Green Team Academy

Each year Americans grow a crop they mow but do not eat. Join Brigitte Mars & BethyLoveLight, Awake & Aware, to discover how to "Get Off Your Grass and Create an Edible Lawn".

Have you ever wondered how to get people to understand the problems with lawns and what to do instead? Herbalist, Brigitte Mars, and eco-conscious hip hop artist, BethyLoveLight, have been working on this very thing. Join us to learn about their videos, songs, books, and courses that demonstrate the absurdity of massive lawns and the healing power of dandelions and other herbs.

Tune in for an interview with Doug Good Feature to hear about his new book, Think Indigenous: Native American Spirituality for a Modern World.

The book is a guide to integrating indigenous thinking into modern life for a more interconnected and spiritual relationship with our fellow beings, Mother Earth, and the natural ways of the universe.

This book's intention is not to teach you to "be Native American," but instead to use the indigenous culture of the Lakota to help you connect with your own indigenous roots and help you remember your ancestral knowing that all beings are divinely connected.

Discover what's in store for you during the 3rd Annual Earth Week Summit!

Find out how to:

• Join our Earth Month Pop-Up Group to meet our partners and connect and collaborate with eco-enthusiasts from around the world
• Get in on Live Workshops that show how to go from passion to action in 90 days
• Hear our interviews with featured guests on Earth Day
• Participate in our Happy Hours
• Help us meet our 1,000-tree challenge goal with Mabinju Power House Youth Group in Kenya
• Get in on virtual events hosted by our partners around the world
• Find online and in-person events in the Metro Denver area

Upcoming Green Team Academy events:

Looking for a way to get people together in-person, while social distancing? Organize a cleanup!

Looking for some fun and meaningful ways to celebrate Earth Day in the Metro Denver area? We've got you covered! Tune in for my chat with Kastle Waserman, journalist with Westword in Denver. 

Tune in for a conversation with Chris Woodburn, School Gardens Specialist with Denver Public Schools. Find out about Garden of Youth, an innovative garden program to help plant seeds of opportunities for students with obstacles to employment. We'll also hear about volunteer opportunities in the DPS gardens and the April 2021 DPS Sustainability & Garden Forum.

Schools use a lot of paper. That's what got two high-school seniors, Sethu Odayappan and Lizzy Elsner, thinking. 

They decided to take action to help replace the paper that they and their fellow classmates had used during their senior year at Mansfield, Massachusetts. That was the start of Tree-Plenish, with its first tree-planting event. The team has grown from 2 to 25 and turned a small-town project into a national one.

The Tree-Plenish team is working with 90 schools in the 2020-2021 academic year and is on track to plant over 14,000 trees across the country. The team is working with schools across 20 states from California to New Hampshire.

Tree-Plenish works with high school students to host tree-planting events in their communities that will offset their school’s paper usage during the last academic year. Students, guided by Tree-Plenish mentors, follow a 3-step process.

1) Planning - During this phase of the process, students figure out how much paper their school used during the last academic year. They then take that number and convert it into the number of trees they will need to plant. We estimate planting one tree will offset 10,000 sheets of paper.

2) Marketing - During the next phase, students reach out to the residents of their community to ask them to request a tree to be planted in their yard or to volunteer to help plant trees on the day of the actual event, or both!

3) Hosting - The final phase is for students to host their actual event. On this day, teams of volunteers plant trees in the yards of residents of their town.

The pandemic and economic implosion have exposed and amplified the pre-existing flaws in our food system. Hunger, access to nutritious food, and the means of food production are more important now than ever. Tune in for my interview with Benu AmunRa, a food justice advocate in Colorado.

Benu is working on her masters degree at Naropa University, centered on Resilient Leadership with an emphasis on Sustainable Systems. She is pursuing a doctorate in Transformative Studies in Fall 2021. 

Benu is active with numerous groups across Colorado that are filling the gaps. She will share about organizations that are providing training and resources for BIPOC farmers, food security measures for students, and much more!  

Upcoming Events:

Film is a powerful type of environmental education that can reach beyond the classroom and the trail. Join me for a discussion with Shawna Crocker, founder of the Colorado Environmental Film Festival (CEFF). Hear how the festival was started, how you can participate this year and in the future, and how to emulate their success.

We're joined by Shiela DeForest, Mrs ECO-International and the founder of Golden Residents (and Friends) Eco-Action Team, one of the Exo-Expo exhibitors and an Eco-Champion Award Winner from the 2020 International Climate Action Challenge. 

This year’s Colorado Environmental Film Festival will be entirely virtual, which means you can now enjoy the best of the fest at home! Watch over 70 films, short and long, featuring environmental issues and solutions from around the world.

Join me for an interview with special guest, Renee Millard Chacon. In this episode, we'll talk about defining environmental justice, and what it means to be an ally to or accomplice with the BIPOC community.

