Soni Pitts's Blog (29)

Here's an awesome video about a guy who called on the power of Nerdfighters across the country to help him provide access to clean water for a village. The money they raised built a pond sand-filter that provides clean water to people who had been previously forced to drink either unfiltered pond water or heavy-metal-contaminated well water.



Go… Continue

One of the changes I am researching for my own life is setting up a bike-powered energy station in my home to charge low-energy items like cell phones, small rechargeable batteries and so on.



But there's also the potential for using the mechanical energy directly for larger items. For example, you could use a bike to power a blender or food processor by hooking the gears of the bike wheels to the gears in the blades. You could also use that rotary power to pump water, spin out salad… Continue

It's harvest time at the community garden and everyone is pitching in. Tonight there will be a big block party and in keeping with the sustainable ethos of the community garden, it will be as sustainably powered as we can make it.



All day long the cooks have been cooking up a storm to lay out a spread for everyone who's celebrating. Luckily, there's still plenty of sunlight this time of year so the solar ovens have been in constant use since the fog broke this morning. Bread,… Continue

"Imagine yourself at the hospital bed of a loved one. The doctors and nurses have just rushed in to resuscitate them. Their life hangs in the balance, not because of a device malfunction or health complication, but a power outage."



This is the problem being solved by the Dell Social Innovation Finalists Waste To Watts. Their idea is to build generators that provide a stable source of power to third world hospitals during blackouts and surges. And the best part is many of the parts in… Continue

It's March 10, 2020 and I'm having a potluck dinner with neighbors at my home. Everyone is bringing a dish they made from produce they raised in our local community garden. I've made my favorite dish - roasted winter squash with a tomato-chipotle chocolate mole. Everything but the chocolate was grown right next door - or in my own garden out back. And the chocolate came from a local coop that sources it from fair trade farms in South America that provide a sustainable living wage for the… Continue

I live in an area that has a vast disparity between the rich and the poor. It is a tourist-based area divided into a small population of wealthy part-time residents, a slightly larger population of middle-class white collar workers and a large population of low-paid service workers who are highly dependent on seasonal work and who compete in the off season for a small number of low-income jobs. This means that a lot of people can't afford to buy healthy food on a regular basis.



On the… Continue

I moved to the community I live in now with the intent of putting down roots for once and becoming an active member of a community. In ten years, I hope to see that intention fulfilled. I'm not sure in what way - I tend to get bored if I stick with one thing for too long, and once I get bored I lose my motivation and interest. Like the EVOKE team, I function best when working on discrete, challenge-focused projects. My goal is to find ways to make my community a better place by

working… Continue

My chosen hero to shadow is former journalist and current philanthropist Ruth Ann Harnisch. This is cheating just a little, since I worked with her on a few writing projects a couple of years ago and already have her on my Facebook, so she's not a stranger. But to be honest, I haven't kept in touch with her much since then. You know how it is, life gets busy and we let it get in the way with the things we want to be doing, like keeping up with friends.



Ruth Ann is an awesome woman who… Continue

Provide skills, not just finished technologies.



The wh*** point of helping others is to allow them to help themselves. Making someone dependent on you doesn't solve the problem, it just creates a new one (or, more likely, several new ones). No solution is ever as good as the solution someone comes up with on their own, because it's theirs - they own it and are empowered by it's creation. It's customized for them because it comes from them. Nothing you can… Continue