GET City Community Forum

1. GET City Community Forum On 11/20/2009, GET City hosted a community forum attended by several experts on renewable energy and green jobs. The purpose of this forum was for youth to learn more about what was actually going in their own community related to green energy. Before the session youth were asked to construct questions for the experts. We compiled the questions and youth were assigned questions to ask. Jazzy missed this session so she did not have a question of her own assigned to ask. When she arrived the day of the forum, she picked up a note pad and immediately began to construct her own question. She raised her hand and interjected her question to the experts in the following exchange. Jazzy: Why do you think green energy is so important to the earth and the economy? Kurt Guter (Wind expert): Which number is that? Shari: She added that.

2. Kurt Guter and Megan Atkinson’s response to Jazzy’s question Kurt: Sure. I think, I think green energy is very important to the economy in Michigan for a couple different reasons. Right now, we import, we, we import, we bring in energy. Import means we bring in energy, most of our energy from other places. We bring in most of our oil from other parts of the United States, or most of the oil in the United States comes from other countries offshore. From other continents. We generate, we produce some of our gas in our state. There are quite a few gas ... in our state but we still import most of our gas. We import almost all of our coal. So all this energy comes into, we, we pay people for this energy to be delivered to us. We spend millions and millions and millions of dollars every year to bring this energy into Michigan. If we use renewable energy here, we’re not gonna have to pay people in other places to deliver energy to us. That’s just one small reason why I think it’s important to use renewable energy to help our Michigan economy. I think these people are gonna tell you some other stories about that. Megan: I would have to say that the most important aspect to the economy that plays a factor in my life is jobs. Using these green energy technologies, like building these windmills and using the solar panels, installing them, maintaining them, selling them, designing them, all the different things that you can do to make something, we’re making these green energy technologies into something that we can sell in Michigan, that’s a lot of jobs for people in Michigan. We all know that the economy isn’t so great in Michigan right now. A lot of people are worried about jobs and worried about money. And that’s gonna bring a whole new facet to our economy, a whole new level that we can have more and more jobs, manufacturing jobs which we specialize in already from all of our car industry history. So I think that’s one of the big factors for the economy, especially here in Michigan, is jobs and jobs alone is really important.

3. Jazzy asking Leroy Harvey (LCC instructor of renewable energy) questions in small group during the Community Forum.

4. Letter Jazzy wrote to Leroy Harvey after expert panel 11/25/08 Dear Leroy, HI my name is Jasmine Boyd and I am from get city at the BOYS& GIRLS club. Thank you for coming into get city last Thursday. I learned from you that every job can be a green job. I also learned that it's important to have renewable energy. I am interested in the car industry. I am worried that if the car companies fail, a lot of people will lose their jobs. But on the other hand ,if we do give them the bailout will they build fuel efficient cars or will they stay the same and not improve on the fuel efficiency of the car. I have question to ask you: Do you think that we should give GM, Ford, Chrysler the bailout? Why or why not? Thank you for answering my question. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Jasmine Boyd