Green is the New Black!

So how fly is my sister-in-law/BFF/resident environmentalist Angelou? So fly that she's in Washington, repping her non-profit children's environmental group, Greening Youth Foundation, at a White House Conference on America’s Great Outdoors. Newark Mayor Cory Booker is there. Governor Bill Richardson is there, too, as are the heads of the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency. And sometime today, she's scheduled to meet favorite guy, President Barack Obama!

The conference is part of President Obama's ongoing conversation about the greening of America, and Angelou is onboard to talk about how to include both people of color as well as kids and young adults in the Green Revolution. It is a mission that is a passion of Angelou's, and she's done some pretty incredible things with her foundation: Her team teaches children in a dozen schools throughout the Atlanta area how to respect and protect the environment; she's lined up several summer internship programs for high school and college students in the nation's national parks, and; she's become quite the outspoken advocate on behalf of organizations working to get black folks engaged in green initiatives.



Most heartening is Angelou's work with the babies; indeed, not even 24 hours after Mrs. Ezeilo finishes up in Washington, she'll be back here in Georgia throwing her second annual Earth Day Festival, which will play host to hundreds of kids who'll exchange recyclables for chances to ride and play in Greening Youth's "green" park full of giant bounce machines and slides, mazes, and fun games. Plus, she's got 14 vendors on deck, including REI, Kroger, Nike, and even the Boy Scouts, to carry out the fun festival’s mission to properly dispose of hundreds of pounds of recyclables and educate the students to effective ways to reduce, reuse and recycle.

If the success of last year’s event is any indication, GYF’s Earth Day Fun Festival will make quite a difference for the environment. In it’s inaugural year, the GYF festival collected: more than three tons—6,000 lbs—of large electronic recyclables like computers, printers, scanners, fax machines, stereos and speakers; about 200 pieces of portable electronics, including cell phones, cameras, PDAs and computer games; about 400 pairs of sneakers; about 100 cubic feet of grocery bags and 400 cubic feet of paper and cardboard, and; more than 100 batteries, plus a few odds and ends, including linear fluorescent bulbs, compact fluorescent bulbs and even a car!

And as if she doesn't have her hands in enough projects, Angelou and her team released a video yesterday announcing a new online reality show she'll be producing, which will chronicle the journey of GYF interns set to become one with nature and the national parks this summer. Here's a sneek peek:



For sure, I'm so very proud of my little sis! Check out her Greening Youth Foundation HERE, become a FaceBook fan of her organization (on the right lower side of her foundation's homepage), peep her on the cover of our local county magazine, Our Town, and, if you're so moved, please leave her a few words of encouragement as she works in Washington to open doors and breathe new, fresh life into the Green Movement.

Angie? You're THE ONE—love you, girl!

Help My Sister Win a $5,000 Grant To Bring Diverse Environmental Ed to Public Schools

She may not wear a cape, but around these parts, we've long suspected that my sister-in-law/BFF Angelou Ezeilo just might be a superhero. Now we have the chance to make it official! Our resident "Go Green" girl, the one whose convinced me and a bunch of non-outdoorsy black folks to GO CAMPING so that we could learn how to appreciate the great outdoors, has been selected as a finalist by Cox Enterprises and Atlanta's WSB-TV for its prestigious 2009 Cox Conserves Heroes award. She was picked for her dedication to teaching children how to love, respect, protect, and preserve our environment through her non-profit, the Greening Youth Foundation.



If she wins, Angelou plans to use the grant to expand Greening Youth's programming, which already touches the lives of a diverse crowd of elementary school-aged kids who participate in her in-class projects, school-wide recycling programs, and after-school environmental club. Her program is fresh and inspiring, and not only touches lives, but changes them. Because of her, kids in a predominately-African American school in Atlanta got to plant trees in a school yard that had none. And a group of black and Latino boys in North Carolina learned the importance of recycling through African drumming and dance. Heck, she kidnapped my kids and put them in one of her water conservation classes, and those little buggers came back with a full-on plan to slash our water bill by 1/3—and it worked!

That's to say that Angelou wouldn't be the only winner here—children all across Georgia would gain from her honor. Want to see how fly she is when she's helping the children? Check out her video HERE, at the Cox Conserves Heroes website. And then do Angelou and me a solid, and vote for her at www.CoxConservesHeroes.com.

You can vote beginning today, August 10 and through August 31, 2009. But I'd appreciate it if you just went on ahead and hooked a sistah up today while it's on your mind. CLICK HERE TO MAKE ANGELOU A NATIONAL HERO!

Spread Love: When African-American Children Put Their Minds To It, They CAN Change the World

Let me tell you something about my nephew, Miles: One of these days, he’s going to be running things. I don’t know if it’s going to be a small business or a small country, but he’s going to be in charge of something and telling other people exactly what they need to do to make his stuff sparkle and shine. Seriously, this kid is forever plotting and planning ways to be the leader, run his own little enterprise, and rally the troops and, on his most entrepreneurial days, make some cold, hard cash. I mean, this kid is like a pied piper—can convince a room full of children to sit and watch him play their Wii, or plot out the rules for a game he makes up. Recently, he used his powers of persuasion to get a kid to pay him $40 for a (used) toy worth, at best $15. In fact, he even told the boy the toy was worth only $15, but it was no matter; that kid liked Miles more than the toy and was willing to just give my nephew all his little money because, well, he’s cool and he was honored to hand over two crisp $20 bills to his idol.

Anyhow, when Miles uses his powers for good (which is often), it’s magical. Witness what he cooked up this past weekend: A recycled toy sale. Miles’s idea was to get his cousins and friends to gather up all their gently used but big-time forgotten toys to hawk, yard sale-style.

The deal was every kid who participated would get to keep the proceeds from their own sales, and then whatever toys were left over would be donated to two different hospitals in South Africa, where waiting rooms in the children’s wards are void of toys and other distractions needed to comfort sick kids. No doubt it's a high-minded recycling and service concept that he picked up from his mom/my sister-in-law Angelou, an environmentalist who regularly hypes in Georgia classrooms the virtues of recycling through her non-profit environmental group, the Greening Youth Foundation.

For two weeks—well, mostly the night before the big toy sale—my nephews Miles and Cole and my daughters Mari and Lila ran all through their toy chests/closets/playrooms/ storage areas/beds/dark corners looking for stuff to sell. And on Saturday, they set up shop on the curbside outside my sister-in-law’s house and gave up their toys.

In the process, the kids rediscovered toys they long loved, and declared their affection for playthings they’d long forgotten (Lila refused to part with her prized collection of chocolate baby dolls, even though they haven’t seen any action in months!). And in some cases, the kids said their sad little goodbyes to some old friends.

Of course, the payoff was well worth it—none of them did too shabby in the sales department. But as they loaded their unsold toys into a box headed for South Africa, these children admitted they were getting much more than a wad of cash; they were getting that warm feeling inside knowing that they were doing something special for kids who aren’t as blessed as they—kids who need the help of other kids with foresight, intelligence, sweetness, and, above all else, heart.

Kudos Miles for the vision, and Cole, Mari and Lila for your beautiful hearts. The four of you, along with your friends, bring us great joy.