Green Collar Technologies

Our efforts this quarter have been largely dominated by our efforts to deliver our second Sustainable Living Educational Series. Presented by our fiscal sponsor, Daniel Morii of the Sustainable Living Institute, this series became very popular. County sponsorship helped us reduce tuition from $50.00 to $5.00. The pre and post evaluations were very positive in all the classes and all instructors stepped-up their efforts to provide a quality experience. Volunteers and sponsors ultimately kept us within budget.

We introduced organic catering, digital check-in and streamlined other aspects of class delivery and marketing. KHBC Radio Stephanie and the Myna Bird helped us get the message. An intense, island-wide, flyer campaign and dozens of posting around the web helped fill the classes. The Paradise Post newspaper donated the back page of their newspaper to advertise the series, all the remaining seats (average 40 students per class).

Special thanks to our event team:

• Daniel from the Sustainable Living Institute for fiscal sponsorship and filming each class.
• Sue Chavez created relationships with vendors, sponsors and catered all the events.
• Jules Ung managed and coordinated the events and provided fiscal management.

There were many additional sponsors including, Natural Investments LLC, Sustainable Island Products, University of Hawaii at Hilo Conference Center, Hawaii Innovation Center at Hilo, Akmal’s Cusine, C&K Tire, Sharky’s and Just Cruisin Coffee.

We all feel richly rewarded by everyone involved, especially the attendees. The evaluations and class participation were amazing. We’re convinced that holding this series is the right thing to do for the island. With County support, we hope to do the next series in Kona this February.

Green Jobs Consortium

• Although still a conceptual draft, we continued working with County R&D to convene all major stakeholders in Green Jobs around the island. This project is on hold pending County involvement.

Green Jobs Capacity Report for Hawaii Island

• Ongoing efforts with the County include the creation of a green jobs capacity report to help identify major stakeholders in sustainable industries and asses green job capacity on the island. Scheduled to be released in Q2 2009, this project is currently in the County procurement process.

Digital Economic Development

• We continue to help raise awareness of the value of a strong digital economy in Hawaii. We continue building our Sustainable Web Community and holding monthly classes to help our members become sustainable using the web as a platform. The classes are held every third Tuesday of the month at the Hawaii Innovation Center in Hilo.

Green Hawaii Jobs Board

• This quarter had many other wins including the creation of the Green Hawaii Jobs Board. This is an open discussion forum to bring together employers and job seekers in an open dialog. In addition to connecting hiring companies with employees in green sectors, we are also studying participation to learn more about green job capacity.

Partnering with Sustainable Movers and Shakers (MOUs)

• We continue to develop memorandums of understanding with sustainable businesses, community based organizations and education providers. For example, we recently agreed to work with a Sustainable Community in Kona. Our intent is to hold classes onsite and offer tours of the sustainable farming and agricultural operations within the community. Our partner application is here.

Second Annual Wordcamp

• The platform we use for our Sustainable Web Community is based on several open-source technologies. The most obvious portion of this platform is WordPress. We use this annual WordCamp event to to highlight the benefits of using standards-based, open-source platforms for small businesses. Although attendance for this event was low, we expect this event to become as popular as the Sustainable Living Series.

Green Collar Interns

• Through our green collar intern program, we’ve been fortunate to attract the attention of a bright and articulate individual with a big plan. Nancy Dresser has agreed to help our organization grow while at the same time we’ll be supporting her efforts to sequester plastics. Her intent is to reduce the size of plastic island in the Pacific Ocean. Look for big plans from our Nancy in 2o09 as she partners with many organizations on the island.

Sustainable Business Directory

• As web 2.0 tools make it easier for everyone to network and even build social communities online, communities with the sustainability mantra are appearing quickly. Our goals for the Hawaii Island Sustainable Business Directory are quickly becoming more important.
  Connecting businesses together on the island facilitates communication and expedites progress in all areas of sustainability. This quarter we’ve been networking with others to share the value of digital tools to aid networking and communication. Look for more news of these efforts soon.

Ecommerce for the Small Business Owner

• Through a partnership with the High Technology Development Corporation, we delivered a two hour Ecommerce class to a dozen local business owners. The class was a big success. In fact, the students wouldn’t leave after class. Instead they insisted on another hour. So we delivered a second hour on social marketing and how to drive traffic to your website. The truth is, Sue’s catering is the real reason they stayed. Not a single student was without food in front of them.  The evaluations will be posted here as soon as we’ve completed the class wrap-up.

Additional Related Projects this Quarter

• Participation in the E Malama Aina Festival on Bayfront
• Participation in the Puna Sustainability Expo in Pahoa
• Hawaii County Hazard Mitigation Brochure – see big island safety . com website
• Big Island Adobe User Group meetings continued serving local designers and developers.
• A Disaster Communication class is being vetted to teach everyone how to use the web to communicate in emergencies.
• Attended the State Senate Hearing on Biomass on Big Island.

Our 2009 Initiatives are posted here.

Special thanks to our advisory board for their guidance throughout the year.

Mahalo for helping us make 2008 another
starting point in sustainability
for Hawai`i Island.

mele kalikimaka e haououli maka hiki hou