on the road

Kicking off our tour in Williamsburg, Virginia showed us the value of and respect for what we’re working towards. The week was incredibly successful, heading out of our homebase having provided programming to hundreds of individuals, young and old. In addition, we left with a painted home, a waste vegetable oil pre-filter, and some beautiful memories. Williamsburg was home to most of us back in the day, and is currently home to all of our interns, and it welcomed us with open arms and warm hearts.

We began with an incredible kickoff concert at the Williamsburg Public Library. The Rock River Gypsies, our very own Gina Sobel’s band, opened for the incredibly talented Old School Freight Train, who performed with a passion rooted in their support for our cause. The show was an incredible success, leaving folks dancing in the aisles to the bootstomping tunes of OSFT’s newgrass styling.

Our interns threw us the party of a lifetime after the show, which ended up catching a good most of us under the tent in the backyard, listening to a moving jam session between the Gypsies and Freight Train. Dampening in the mist on the backporch, we listened to a musical rendition of what we’re working for.

While Liz and Brenna provided educational programming to over 200 middle schoolers (yeah, in one day), we had a public “paint-the-bus-by-number” event in the middle of the William and Mary campus. Mila Thomas, our good friend and artist, developed the concept for the bus, painted it out on the side, and trusted the community to fill in her work. The finished product carries us down the road in a personalized aesthetic, putting smiles on faces and drawing attention to our cause.

Other successes, such as a small business meeting, a community biofuels discussion, and the Sorority Court “greening challenge” kickoff linked our former interns and current groundteam with community projects to develop over the course of the year. And many more connections were forged for facilitating various changes in many different communities.

Williamsburg left us with great feelings of accomplishment and a perspective of the ups and downs we’ll be expecting as we kickoff this expedition. We took off for Powershift at the University of Maryland campus soaked to the bone in used vegetable oil, and arrived a few hundred miles north without paying a dime for fuel. (by jon)

In order to minimize our carbon footprint, the Back Porch crew piled in my car and headed up north to practice some programming and do a bit of fundraising. Oddly enough, the only two Back Porch board members not from the south, are from Connecticut. While Brenna and I cannot put us in touch with many southerners, we insisted that the crew headed up north to meet our friends and families.

Thursday began at 7:30am where we woke up groggy after a full nights travel to conduct nine hours of educational programming with my brother’s high school and Fairfield University. We spent the day chatting with Fairfield High kids about environmental justice and our project in general. Highlights of the day include: reuniting with my favorite and most inspirational teacher from high school, Ms. Wolfer (who bought us lunch – we love you!), students who approached us after our presentation to ask how they can get more involved, adding 40 new names to our Back Porch listserv, and of course talking all day about what we love: the environment and how to save it.

The programming day concluded with sessions about organizing, empowering student environmental groups to tackle big issues through our campaign training. Fairfield high school students are now aiming for climate neutrality in their school! Their first project is taking place the third week in October where the Earth Action club is hosting a “Lights Out“ event and the entire school will be turning off all lights for a whole day to raise awareness about excess energy consumption – Go Falcons!

Later that evening, the crew left Fairfield and headed up to Brenna’s old school, Connecticut College to host a benefit concert. Both Gina and Brenna played sets for the show making the event a perfect conclusion to the day.

Friday was spent cooking food, cleaning, and preparing for Saturday night’s big benefit party hosted by my dad. As Saturday rolled around we had a house full of southern food including fried chicken, jambalaya, cheese biscuits, sweet potato fries, and pulled pork – YUM! That night our friends and family members poured into my Dad’s house to enjoy his delicious cooking, more music played by Gina and Brenna, and even some Virginia wine.

All and all, it was a wonderful weekend and a huge success – we raised enough money to purchase our truck! It was so encouraging to witness all of the support and it instilled us with a new surge of motivation and positive thinking. Thank you to everyone who helped us out, words cannot express our gratitude! (by Liz)

the backporch blog was transferred from blogger to wordpress on 14 January, 2008 with 4 posts in tow.