance. If you want to support our educational and marketing efforts (creating material, boots-on-the-ground efforts, or marketing supporting) please email draindefendersLFT@gmail.com with your interests.
Our current, most pressing challenge is that we are working with LCG to get access to the storm drain data set. We are reaching out to our city and parish council members to gain support for this process, as well as leveraging this project’s champions to continue requesting access to the data. If you want to help, you can contact your council members (find their contact info here: http://bit.ly/lft-council) and let them know you support giving our team access to the storm drain location dataset and would love to see more open data projects, like this one, develop across Lafayette!
As always, we want to emphasize that our core value is transparency. Follow our Trello board (https://trello.com/b/MnlSujIZ/adopt-a-storm-drain-timeline) to see our progress. This is our way of living our truth and being the change we want to see in the world. We hope you follow our progress along the way, or better yet, participate however you want to.
Now, let’s get to work. We have a lot of #DrainDefenders to mobilize and even more #StormDrains that need adopting!
We are excited to announce that we have officially begun installing the Eyes of the Sun mural at Martin Luther King Center. Our team is working diligently to achieve our goals in a timely manner despite rainy days. Support from locals in the Truman community has been extremely motivational. We are stopped by all daily by people of all ages complimenting the progress our team has made. We want to thank our youth community for taking the time to help us clean up our work areas!
We have also gained two new visual artist volunteers. Dorian and Ricky have been a great asset in helping Justin execute the more technical portions of the mural. We have also, recently released a new social media advertisement to recruit additional volunteers.
Another great update! We have reconnected with one of the original authors of the Eyes of the Sun poem. He was one of the incarcerated youth that not only contributed to the poem, but made the commitment strive for greatness. He wants everyone to know that he is thankful for our communities faith in him and that he will not let us down. He will continue to stay positive and focus on his education.
We at Veggies on the Go are hard at work with our project. Everything is flowing smoothly except for the bike and trailer. We could not find a bike and trailer within our budget so I did some research and found a gentleman in New Orleans who’s custom making them for us.
We put in the application to accept the EBT card and also created an account to be able to accept different forms of payment. I created a l3c for the project it’s called Veggies on the Go l3c. A l3c company is considered a low non-profit organization. Michelle is creating our pay it forward board along with healthy information. Kimba is creating our healthy menu’s.
I created a Facebook page and got a web page name. The name on Facebook is Veggies on the Go, I’ve been posting helpful articles and letting everyone know about our project. I also created VeggiesontheGo.org, I haven’t posted to it yet because I’m still learning about this process, but will start soon. Since the growing season for okra is over I harvested some of the okra, dried them and created some seed pack to give to customer so that they may grow their own okra.
I’ve been going to the Makers Market at the library creating decals and coasters to give to future customers. I will also be making signage and aprons for our project. I’m in the process branding our project.
The bike and trailer was ordered today the gentleman in New Orleans will have the trailer ready within two weeks and the bike by the end of January. We had to get McComb Veazy Coterie to advance a check to pay for the bike until the checks are disburse.
When we receive the check we will reimburse the McComb Veazy Coterie the money they advance for the bike and also order the POS system and get the insurance.
We will be working on the routes and the plans to kick of our first Sunday Produce is on schedule. First Sunday Produce will be at the corner of 12th St and Magnolia St. the morning of March 1, 2020. We will have produce to sell along with samples of the produce and helpful information and menus. Our team would like to thank the Community and the 24HCP for supporting us. We are very honored to have been chosen to help our community.
There is no doubt that the 24-Hour Citizen Project was one of our team’s most memorable moments in 2019. Within the last few weeks we have made some progress and are excited to share with you some things we’ve learned.
Let’s start with the great news first. We held our first class on December 6, in partnership with AOC and it was a huge success! Christi Tracie taught a media literacy course focusing on perspective. 30 teens participated in the class. Christi was able to keep the class exciting by having an interactive presentation and ending with challenges for the students to compete in. We were able to use staff members phones for challenges when taking pictures.
Before the actual class, we started off with addressing a few challenges. We didn’t have as much time to organize and schedule the first class as we originally thought. This was a result of us working with a 2-week window instead of 4 weeks for December, due to the Holiday and competing school events. This is something we will need to consider for upcoming classes. Secondly, although the students enjoyed the class and took several photos, they were apprehensive with sharing it with the public. Their reasoning was that “The internet trolls aren’t kind”. The students feel the pressure of look 100% on point, needing a picture without a hair out of place. I hope that we can break them out of being afraid of sharing. Thirdly, we designed our courses to be with 4-5 students, based on the first course we may need to offer it to more students initially.
As of now, we have stayed on course with our time. Our next steps include purchasing software and Equipment, creating Engaging challenges for the January class, and deciding on a platform to share our video updates.
That’s all for now, looking forward to giving you an update after the next classes is offered.
Is it a marketing miracle or meant-to-be that the first day of Festival International de Louisiane 2020 is Earth Day? That’s right, mark your calendars for April 22-26, 2020 and a Festival International experience with a slightly green-er hue!
As a reminder, we’ll be incentivizing food vendors away from using styrofoam packaging items at their FIL booths. The incentive comes in the form of a subsidy meant to cover some of the increased costs associated with the environmentally-preferable materials, as well as a full-court marketing press around the initiative. Our team met with FIL staff last week for a post-funding kick off to work through some logistics regarding the vendor subsidy as well as a vendor-communication plan.
We’ve confirmed working with a company called Eco-Products to create a FIL-specific store on zerowasteevents.com. Vendors will be given a special code to login and order what they need for Festival International. We’ll have individual calls with vendors this month to determine what bagasse and other compostable items should be offered in this digital storefront. These calls will also serve to confirm our quantity estimates and gauge buy-in from vendors. We’ll then use this information to calculate the official subsidy parameters that will be possible with our 24HCP funding.
Vendors who use all compostable packaging at their booths will get the special “green vendor” designation on all communications about food and vendors — the FIL app, online, and even their physical booth signage! This way, Festival-goers will be able to search for green vendors and choose to eat from booths that use compostable packaging!
Our first all-vendor meeting will take place in January, so be ready for another big update in our next letter.
