The fuel and energy required to move people around are central to discussions of sustainability. Urban environments have an unique contribution to this dialogue. This panel looks at youth, urban/hiphop aesthetics, the social phenomenon of the bicycle, greening lowrider cars, and sustaining cultures. Kristy Alfieri (The Crucible), John Jota Leaños (CCA),Nancy Hernandez (H.O.M.E.Y.), Ross Evans (Xtracycle Inc.), Moderator:Lauren Marsden
Kristy Alfieri
Kristy Alfieri is an educator who began her studies at UC Berkeley. She received a B.A. in English with an emphasis on Multicultural Literature in 1997. After graduating, she worked in Oakland Unified School District for five years as a teacher and served on literacy team designed to help at risk students reading below grade level.
Kristy began her career in youth development in Americorps in 1996, where she developed a juvenile runaway task force to develop strategic partnerships between the Seattle Police Department and Community Service Providers. She developed training materials, resource guides and facilitated workshops for Community Service Officers.
In 2001, Kristy served as the Youth Director at the Red Cross and developed youth community service projects, such as: bilingual youth preparedness presentations, youth initiated fundraisers, preparing safety kits for home and schools. She developed yearly Leadership Development Centers, which focused on youth empowerment and service learning training. She trained over 3,000 middle and high school students in Alameda County in HIV/AIDS prevention and education, 6,000 elementary, middle and high school students in Alameda County in disaster preparedness and CPR/First Aid. She also facilitated training 50 youth peer educators in disaster preparedness and HIV/AIDS education.
As the Youth and Community Director of The Crucible, Kristy has developed, planned, and coordinated youth programs for over 7,000 youth in fine and industrial arts education. She leads the on-going development, articulation, and implementation of a strategic plan for all Youth and Community programs. As principal spokesperson for the department, Kristy articulates the Crucible’s educational philosophy and participates in institutional strategic planning, goal setting and on-going evaluation. This dynamic and thriving program anticipates serving 3,500 youth in 2009. She has organized youth and community outreach programs, which have been highlighted by KTOP, KGO, Fast Forward Magazine and Alameda County Office of Education. Under her direction, over 2,500 youth were served in local community initiatives, such as Bike Fix A Thons and Earn A Bike Program.
Kristy Alfieri (part one)
Kristy Alfieri (part two)
John Jota Leaños
John Jota Leaños is a social art practitioner who utilizes all and any media to engage in diverse cultural arenas through strategic revealing, tactical disruption, and symbolic wagon burning, His practice includes a range of new media, public art, installation, and performance focusing on the convergence of memory, social space and decolonization. Originally from Pomona, California he identifies as part of the mainly hybrid tribe of Mexitaliano Xicangringo Güeros called “Los Mixtupos” (mixt-up-oz).
Nancy Hernandez is a 29-year-old Bay Area Native who has spent half of her life as part of a grassroots movement for social justice and youth empowerment. Since the age of 15 she has been a leader in the Xicana student movement for educational equity and immigrant rights. Her activism instilled Ethnic Studies classes at her high school and several across the Bay Area and helped her to develop a powerful voice to become a lifelong advocate.
She helped establish the Multi Cultural Center at City College of San Francisco where she helped to develop a Peer Mentoring Program; Students Supporting Students, which continues to recruit and support underrepresented students to transfer to 4-year universities. While in community college she helped organize campaigns for racial equality and educational access and plans to return there as a professor one day.
After attending SFSU, and majoring in Raza Studies, she worked with HOMEY (Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth) and youth of the Mission District in San Francisco to confront the root causes of gang violence in the Chicano community. Through education, art, silk screening, entrepreneurship, job access, cultural and spiritual connections, HOMEY provides at-risk youth with the tools to change their dedication to the street into a real dedication to serve the community. She coordinated a mural project on 24th and Capp St. that gained international support, which you can learn more about by visiting www.homeysf.org.
Nancy is now in her 3rd year of teaching high school at June Jordan Small School for Social Equity. Her classes, “Muralism in Movements” and “Urban Art for Social Change” study the historic contribution of artists to progressive movements and learn to utilize art as a way to find and project their own voices. Students have created artwork addressing issues of war, community violence, the prison industry, environmental racism, educational funding, ethnic studies, juvenile justice, and demanding a stop to the I.C.E. raids and the implementation of just immigration policies.
Nancy is currently on the Board of HOMEY and they are currently working on a project entitled "Green My Ride" which will convert a series of old school cars into bio-diesel lowriders. The project is mobilizing youth from neighborhoods in conflict and affected by poverty and neglect to work together on the restoration and conversion of gas-gusseling classic cars into environmentally sustainable outreach-mobiles for the movement!
Nancy Hernandez (part one)
Nancy Hernandez (part two)
Ross Evans
Ross Evans is the Founder and President of Xtracycle. At the age of 19, while working on his thesis he travelled to work with a group of war-disabled men in Managua. He brought a welder and bike tools and set out in pursuit of a simple, cargo-carrying bicycle solution. What began in 1995 grew up to become Worldbike and Xtracycle. Over time, he discovered how to enable a beautiful machine (the bicycle) to meet more needs and desires than it ever had before. He is an engineer (BS Engineering/Product Design, Stanford University), designer, inventor, humanitarian, yogi, and photographer. ID Magazine declared him one of the 40 most notable socially responsible designers in the world in 2000. An innovator by nature, Ross invented the Super Fort, which was named Parenting Magazine's "Toy of the Year 2005". A display of his work for Worldbike is featured in the Smithsonian as a part of the Design For The Other 90% exhibition. Presenting at TED 2009 he rode a Radish out on stage to perform rodeo roping tricks. Curious and catalytic, he designed medical devices for interventional cardiology and cataract surgical tools for Nepal. He founded Willow Springs, a rural incubator for art, farming, community and business, and the former home of Xtracycle. Ross aspires to inspire others to "do what we love to make a positive difference". He calls it "holishift".
