Community Is The Solution
Posted by Sonja Ebron
By far, the best part of my job is visiting with community organizations and seeing the great work they do to help people better their lives. Whether they’re working on housing, health, education or women’s empowerment, the people in these organizations choose to spend their working hours and careers improving the odds for other people. There’s an obvious cultural difference between for-profit corporations and nonprofits, and it shows up clearly in the attitudes and enthusiasm with which people in community organizations do their jobs.
Georgia Avenue Food Co-op
Posted by Sonja Ebron
I had the great pleasure of visiting one of the Georgia Avenue Food Co-ops last week. The first co-op was started 17 years ago by Chad Hale and Brian Lowring, current and former pastors of the Georgia Avenue Church in the Grant Park/Summerhill area of Atlanta. The number has now grown to four co-ops serving 200 families. Designated members collect food for their co-op each Tuesday and Thursday from the Atlanta Food Bank, then distribute it among the families in the basement of the Georgia Avenue Church. Most of the families are headed by women, including many grandmothers raising grandchildren. I found myself inspired and encouraged by their example of cooperative economics.
blackEnergy and Friends Present “Light Swap 2008″
Posted by Sonja Ebron
blackEnergy, along with the Concerned Black Clergy, Georgia Interfaith Power & Light, the American Association of Blacks in Energy and presenting sponsor the ChicoBag Company distributed free energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) during “Lightbulb Swap 2008,” an annual event developed to introduce a cost-effective way of “Going Green” to the African-American community. The event took place on Saturday, March 22, 2008 at True Light Baptist Church located at 47 Anderson Avenue NW, Atlanta, GA.
blackEnergy Wins Atlanta Business League Award
Posted by Sonja Ebron
Sonja Ebron, CEO of blackEnergy, was honored with the 2007 “Non-Traditional Business Enterprise” award by the Atlanta Business League at its 23rd Annual Super Tuesday Conference on September 25, 2007. The Super Tuesday Conference is the ABL’s signature event, designed to recognize and celebrate African American business women. This year’s sponsors included AirTran Airways, the Coca-Cola Company, UPS, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Ms. Magazine Profiles blackEnergy
Posted by Sonja Ebron
The summer issue of Ms. Magazine carried an article entitled “The Green Bottom Line: How environmentally conscious, women-run companies do good and do well.” The article, written by Ms. contributor Laura Orlando, begins with blackEnergy: “The trade-off between social good, the environment and profits isn’t really a tradeoff anymore — it’s an excuse. Just ask Sonja Ebron, CEO of blackEnergy in Atlanta. Her company, founded in 2001, secures energy for black communities, using collective buying power to negotiate some of the lowest natural gas rates in Georgia. Moreover, it sends some of its profits back to nonprofit organizations in its customers’ communities. And since the company anticipates that access to energy will get much tougher because of climate change, Ebron — who has a doctorate in electrical engineering — hopes its efforts to locally produce power will help ‘ease the transition to low-energy living’ for its customers.”
Amandla!
Posted by Sonja Ebron
Welcome to blackEnergy’s blog. We at blackEnergy hope to start and maintain a discussion on energy in Black communities. The issues are large and complex, as they are for the U.S. as a whole on the topic of energy. But as we say, when America catches a cold, Black folks catch pneumonia. So we’d better get a head start.
On the real deal, I think our energy security is threatened by the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, a combination of climate change and peak oil, and I think the “authorities” learned nothing of use to us from our experience with Katrina. We need to get informed and organized in a hurry. At least now we have time to prepare.
