ShoreBank Facebook Fan Steve took a really green approach to keeping cool during the East Coast heat wave sans an air conditioner. Steve freecycled his air conditioner 3 years ago. Why? According to Steve, “my wife says that it’s because I’m ecological and she’s cheap. We prefer to say frugal. We think that frugal is choosing to be economical with yourself and cheap is being economical with others. A few years back, the combination of high electricity bills and wanting to green our behavior around the house led us to our experiment of apartment life without AC. We’re in a 4th floor walk-up and it was a real leap of faith. Hot air rises and seems to pool in our little 2 BR unit.”

How does one cope in a heat wave without AC? Steve’s response: wet shirt contest. I thought he was joking. No! Not joking! His family uses the following tactics to make do without the AC:

• Draw heavy curtains. “Sun pouring through windows in a heat wave is not your friend. We draw heavy curtains during the day to reduce the amount of energy heating the inside of our house.”
• Use ceiling fans and window fans to circulate the air. “Window fans these days have multiple settings for drawing in air from outside, sending out air from inside and even exchanging air (one fan blows in and the other simultaneously blows out). Experiment with what cools your place the best.”
• Use wet shirts to keep cool during the day. “Dunk a t-shirt in cold water. Wring it out. Put it on. It’s a little cool and clammy at the outset, but it works on the same principle as sweating. Your body heat is dissipated by working to evaporate the water. It really cools [Steve and his family] off.”
• Use a drying rack for laundry. “It seems to cool the bedroom the same way. Drying the clothes takes heat energy. When our bedroom is hot, hanging the laundry seems to cool it off. (We haven’t experimentally checked the results to see if the temp actually drops, but anything that contributes to the mind-over-matter method is good for us!) A nice bonus is that the drying rack also saves energy and money.”
• Take frozen water bottles to bed. “You might want to wrap it in a hand towel before bedtime or it could give you a puddle of condensation. It really works. A small bit of cool on any one place of your body (torso, neck, etc.) makes your whole body feel cooler.”

I admire Steve’s dedication to not cave to air conditioning convenience and his ability to keep his cool while saving green. We all might not have the ability to save and survive sans air conditioner, but anybody can spot green. And spying a green object or lifestyle like Steve’s could help you win a 6-speed folding bike!

Enter ShoreBank’s “I Spy Something Green: What is the Greenest Thing You’ve Seen This Summer?” 100-150 word micro-essay contest starting August 2, 2010! The winner will receive a Tokyo Citizen 16-inch 6-speed Folding Bike with Ultra-Portable Frame and more. Visit Facebook.com/ShoreBank for contest entry and voting guidelines, rules, and additional information. So get ready, get green, and write a micro-essay! We can’t wait to read about the green things you’ve spied this summer.

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Insights from this conference include:

1. The talent pool examining energy financing is astounding and it extends from one corner of the earth to the other. Very smart, tech savvy entrepreneurs are creating an array of exciting tools to help deploy alternative energy systems in very remote locations. By using mobile technology, GPS systems, and internet applications, businesses are utilizing sophisticated new technologies to facilitate loan payments, track carbon savings, and monitor energy performance from every corner of the Earth.
2. The problems confronting wide-scale adoption of small-scale, alternative energy systems internationally are familiar to those of us working on deployment of these systems domestically. The issues range from technology risk, to the economic viability of the energy systems, to concerns about installation and maintenance, to the difficulties of dealing with the relatively large transaction costs that come with deploying alternative energy.
3. The business models being developed to tackle the issues outside of the US are similar to those gaining attention in the U.S. For instance SELCO, a leading solar technology firm in India, employs a business model similar to Solar City, the fast growing PV installer in the Southwest. In both cases, these companies have simplified the process for their customers by offering solar packages that include financing, extended warranties, and long-term service contracts. These firms have pre-selected specific solar applications, offer pre-packaged financing, and provide in-house installation and maintenance over the life of the systems.

While overcoming the challenges limiting widespread adoption of small-scale alternative energy systems is a prodigious undertaking, the talented entrepreneurs dedicated to tackling the problem across the globe offer hope for a brighter future.

Local parks districts often do a great job evenly distributing their diverse free arts programming (movies, concerts, and dance in parks) through out various neighborhoods; however, that does not mean it appropriately serves every neighborhood. Underserved neighborhoods often have language and financial barriers that inhibit them from feeling a sense of connection to the greater community. The universality of the arts can bridge those barriers. For example, although opera is typically associated with high-income, when a former colleague of mine delivered free opera programs to low- to mid-income communities in Sacramento, she told me that her audience, many of whom spoke Spanish as their first language, more easily understood and related to the Italian opera than their English speaking neighbors. It just exhibits how this free program and others can remove language and financial barriers to create a sense of connectivity.

