The homebase and my project

Yesterday we were introduced to our homebase - a wonderful, super cool place; big and dirty! I will post some pictures later - right now I just have too many of them, and I want to give you a before-after tour of the homebase. It is located in downtown eastside which is one of the poorest neighbourhoods in all of North America. We are really facing the real world there - homeless people everywhere, alcoholics and drug addicts...and the most horrible thing is that many of them are our age. On the back of the building there was a little thing to sleep on and needles in the wall (see the pictures). It's a different place to be to work next to people shooting up and sleeping outside your main door. Vancouver is really facing some serious challenges when it comes to poverty and homeless people - and what so many people are angry about is that the government is spending billions on the olympics in 2010 when they feel that this is not helping the social problems one bit. Both the Vancouver government, the BC government and the federal government is right wing, and the poverty issues are (apparently) not their first priority. The federal government could fall any day, so we might be experiencing an election while we are here - there is a minority government in Canada right now.

We met with Kevin the day before yesterday - he is the leader of Check your head - our major partner here for the outpost. The pictures on the previous post are from his building which is a cooperative where you pay according to what you make. Beautiful view! I got "the corporation" - both the book and the documentary - for christmas, and I really enjoyed reading the book (still haven't seen the documentary). I asked Kevin if he knew Joel Bakan (the author) by any chance, and he did. He knows both Bakan and the guy that directed the documentary, and he says it would be easy to have them come talk to us. That would be so great!

I bet some of you wonder what it is that I'm actually doing here, so I will give a short explanation. The team is here to explore and experiment with sustainability, and the reason for going to Vancouver is that there is a will in the city to be more sustainable, there are some cool trends, yet at the same time the city is - as I already mentioned - facing some big challenges like homelessness, poverty and the highest AIDS-rate in North America. The team is separated into seven smaller groups that are working with different clients on sustainability issues within the following areas: culture, education, urban, ecological/environmental and business/economy. My project is called "Climate Change Action Plan" and is in cooperation with Check your head and The British Colombia Government Employee Union. The union wants to look at all their operations (daily life, meetings, travels etc) and figure out the impact they have on the environment, and then come up with more sustainable solutions. It is really exciting - if the project is succesful this might be spread all over Canada. It is a big task, and we will have to see how we can limit it to fit our seven weeks of project, but I'm sure we will learn a lot about new and sustainable solutions for businesses that will be valuable to businesses all over the world!