Germaine Caprio launched Majamas Earth in 1999 after designing, patenting, and selling the first nursing tank top to Nordstrom Department Stores. “I thought,” she says, “I could sell one of these to everybody. I dove in, and I wanted to be big, like Lululemon.” So she added other clothing lines, basics for women (including those who are pregnant or nursing), men, and babies. And the business grew.
Since its inception in 2013, the One Earth Young Filmmakers Contest has grown from a local, Oak Park/River Forest, Illinois, project accepting just 12 submissions to a highly competitive international competition garnering 403 submissions. Countries such as Brazil, Australia and Mexico and states such as California, Georgia and Indiana will be represented among this year’s winners at the Global Awards Celebration at 11:30 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 17, in person at the Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State St., in Chicago, or online virtually anywhere in the world.
Reserve free tickets here: tinyurl.com/yfc23awards
Three mayors ago, in the City that Works, the original Goldblatt Bros. Department Store sat empty on Chicago Avenue in the City’s bustling West Town neighborhood. A shadow of its former distinguished self, the structure was slated for demolition, to be replaced by a Del Ray Farms supermarket. Enter a group of community activists and preservationists, whose objections to the razing prompted the City to buy the vacant store in 1997 and recast it as a municipal office building. The structure, now a Chicago landmark, underwent an extensive rehab to accommodate a senior center, the Chicago Department of Family Services and other City agencies. More recently, part of it was remodeled again to become the West Town branch of the Chicago Public Library.
Last month, the Plastic Pollution Coalition hosted an expert panel discussion, Safe Drinking Water for All: Protecting Communities from Plastic During U.S. Lead Pipe Replacement, for the UN 2023 Water Conference. It highlighted the need to keep plastic out of water systems because of its toxic impacts. Plastics are a health threat at every stage of existence and an environmental injustice issue disproportionately harming rural, low-income, and communities of color.
On November 5, five students from the Chicago area youth-driven advocacy group It’s Our Future (IOF) will fly to Egypt to take part in COP27, the UN Climate Change Conference in Sharm El-Sheikh. It's Our Future, a program developed by Seven Generations Ahead and supported by One Earth Collective along with other partners, connects youth climate activists and empowers them to advocate for climate solutions in their schools and communities, and for a healthy livable future for all.
If you, like me, don’t know much about how a young person gets to go on a trip like this, you’re in luck, because I had the great pleasure of discussing these matters with two students who will be going—Tori Evans and Emmet Ebels-Duggan.
All around the U.S., communities are taking the lead on fighting climate change and building community resilience. Climate change is here, and it’s just a matter of time before some version of a Hurricane Ian or the Big Ranch Fire impacts any given community: intense storms, flash flooding, prolonged drought, extreme heat and other weather emergencies are intensifying each year.
This summer the Oak Park Village Board approved Climate Ready Oak Park, a comprehensive, long-range plan that provides a vision, goals and actions to make Oak Park more sustainable and resilient.