That sense of connectivity can serve as a catalyst of positive change for communities. For instance, when Chicago low- to mid-income neighborhood West Humboldt Park hosts events, which range from Chicago SummerDance in the Parks (let’s Bomba on 7/21/10) to Movies in the Park (let’s see Yo Soy Boricua, Pa’que to lo Sepas on 7/24/10) to En Movimiento (a program that combines salsa dancing, tai chi, basketball, bike riding, steel drum music, and muévete), it finds it reaps the following community benefits (1):

• A bridge over time where you can see and/or speak with people who you only see at that specific event every month or year.
• A community connection that allows people to run into neighborhoods and catch up on news and info.
• A safe environment created by crowds where many types of people can mix and get to know each other. And the more you know, the more you grow!

Plus, these programs have the capability to be effective tools for economic development. The more people that attend from outside the community, the greater the opportunity to generate new revenues from the money spent by visitors at local attractions and businesses. Programs also fosters civic pride in the area and respect for the neighborhood that makes it more likely to be where people will want to go to live and work. (2) And it just takes arts!

So amidst a period of declining resources, how can we help support more free cultural events in underserved communities?

• Support arts organizations that develop cultural programs for underserved communities.
• Enlist unemployed or part-time artist friends to volunteer their performance and teaching talents.
• Volunteer or donate your own talents and resources.
• Create artist housing in the most underserved communities.
• Write blogs or letters to the editor on arts advocacy in underserved neighborhoods.
• Recommend cultural event sponsorships to your employer.
• Check out a free event in one of these communities and to tell your friends.

You might be pleasantly surprised, delightfully entertained, and easily building a community, all without it costing you a dime. Who doesn’t love that?

Love ShoreBank Voices? Help me tell others that where they bank does make a difference and leave a comment or subscribe to the ShoreBank Voices feed.

(1) http://communitybeat.blogspot.com/2008/09/value-of-community-events.html
(2) http://www.railstotrails.org/resources/documents/resource_docs/tgc_economic.pdf

Successful primary education is a partnership between parents, students, and teachers. Parents must provide a home environment that encourages learning.  Students must take responsibility for their work. Teachers must motivate children to learn. Absent the first two, the best teacher in the world will fail. But in America today, only the teacher is blamed when students perform poorly. Why? Because, though both teachers and parents are voters, there are a lot more of the latter than the former. And, for reasons that are too deep for me to fathom, we can only see children as victims, not as contributors to their own success or failure.

Twenty-five hedge fund managers made $1 billion or more last year. I suspect that every one of them came from families that actively encouraged education, and that they all were ambitious in school. At the other end of the scale, in a weakening economy, where there are six applicants for every job opening, many would-be workers simply lack the skills to compete. What consolation is it to them, and what good is it to us a society, to realize too late that “bad teaching” is a false and futile excuse.

Although personal finance books are quite popular, few have garnered the notoriety enjoyed by Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin (later editions include author Monique Tilford). Even though Your Money or Your Life was first published nearly 20 years ago, you can still find a study group in virtually every city working the book’s holistic, nine-step program.

The program asks participants to base their earning, saving and spending patterns on their core values. My core values are simple. I believe that my purpose on this spinning blue ball is to ensure that all people have the right to health, safety, security, and happiness. If I truly believe that, then I must pay attention to the how and who of the products that I purchase (Is it sourced from sustainable practices? Are the workers fairly treated and compensated?). It eventually dawned on me that this sort of thinking should extend to all my fiscal activities, not just when I buy stuff. But in a culture devoted to upward mobility and the material trappings of “success,” reorienting our financial lives to an internal compass is a radical concept.

As I began to align my finances with my values, I investigated the world of banking. What was my monolithic bank doing with all those billions of dollars? Who was benefiting from my deposits and the interest I paid on loans? To whom did they market their credit cards?

I didn’t like much of what I found. I discovered that I was putting my money into a system that seemed to disempower and exploit people. I knew that there had to be a better way. The primary thing I wanted to see in a financial institution was an active engagement in bettering the community. I also wanted to see a measure of respect for clients, regardless of income levels or portfolio dollars. Community reinvestment is a concrete example of that respect.

After spending a few months hunting for a bank that invested in communities, I found ShoreBank. Through ShoreBank Direct’s online savings account, I am earning interest on my savings far above that being offered by my previous bank while knowing that my money is also being put to good use.

