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Majora Carter: 3 stories of local eco-entrepreneurship

Culture and Leisure
Three Stories of Entrepreneurship and local ecoactivism 

 Listen to Majora Carter talking about entrepreneurship in the local communities

Majora Carter (born October 27, 1966) is an urban revitalization strategist and public radio host, from the South Bronx area of New York City.Ms. Carter founded the non-profit environmental justice solutions corporation Sustainable South Bronx  before entering the private sector.

If you want to download the vocabulary and the script, click HERE .



Click HERE to go to the original source

Questions: 


1. Majora Carter tells us about both how to avoid social exclusion and how to improve the management of cities so as to maximize taxpayers' contributions. Can you think of/ Are you aware of/ similar initiatives in your area? Tell us about them

2. One of the issues Majora Carter tackles is energy production and consumption. Can you think of ways of minimizing the use and waste of energy resources?  Can you, as an individual, contribute to saving energy resources?

3. Governments are concerned with their population's  eating habits and access to food. How do our eating habits and food budget influence our health and the local/global economy? How do the different approaches to food access affect our economy and other countries' economy?

2 comments:

Oriol Pomar said...

Though this talk was somewhat intriguing I have to add that I can't really relate in any way to these kinds of acts. Sure, I've contributed to some ONG's in the past like Open Arms and MSF (Médicos Sin Fronteras) but here in Barcelona I haven't really seen that many cases of local charities and movements. I feel like this is much more of a common American theme, something that is done more in areas of the US in which there isn't much quality of life, such as the Bronx.
I suppose one of the examples I do however know that is local to the city of Barcelona is the project of Les Glòries park, where as before it was just a gray area with little to no vegetation and a very depressing urban enviornment and now it is under constant construction and planning to replace the highway roads with a park filled with vegetation and greenery.
While I do consider this a valid example and I do understand the nature of the project I have to say that I have but to assume it's a valid answer because, even though it fits the theme of a government funded project that was formed by the people of the area, its poor planning and long hiatus is starting to look very much like the construction of our own Sagrada Familia, with rumors of its completion being very improbable.

Júlia Pareja said...

This was an interesting TED talk. I do think that maybe all this is too American tho. But either way, I'm gonna respond question number two. This has always been a very talked topic, it's normal because waste of energy resources has always been a really important topic. The best option to minimise it is, obviously, reduce the use at homes and public spaces. This could be done in different ways but, the one I think it's the better one is by using home appliances with a low energy use and raise the taxes of the ones that have a high use of energy. It can also help to use low energy use light bulbs and to disconnect your TV and home appliances that you don't use when you go to sleep. Then, this thing can be done too in public spaces just by translating these ideas to a library or supermarkets. Also, for the lights on the streets, they should control and make shorter the periods of the day the lights are on because these lights consume a lot of energy and just some minutes more could help the energy used by a lot.