See It: The Community being helped

From America's back highways to your own back porch, I am excited to share with you the ideas and actions of the Back Porch Energy Education Corporation, Virginia based educational non-profit working for environmentalism in the American Southeast. Back Porch Energy is committed to fostering local responses to the national and global problem of energy consumption.

In recent years phrases such as "going green" and "eco-friendly" have become buzz words in our popular culture. Back Porch makes these abstract concepts accessible—bringing them out of politics, media, and academia and into our homes, congregations, grocery stores, and back porches. By highlighting pragmatic, tangible consumer options to small towns, we will work with communities to find personal, practical solutions to local environmental needs. Our services include in-home energy audits and implementation of energy saving supplies. We also offer a variety of educational programming and community organizing training to all ages and audiences. As activists and organizers, our work encourages open dialogues within communities and facilitates networks of concerned individuals working to create long-lasting change.

Back Porch was born and bred in the American south, where my co-directors and I first visualized the need for a change. The American Southeast has the highest per capita energy consumption values in the country, spending only one fifth the national averages on energy efficiency programs and resources. Therefore we are focusing on the Southeast for our kick off project: The Back Porch Energy Initiative. This project has us traveling on a trailer fueled by waste vegetable oil for ten months through every state in the Southeastern region, offering free programming to rural and underserved communities regarding energy consumption awareness and environmental conservation. To these audiences we are offering an alternative perspective on energy consumption, environmental conservation, and sustainability.

We are visiting one town per week, providing in-home energy audits and implementation of energy conservation efforts, educational programming for all levels and ages, and consultation to small businesses, in hopes of providing an often ignored part of the country with a way to reduce both consumption and cost. In addition, we are supporting and creating a network with numerous Southeastern sustainability projects, from local agriculture initiatives to university-community partnerships.