However, what I have most enjoyed about transitioning to a community development financial institution is the human connection. Through blogs, email correspondence, and Facebook interactions, I have been able to engage with staff and fellow ShoreBank customers, and discuss political, environmental and social issues important to us all. It gives me hope that amidst all the economic doom and gloom of late, we can find ways to create a values-based economy in which all of us are respected and empowered.

Love ShoreBank Voices? Help me tell others that where they bank does make a difference and leave a comment or subscribe to the ShoreBank Voices feed.

1. Wedding guests spend an average of $500 dollars to attend a wedding.

2. The average wedding emits 63 tons of CO₂.[1] Who is the biggest contributor to that CO₂ emission? Friends and family!

3. Using this calculator I calculated that the 2 weddings I am attending this year will generate 2,895 lbs of CO₂ and cost me $1,000.

I do believe we can make our own green wedding attendance plans. Here is a breakdown of where I think I can do to save green and be an eco-friendly guest this wedding season:

• Travel Green. As my colleague Karen said in this blog post, look at three different factors when making travel arrangements: how far you are going, what is your vehicle, and, how many people are traveling with you? “If your party has two people and you are traveling 1,000 miles then flying economy beats out driving – the flight creates 835 pounds of CO₂ while driving would create 1,125 pounds of CO₂.” You might then also consider purchasing the appropriate quantity of carbon offsets ($17.85 will offset my 2,895 lbs of CO₂)_.
• Dress Green. Throw caution to the wind and dare to wear something from your current closet, even if other guests have previously seen it. A classic almost always works. (Not to mention the $200 savings you can pocket).
• Stay Green. Share rooms, reduce electricity and air conditioning use, and request your towels to be washed every other day. You can save 1.3 gallons of water daily per room (and even more if you share!)[2]
• Give Green. Make and give an eco-friendly gift. Not only will this reduce your financial and environmental expenditure, but giving an off-registry homemade gift can have greater positive meaning for the newlyweds. (Not crafty? Cash is also a perfectly acceptable green gift.)
• Eat Green. Ask for the vegetarian or the fish option – even if you like meat. In my experience, the veggie option is often prepared individually and tastes better than its companion meat dish. Some research also implies that producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuel, and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide, as does a calorie of plant protein.[3]
• Drink Green. Request locally produced beverages on draft, wherever possible. Not only do you minimize packaging and travel, but drinking locally can also provide you with a better cultural flavor of the wedding location.

I believe that everybody, not just the wedding planners, can do their part to generate a greener wedding. Here’s to a happy (green) wedding season.

[2] http://www.economicallysound.com/towelsheet_reuse_program_savings.html

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/vegetarian-is-the-new-pri_b_39014.html

Who watched the England vs. United States World Cup match on Saturday? Where did you watch it? Did you watch it with friends, neighbors, and strangers? And who did you high five when the U.S. scored? Although it may not have been the most beautiful goal, did you still high five anybody who you could reach? I did! Sporting events have this amazing ability to bring us together. The rush that comes from knowing other people from around the world simultaneously have their eyes glued to the same match creates an amazing sense of international camaraderie. It’s a sense that compels you to want to accomplish virtually anything with those people. And that sense has enormous power and potential to make inroads towards working together on a myriad of issues.

How can we translate these effects into similar events to unite our communities? Here are a few lessons that I derived from the watching World Cup and from participating in the Chicago Black Hawks’ Stanley Cup victory celebration that I think can help us to “World Cup-ize” our own community process:

1. The event needs multiple or incremental phases, like first and second round playoffs. Yes, of course, I wish it were easy, but the more matches we face in the playoffs, the more we bond as fans and the greater our thirst for victory.
2. This event must make us feel like we are a part of something that is bigger than ourselves. We then become proud of the Ghana Soccer Team’s first World Cup victory for an African nation on African soil rather than of us as individuals.
3. It needs to be something that a) many have a vested interest in b) that all people feel and are welcome to attend, but c) that will not negatively harm anybody’s person or human rights. In the U.S., all are welcome to attend and cheer for sports games, but the outcome of the game will not negatively impact the opponents’ human rights (even though it may hurt their feelings).
4. We should initially gain an unconditional reward. The team’s accomplishment may not happen again or it might lose next year, so the reward is the ability to reap, enjoy, and savor the moment with friends and family.
5. We need some magic – the successful game-winning “Hail Mary” pass, the overtime Black Hawks goal, or the Paraguay beautiful shot. “Magic” provides safe excitement and the belief that the “impossible” is possible.

These events, whether they are far away in South Africa, at Chicago’s United Center, on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, or in our own backyards, have the opportunity to bring more people to together in a common spirit and purpose to create a stronger more vibrant community where people will want to live, work, and to play.

