Did your email list get swamped the last few days with pleas from government officials begging you for money?
Are you as sick of being treated like a political ATM as I am?
I spent the last three days unsubscribing from email lists begging me for money. Notice how the only time we hear from our elected officials is when they want our money? I'd really like to get an email from my Senator that tells me what he's actually done without a plea for funding.
I've been unemployed for 15 months, and until the useless idiots in Washington can either fund a stimulus bill that actually creates jobs in America or else actually passes an unemployment extension in the Senate, then in two weeks I'm out of options.
Right now there's a clever little diary on top of the wreck list that asks if James Carville asked you for money, and instead, asks you to give money to other people instead.
I have a better idea. Give your money to me.
I'm the executive director of a group called Community Greenhouse Partners. We're in the middle of applying for a 501(c)3, but we could actually use a lot of money right now. $5 million or so, to be vaguely exact.
With that money we will build a large greenhouse that houses aquaponic tanks, sustainable energy solutions, and enough vegetables and fish to feed a thousand people year-round. We will teach classrooms full of urban kids how to grow their own food, and, more importantly, how to prepare and eat that food in ways that doesn't destroy the nutrition found within it. We will teach folks from the local neighborhood how to run a modern greenhouse facility, and teach them agriculture as a viable modern career choice, We will teach area parents how to feed their children in a manner that doesn't directly lead to Type 2 diabetes. And we will teach a community how to compost and reuse their waste in a way that creates soil.
We will plant fruit trees and start bee hives, We will convert an abandoned church into a store, classrooms, a production kitchen for local gardens to create value-added products, offices for other local food organizations, and a coffee house where we can all gather and talk about healthy alternatives to the corporate food being offered to us at the chain stores in the suburbs.
We will build a 50KW Solar array and 4 25KW wind turbines on the roof of that church. We will put together a large-scale composting facility handling thousands of pounds of organic food waste a week. We will raise chickens for their eggs and goats to make milk and cheese, and we will add their manure to the compost to enrich it even further. And we will do all of this on a 2.83 acre site in the middle of a forgotten rundown urban neighborhood on Cleveland, Ohio's east side where unemployment is greater than 40% and childhood-onset type 2 diabetes has reached epidemic levels.
And while we're at it, we will build a model that can be replicated anywhere in the country, or even the world.
And all I need is $5 million to get the first one started.
Got money to give? Don't waste it on politicians who offer empty promises and then fail to deliver. Give it to me instead.