Economic Equity thru Biodiversity Conservation

Who Will Benefit:
The local community of underemployed and the local environment.

I need the funds in the next two months to hire people for the new growing season just around the corner.

What the support means to me is an opportunity to work with a community of people (you and the one we build) to build a new community-engaged in climate crisis solutions and economic justice!  How - by hiring women from the formerly incarcerated community and teaching them the ecology of landscape maintenance and arboriculture.

Why I can do this with YOUR HELP:
Hi!  I'm a plant biologist and evolutionary ecologist who started a plant and soil health care business to help deal with the climate crisis. By using integrated pest management and focusing on soil and soil microbial health, our approach has been to increase biodiversity rather than squelch it. This increases the health of the soil, water, air, yard, community, and of course PEOPLE!


Why is this needed???
Because most formerly incarcerated people have a hard time finding a job and keeping one.  Over 70% of recidivism is attributed to joblessness.  We as a community can change that, but it takes a village.

Where I live and work, most yards are massive inputs of herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizers.  All that stuff moves into the plants and the insects that eat them and the birds eating the plants, insects, and pollinators.  Just keeps going up the food chain to us.  That stuff is also being soaked up in the soils making those soils increasingly toxic to living things, like trees.  Too often trees are removed rather than cared for to live a ripe-old carbon-filled age.  All of this is expensive and unhealthy for everyone.  Cities, communities, and individuals pay too much for landscape care and get an unhealthy return on investment. 

My goal as a business owner has been to stop this!  Then I realized - I can't do it alone and I can't get buy-in from a community that doesn't know me.  How can I get buy-in and do something that benefits even more people???

  CREATE THE WORKFORCE FOR THE FUTURE FROM THE LOCAL COMMUNITY. 

How do I do that?  Get more women in this business trained to do this work from an ecological foundation.  Get formerly incarcerated (including those coming out of juvenile detention).  Why these people?
Because they are not well represented in this industry as either skilled-labor or as owners and leaders. Because there are increasing numbers of the poor and under-employed in these groups who have a lot to offer their communities and just need a chance. Because education of the mind and learning a skill is a way to escape the doldrums of poverty - which are profound. 

How do I know this?  I grew up in poverty and escaped a life of potential crime by falling in love with nature and science.  I'm still poor but not as poor as I grew up by a long shot; I know how hard it is to get out of it.  But I do have a PhD, years of research experience (publications and a patent), have taught college (including a course for Cornell's Prison Education Program) courses and tutored, and I started this business that has steadily grown by 10% annually its first three years in operation. 

I am passionate about equity of income and environmental justice!

I'm raising this $3000 to:
1.  legally establish the nonprofit status, and join the Alliance for Nonprofits East TN,
2.  hire a grant capture professional to get the ball rolling for attracting Board members to get a donation campaign going,
3.  and have an attorney review our nonprofit paperwork for the federal, state, and city governments.


I NEED YOU - WE NEED YOU!  The honor of being trusted/invested in also brings great responsibility.  I know I can handle the load with great people/minds on board.  Your investment will make that happen.  Make it possible to attract funding and great community engagement essential to the success of any and all nonprofits.  Thank you!!!

Stay tuned here and the YouTube site for updates about where your investment is going and how BNS is changing the world one yard at a time.