But we need more! What else can we, as Americans, do to create our own community World Cup?

Financial:

• “Green” clean my finances. I am going to sign up for as many autopilot online and paperless banking products as I can.
• “Green” my budget. I need to revamp my food, housing, and entertainment budgets for the appropriate amount of organic product, air conditioning (or in my case – a lack there of), and travel expenditures.
• Re-evaluate my 401(K) to participate in socially responsible investments. I did evaluate my 401(K) as promised in my 2010 resolutions; however, I want to verify that my portfolio has not modified in whom it invests and re-adjust my investments accordingly.
• Go 2 weekends without drinking non-water beverage and donate the savings. According to MSN Money, Americans spend more on beer from Memorial Day through Labor Day than at any other time of the year. There is more than one nonprofit that can use my donation.

Community:

• Meet My Neighbors. Not only does it improve community cohesion, but it also increases my safety, as neighbors you know are more likely to alert you if there is suspicious behavior around your neighborhood.
• Support local businesses at street festivals. Street festivals can really provide an economic impact for a community.
• Volunteer for at least 4 hours per month. Volunteers reduce organizational cost while helping to improve the community. And when a community is doing well as a whole, its individuals are better off, too.

Environment:

• Pick up litter for at least one hour. According to Every Monday Matters, if every person picked up one piece of litter today, there would be over 300 million fewer pieces of litter.
• Invest in a urban window garden. I still haven’t completed this resolution! But I think I have added another 3,000 pounds of CO2 from flying this year. It is time.
• Eco-shred all of my hoarded paper. I don’t know how paper adds up, but somehow, all of a sudden, I have stacks of unsolicited credit card offers and napkins everywhere!

Think about the impact that I alone can make with this triple bottom line to-do list! Help me stay on track and join me in becoming a triple bottom line summer activist. The “What does ‘Green’ mean to me?” Facebook photo contest runners up have already gotten on board! Who else is with me?

“What does ‘Green’ mean to me” Facebook Contest Runners Up Photos:

“For now we see through a glass, darkly;”  — 1 Corinthians 13

In recent years, financial transparency has become a fetish. Demands for more detailed disclosure, along with the regulations to back it up, are constant and invariably defended on the grounds of providing more transparency.

Here is a statement issued last week by the Chairman of the Financial Accounting Standards Board, Robert Herz: “The proposal would impact the reporting by financial institutions and all other entities that have financial instruments as the goal of greater transparency in financial statements is pursued.” The Board, known as Faz-Bee, determines the rules of accounting. The proposal to which Mr Herz refers would require banks to record loans at “fair value” along with the current method of “historical cost.”

Before we get too lost in accounting jargon, let’s take an example. Say a bank makes you a $150,000 30-year mortgage at an interest rate of 5%. Under current accounting rules, the bank carries your mortgage on its books at its current principal balance as long as you keep paying. But what if, at some point in the life of the loan, rates for new mortgages rise to 8%. If the bank were required to report its loans at “fair value,” it would have to write down the value of your loan, even though you kept paying. You may say, “So what? That doesn’t change my loan.” True enough, but the prospect of having to record such a loss in the future, could very well influence the kind of mortgage the bank would be willing to make in the first place. Perhaps it would demand a higher rate, periodic rate adjustments, or a shorter term. Almost certainly, you would end up with a more expensive and less predictable mortgage. Achieving “the goal of greater transparency” might not be such an unmixed blessing after all.

Love ShoreBank Voices? Help me tell others that where they bank does make a difference and leave a comment or subscribe to the ShoreBank Voices feed.

Examine how Green Festival Chicago attendees specifically responded to my question. Responses included:
•    “Green” means modifying the way we live so that [future generations] can survive.
•    “Green” means utilizing energy to create energy.
•    “Green” means only using existing resources that exist above ground.
•    “Green” means sustainability.

These definitions all require an innovation of what currently exists in order to create an improvement for our planet.

According to my fellow blogger and Senior Vice President of Energy Finance, Joel Freehling, “green” for ShoreBank isn’t just about having the greenest branches (although this week is “Growing Green Branches” week for ShoreBankers). “Green” is also a suite of actions ShoreBank takes to help our customers be the most responsible they can be, within the constraints that govern their lives.

When asked what “green” meant to him, ShoreBank Facebook Fan and “What does ‘green’ mean to you?” photo contest winner, Adam Thada took this picture that shows even just removing one bottle can improve the Earth.

But what ‘green’ means to me is just one opinion. What does ‘green’ mean to you?