Wednesday, February 15, 2012

February Conference Call - Feb. 15th, 2012

On call : DC (Greenville), Holly (Anderson/Clemson), Lam (Columbia), Meggie (Columbia)


I. Summit planning

Kathryn and DC have tried to reach out to Coastal students with little luck.

Meggie recently had the eco-reps state retreat and has contacts:
She will reach out to.....
Jennifer Sellers - Coastal Carolina
Brian Fisher - USC
We will follow up next week on any progress contacting Coastal

Shooting for Coastal, since they've never hosted a summit before.
Also, shooting for late March, early April.....any later and we risk losing momentum over the summer.

Summit Agenda : Let's focus on coastal and marine issues since we will be near the coast, in addition to the more usual teambuilding exercises and skill building workshops.
Some topics to consider:
-Marine environment
-Food justice and food politics
-Nuclear waste

Who to focus on to invite/bring into the summit :
-Let's reach out to the Occupy movement folks (especially in Charleston and Columbia, which are strong) to build some intergenerational dialogue.
-SC Progressive Network
-Agricultural stakeholders : current farmers, young and old, rural and urban farmers, budding farmers
-Food justice speaker, Deana Bruce
-Inviting a legislator to come
-Riverkeepers from around the state
-Effected community members from the surrounding areas (are there any neighborhood groups who would like to come talk? Conway, if we do it at Coastal Carolina)
-visual displays...in order to educate and convey extra information that we don't have time to cover....trifold science fair board style

Cost : how to make it as low cost as possible
-Residence Hall association helped out in the past at USC
-Beginning to think about food and getting donations...going out to eat at least once to offset costs
-Finding a place to stay on campus/off campus with Coastal students

II. Updates on meeting with legislators and the governor

DC and Holly have been calling Gov. Haley's secretary to set up a meeting with Nikki Haley. We have yet to hear back from them, though the secretary said her staff would call us back.

DC has been in touch with Jean Hogan, the assistant to the chair of the Agricultural and Natural Resources committee

Topics to consider:
-Funding of school nutrition programs......lots of legislations seems to get in the way of capitalizing on bringing healthy food to schools (this fits in nicely with the issue of food justice we were talking about earlier) Meggie has contacts and is doing research in the School of Public Health on this issue.

Holly and DC had a call a few weeks back and brainstormed some ideas to take to Columbia:
-Increasing of kilowatt capacity for renewable energy projects....via Rory McIlmoil in Kentucky
-Retrofitting or making LEED certified any new buildings built by the state
-Re: Haley's state of the state address.....she says we are open for business!!...so lets bring in more green jobs...
-Moratorium on coal and nuclear plants...we already produce more energy than we need, so no reason to continue building more dirty energy here.
-Putting the Environmental Control (aspect of DHEC), the Dept of Natural Resources, and the Dept. of Agriculture together for more efficient government, which Nikki Haley would be a fan of.



Upcoming Event : In Columbia, on Feb. 23rd at Convention Center, SC Clean Energy and Jobs Forum
Its FREE! It starts at 1230pm...Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, speaking at 4:15pm on a panel.
http://sccleanenergyandjobs.eventbrite.com/

Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center
1101 Lincoln St.
Columbia, SC 29201

Thursday, February 23, 2012 from 12:30 PM to 6:00 PM (ET)


Next Call : NEXT WEEK : We are rolling, so at least check in with each other on our tasks, which are:

Lam - get Google Doc together for summit planning
Holly - Will continue to call Haley's secretary
Meggie - will make contact with the eco-rep folks at Coastal to see about the summit there
DC - will continue to make contact with Jean Hogan about meeting

Next calls agenda :
-Check in about summit planning
-Check in about legislative meetings
-Talk about the Clean Energy and Jobs forum, which we are going to the next day
-Start talking about the newsletter for the spring

NEXT CALL : Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 9pm EST
call info Call-in: 218-632-0550
Pass: 1066925#

PEACe!

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