Renee Millard-Chacon is a writer, educator, Danzante Azteca, Xicana activist, and most importantly the mother of two sons. She is an indigenous womxn of Diné/Mexica descent, fighting for future generations and committed to relating climate justice to social justice. Her family is from the Denver community and she now works as a cultural educator and teacher. She works as the Youth Program Coordinator/ Cultural Educator at Spirit of the Sun and Co-founder of Womxn From the Mountain in hosting, organizing, and leading marches, workshops, and educational resources for social justice and environmental justice. She maintains her culture every day as a Sahumadora/Malinzin in Azteca Danza for Grupo ColorAztlan in Denver and Tlahuitzcalli in Boulder. Her goal now is to help in the circles she has the opportunity to engage in to move forward to heal through environmental awareness, transformative education, and support to diverse leaders ready to fight for future generations. She welcomes any respectful correspondence to start doing the tedious but powerful work of creating better relations in spaces that deserve to be healed because of the trauma from historical inequality and environmental racism.

If you have any questions about Spirit of the Sun programming, please email Renée at reneemchacon@spiritofthesun.org

Renee is working in Colorado to define environmental justice for legislation.

Renee worked with 350 Colorado, Conservation Colorado, Western Conservation, and many environmental organizations to address how womxn and children are often trafficked in these same areas affected by exploitative practices, such as fossil fuel development. In a collective effort with the International Indigenous Youth Council, they presented an art installation on 16th Street Mall in Denver to highlight Missing and Murdered Indigenous Womxn, Black Womxn, and Migrant Womxn by hanging red and black dresses individually dedicated to a womxn missing or deceased. During the strike with Greta Thunberg, they painted handprints over the mouths of hundreds of individuals to continue to bring attention to these silenced individuals.

Renee provides fee-based cultural and allyship trainings for groups and organizations.

Tired of being ineffective while watching the state of planet degrade before our very eyes? If you've tried bunches of others things to no avail, don't worry. It's not your fault.

Anyone can make an impact quickly, once they know how. This episode was recorded on January 6, with 106 days until Earth Day, April 22, 2021. That's plenty of time to make a difference.

Join me for a look at 2020! I'll take you on a ride through the ups and downs of life with the Green Team Academy. Find out how the Climate Action Challenge came to be and what our global community achieved, even during a pandemic. 

We are excited to introduce you to the Climate Reality Chapters/Branches who are sponsoring the 2020 International Climate Action Challenge Impact Summit!

Meet Climate Reality Chapters:

• Eagle County, Colorado
• Atlanta, Georgia,
• Newark, Delaware
• San Antonio, Texas
• and Calgary Climate Hub

Learn what they are doing. Discover how they are making a difference and how to get involved!

The Impact Summit is Dec 13-17, 2020 and includes challenger interviews, happy hours, and next steps intensives. Register to attend the Dec 13-17 Impact Summit for free at https://www.climateactionchallenge.net/summit.

From September 1 to November 30, over 100 challengers took up the charge to make an impact...fast! Hear what they've achieved in the Impact Summit, December 13 - 17, 2020.

The Philippines is very low on the carbon emission scale and yet is one of the countries with the highest risk for experiencing issues from climate change. Tune in for my chat with Dann Diez, SEED4COM Founder, and CEO, to hear how they are responding and what all of us can do. 

Typhoons, flooding, solar lamps, and gardens

Let's talk issues and solutions with Dann Diez, founder of SEED4COM

- Responding to Typhoons Rolly & Ulysses with flooding at depths of 5 meters in the Luzon area

- With every disaster: energy access, food, and communications are issues

- With flooding, lots of plastic trash washes us. Looking to build housing from eco trash with eco bricks

- Partnering with Eagle Scouts to build solar lamps. These are built and repaired in the communities

The Philippines is one of the most at-risk countries from the climate crisis, though they are low on carbon emission output. https://www.amnesty.org.uk/philippines-country-most-risk-climate-crisis

As a mentor in the 2020 International Climate Action Challenge, Dann is working with Earth Fairies and Juan for Nature as part of the Philippines Food Gardens Movement

Half of the earth’s shallow-water corals have disappeared in the past 30 years. The remaining half is at risk of disappearing in the next few decades. What can be done?

Tune in for my interview with Jolyon Collier to find out how Counting Coral uses coral sculptures to transform the relationship between communities and protect coral reefs.

We are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. Yet, biodiversity loss often fails to get as much attention as pollution, climate change, or other environmental issues.

What can be done to raise awareness? How can we prevent and reverse the collapse of ecosystems and restore biodiversity?

Tune in for a discussion with Derrick Mugisha, Earth Day Africa Director and Coordinator of the Uganda Biodiversity Youth Network.

