Staff and volunteers of a local non-profit advocating for sustainable living are trying to raise $30,000 this month through Kickstarter to create a new community center.
Members of Earth Rebirth are collecting donations to provide a wider range of services to the Earth Rebirth Innovation Center. The Kickstarter campaign is scheduled to go from April 1 to April 30.
Members of the organization plan to utilize the Earth Rebirth Facebook page and other forms of social media to promote the campaign, said Earth Rebirth President Andrew Sartain. Members will also make door-to-door visits and stop by community events such as the Norman Art Walk and Norman Music Festival to build support for the Kickstarter campaign.
Sartain said the organization, established in 2011, tries to bridge the gap between economic and environmental problems.
Sartain said the Earth Rebirth Innovation Center addresses environmental issues by helping people in the community learn to make better use of their resources. This is done by teaching people how to grow their own food, conserve energy and improve their own water quality.
“There’s not really an argument," Sartain said. "Food, energy and water are the most important factors we need to address, and our goal is to teach people how to take care of their own resources, then we won’t have shortages for the entire world."
Programs such as Garden Your Own Growth, Homemade Sustainability and Take H2 Ownership are some of the most popular learning programs at Earth Rebirth, Sartain said.
The Garden Your Own Growth program has already established gardens at nine Norman area schools, Sartain said. Food from these gardens will be used to contribute to the school cafeteria vegetable supplies.
This service is also offered to individuals in the community so they can grow their own food at home as well. For the Homemade Sustainability program, Earth Rebirth staffers and volunteers show businesses how to cut energy consumption, Sartain said. The Take H2 Ownership program teaches people how to conserve and protect their water’s quality.
Although Earth Rebirth is excited about the current programs they offer, Sartain says he wants to offer a wider range of services with five new projects. Funds collected during the Kickstarter campaign will be used to expand the group’s services with these new additions to the Earth Rebirth Innovation center.
A new green roof community garden, a garden on the roof of the Earth Rebirth center, will be added, alongside retrofitted lighting to help conserve energy and to aid in plant growth.
There are plans for a new vendor bar, openings for new full time staff positions for the center and an app and innovations section to integrate new technology into the facility for customers, Sartain said.
Earth Rebirth's lead garden consultant, Paul White, said the hope is that expanding Earth operations through the Kickstarter will be the beginning of a new age of environmental technology in Oklahoma.
“I want to make Oklahoma the place to be," White said. "I think by doing these cool projects, which Kickstarter will allow us to do, we can get on the map. We want to get ahead in the environmental technology and urban agriculture.”
Earth Rebirth board member Sunny Hill said the Kickstarter campaign can also serve as a reminder for how the organization wants to continue educating the community while providing a platform for more responsible usage of the world’s resources.
“We need to be able to stay here so that the more people learn about us," Hill said. "We will be more available to answer their questions and meet their needs for gardening, energy use, water use and recycling. We really are all about teaching people how to be more sustainable and how to spend less money. Hopefully it will help us help the community into the future.”
