SWEET!!!  CARES won a $75K seed CITRIS grant to start a CARES center at Berkeley to codesign & build green it & energy systems for Native Nations.

The center will be called Native American Community Assessment for Renewable Energy and Sustainability (Native CARES) and will include Native American partners such as the Pinoleville Pomo Nation, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Sandia National Laboratories.

Thanks to everyone that's supporting our efforts to helping  communities improve their overall level of sustainability and meet their triple bottom line requirements!

In March 2010, it will be two years since I started our partnership with the Pinoleville Pomo Nation (PPN).  In these past few years, CARES has been able to work with the PPN to co-design culturally inspired, sustainable housing for their members and secure funding to work development renewable energy power generation systems for their communities.

Currently, CARES has some office space in The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of
Society (CITRIS).

Now, we are trying to establish a more permanent relationship amongst the PPN, CARES, and UC Berkeley by seeking to create a center in CITRIS that uses the CARES model of (1) Assess, (2) Advise, (3) Implement, and (4) Live Sustainable.

This center will be called Native American Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and & Sustainability or NAtive CARES.  The center will focus on all aspects of sustainability that our tribal partners in Northern California are pursuing: green building, power generation, indoor air quality, water conservation, and economic business models.

I have been able to secure letters of support of the National Renewable Energy Lab , Sandia National Laboratories, and the Environmental Protection Agency to support this center as well.

I am really excited about our prospects for winning this CITRIS seed funding and I am looking forward to continuing the work that CARES has begun to improve the personal level of sustainability of all communities.

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The engineers of the Cares4Pomo team have begun work on the renewable energy feasibilty. Read more about it here.

The Tribe were enthusiastic about the home design. Here is an image of the final physical prototype:

Julian Berg and Robert Ulibarri were also thrilled with the design from a technical standpoint, and it looks like the EPA might want to study the UCB/PPN partnership as an exemplar of sustainable housing. Go team!

You can see more images from the Final Presentation in the Gallery; just make sure to log in first!

Our visit yesterday with the Pinoleville-Pomo Tribal Council was a success..everyone there was very happy with the home design, and we received lots of great questions. The only downside is that our part of the project is done!

Some of my team mates will be posting pictures of the presentation here later on.