Shaina Oliver is an Indigenous Peoples' Rights Advocate and Field Organizer Moms Clean Air Force In this live podcast episode, Shaina shares how you can make a difference by testifying at hearings and understanding what the different commissions are doing that impact air quality. This is an important way we can all work to improve conditions for less-affluent neighborhoods and communities of color.

Should Denver residents vote yes on Proposition 2A: Climate Action Sales Tax?

What's one simple thing you can do to help heal the racial divide? Albert Kueffner shares his initiative to get more people talking with each other in this episode of the Green Team Academy Podcast Live.

 Hear how the idea is taking off in faith communities and opening up shared housing opportunities to benefit all.

You've completed your Climate Reality training... now what?

Join us for a session with three Climate Reality Leaders who can help you get your first presentation off the ground!

• Jim Sandoe, Citizens Climate Lobby, Lancaster PA 
• Malika Yates, Climate Reality Chapter, Newark DE 
• Bill Keydel, Climate Reality Chapter, Denver/Boulder

Have you wondered why you can't get people interested in your project? Are you not sure what to focus on first? Are you having a hard time even figuring out what your team is all about? Don't despair. There's hope. Enter... the Action Plan!

Wondering what it would be like to be able to chat with friends from around the world who are all working to launch their eco-initiatives in 90 days? Join me for a demo and training on the Climate Action Challenge Portal! Haven’t registered for the challenge yet?

Join me to hear from Rabiu Dannakabu, President and CEO for Plant-for-the-Planet Ghana.

Your love letter is ready! I've been thinking about you and writing to you for the past few months. The new book, Climate Action Challenge, is now available for free download through August 31, 2020.

Find out how to get it for any device! The book is available at www.ClimateActionChallenge.net. 

Join us to find out how you can be part of the One Million Trees 4 Colorado initiative. Tune in to the Green Team Academy Facebook Page to hear my interview with Michael Alcazar!

One Million Trees for Colorado

Goal: Plant one million trees on Sep 21 in Colorado

Find out how Brianna Hallinan, Sustainable Broomfield, and Shannon Bean-Scalise, Hugelrado Farms are launching innovative composting projects in two Colorado communities.

We have a bold vision! We are helping launch 1,000 eco-initiatives in 90 days. To make that happen, we're forming a team of 100 Ambassadors, Mentors, Volunteers, and Sponsors. What does it take to join our team? Find out now!

2020 International Climate Action Challenge

Why start from scratch? Ever!

My goal for you is that you start 90% of the way up the learning curve, even if you're brand new to a topic. Whether you want to plant 1,000 trees or get your city to go pesticide-free, there's an easy way to figure out how to do it.

Join me to learn this strategy for identifying 10 exemplary projects. I'll show you how I'm using lessons from the #teamtrees campaign that YouTuber Mr. Beast started to raise money to plant 20 million trees in just eight weeks. And, what I learned from expert digital marketer, Russell Brunson, on how to use funnel hacking to emulate the best.

Tune in for my interview with author, Jerry Yudelson and hear about his eco-spiritual memoir, The Godfather of Green. Released on Earth Day 2020, the book celebrates 50 years of work in the environmental field and his journey as a spiritual seeker. 

Tune in for my interview with Jasmin Barco of Eco-Cycle to hear about a video series to help answer your burning questions about recycling and composting. You'll also hear how you can make a difference by tackling a waste reduction project in your community!

Reducing waste seems like it should be easy, but let's face it. It's complicated! That's why Eco-Cycle, a zero waste nonprofit in Colorado, has developed a new series of videos to cut through the confusion. 

Does it irk you to order food, but then get 'accidental' plastic?

Tune in for my interview with Mladen Gajic, Co-founder and CEO of PlasticScore, a zero-waste rating app for restaurants. Find out how PlasticScore is providing opportunities for diners and restaurants to reduce plastic waste.

Tune in for a live performance by 10-year-old Elena Magnie. Elena debuts her new song, Kids Can Make a Difference. We talk about songwriting and about what special characteristics kids bring to helping make the world a better place. 

We are going through an unprecedented rapid shift due to the sudden spread of the novel coronavirus. Massive change, plus uncertainty, with job loss, health risks and changes in day-to-day behaviors are leaving many of us not sure even what to think. At the same time, we may be feeling stuck at home without our typical mental health tools.

In this historic moment, you might just be able to do something really powerful right now if you're feeling strong enough. 

So, what are we to do? 

In this podcast, Deb Matlock of Wild Rhythms share simple strategies for connecting to nature's rhythms to find peace in uncertain times. 

Show Notes

Suddenly, we find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic. If you were used to meeting in person, you now need a new way to stay in touch with your family, coworkers, friends and community. In this tutorial, find out how to use Zoom Meetings to stay connected while practicing social distancing.

Get ready to laugh and learn with Joan Gregerson, Founder Green Team Academy during a live Zoom Meeting to demonstrate how to use Zoom Meetings!