Hello All!

With our first signs up in front of our yardshares, we decided to kick off a week in “Green Economy!” LET’S REVIEW! As a program, we worked on developing potential business models. We came up with many ideas as well as questions. We discussed about what a “green economy” meant and what we could do to make a model that we could apply to our current system.  This was important to us because we are trying to develop a self-sustainable model. For ideas on how to do this, we went to a place called the Green Exchange in Logan Square. The Green Exchange is a hub for sustainable and green businesses. While we did meet a variety of businesses, the one we spent the most time with was WeFarm America. We were able to meet some inspiring individuals that were making it easy for people to garden. They are doing exciting things with urban gardening. They developed a working business model for financial sustainability, and it was great to see how they were doing things. On Friday, we were able to close the week by getting to know some of the businesses in the neighborhood. We canvassed the neighborhood to talk with business owners and employees about their own business practice as well as what we were doing. We happened to run into the president of the Rogers Park Chamber of Commerce, Bill. Bill was supportive of our desire to know more about the neighborhood businesses and gave us his contact information. It was awesome getting to know the neighborhood businesses and seeing what they were doing.  

ALSO, Molly taught us how to make paper for the week’s skill share! Many of us were very excited. 

Greg