April Newsletter In This Issue Upcoming Tours \* The Moveable Feast: A Seasonal, Locally-Sourced Progressive Dinner - Wednesday, May 2, EARLY BIRD
April Newsletter
Green Academy Student on a "Field Trip"
In This Issue
Upcoming Tours
* The Moveable Feast: A Seasonal, Locally-Sourced Progressive Dinner - Wednesday, May 2, EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT!
Artisan Pizza, Wine or Beer at Gather Restaurant
Trout or Chicken at Revival Bar + Kitchen
Assorted desserts at Five Restaurant
News
* Vote for BAGT in BART’s Blue Sky Contest and YOU could win a $500 Clipper Card!
* BAGT helps host 3rd Healthy RichmondBUILD Health Fair, March 23
* Berkeley High School goes on a Sustainable Agriculture Tour in SF
* Climate Action Coalition Launched in Berkeley
Suggested Events
* Sustainable Enterprise Conference, May 11
Upcoming Tours
The Moveable Feast: A Seasonal, Locally-Sourced Progressive Dinner, May 2
Early Bird Special $75!
Delicious food and presentation by Revival Restaurant owner and chef Amy Murray
Early Bird Tickets Available until April 20! Buy tickets here.
Experience a wonderful night of delicious food, excellent company, inspiring speakers and fun music. Join us Wednesday, May 2nd for this delightfully delicious 3-course progressive dinner with leading edge speakers. Our feast features extraordinary fare from 3 model sustainable restaurants: Gather, Five, & Revival Bar + Kitchen, as well as live music by Dum Spiro Spero and an inspiring talk by Sibella Kraus of SAGE (Sustainable Agriculture Education).
Within 3 blocks in downtown Berkeley, participants will meet award-winning chefs and owners and savor their local, seasonal food. Network, make new friends, indulge yourself, and learn about Slow Money, Slow Food, local farms, sustainable food, and more!
CHECK OUT OUR FANTASTIC VIDEO FROM MANTRA MEDIA here
Date: Wednesday, May 2nd
Time: 5:30 - 9:00 pm
Meeting location: Outside patio of Gather Restaurant: 2200 Oxford Street, Berkeley, CA 94704
Price:Early Bird tickets for $75 until April 20 - includes a 3-course scrumptious meal, wine or beer, tea or coffee, short presentations, and lots of time for meeting like-minded locavores! Includes tax and gratuity.
Gift certificates & senior / student discounts available online. A great gift for yourself and others!
Buy tickets here. Order gift certificates here
More info on our guest speaker Sibella Kraus:
Sibella has developed innovative and successful sustainable agriculture marketing and education projects in the San Francisco Bay Area region for over 25 years. She is President and Director of SAGE (Sustainable Agriculture Education), whose primary mission is to revitalize urban edge agriculture. Sibella also directs Agriculture in Metropolitan Regions, at the UC Berkeley Global Metropolitan Studies Center, which engages faculty, students and practitioners in an in-depth investigation of systems- and place-based issues affecting the urban-rural interface. Prior to forming SAGE, Sibella created the acclaimed San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market, as Founder and Director of the Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) and its predecessor organization, the San Francisco Public Market Collaborative.
Enjoying the patio and fabulous fare at Gather Restaurant with owner Eric Fenster
Brazilian music by Leo Mascarenhas at Gather Restaurant to start the night off right
Indulging in delicious chicken or trout entrees at Revival Bar+Kitchen
Sitting down with Chef Banks White from Five Restaurant to learn more about his family's fabulous dessert recipes
News
Vote for BAGT in BART’s Blue Sky Contest and YOU could win a $500 Clipper Card!
BAGT will be participating a second time in BART's Blue Sky Festival held at Justin Herman Plaza on April 19. The lunchtime event, which attracted more than 4,000 people last year, celebrates the eco-friendly attitude of the Bay Area and features a wonderful variety of companies, nonprofit organizations and public agencies that provide green products and services to area residents. The Blue Sky Festival is open to the public and FREE to attend!
Details: Event: BART Blue Sky Festival
Date: Thursday, April 19, 2012
Time: 11 AM - 2 pm; at noon, The Venusians http://venusians.com/cdreleases.php will play their “other worldly” music
Throughout: Raffles , contest and other entertainment
Please take two seconds to vote for BAGT in BART’s Blue Sky contest and YOU can win: A $500 CLIPPER CARD or a FOLDING BIKE
BAGT is competing against other Bay Area nonprofits for a chance to win valuable exposure in BART stations, and YOU could win by just voting for us now at: http://bit.ly/HKIq8r
The voting goes through May 4, 2012 at midnight so please spread the word.
The top 3 most voted for organizations will be included in a 2012 advertising campaign in BART stations, on both interior car cards and in-station ads. If we win, more people will learn about our work in the community. We are competing against a small number of organizations so we have a real chance of winning IF everyone reading this email takes a moment to vote! Please share this contest via Twitter, Facebook, online newsletters, etc.
Note: in order to vote you need to be over 18 and a CA resident, and you can only vote one time, but you can also leave a nice comment on BAGT's voting page and post it to your Facebook wall.
Thank you for participating, and GOOD LUCK!
BAGT helps host 3rd Healthy RichmondBUILD Health Fair, March 23
RichmondBUILD cooking class
The rock climbing wall
Enjoying the massage chair!
Thank you to Artisana Spreads and Vital Vitals breads for your generous donations for this event!
On March 23rd, BAGT helped host the 3rd RichmondBUILD Health Fair to help green job training participants learn about healthy lifestyles by visiting several informational booths, focusing on blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose testing, etc. They also participated in a healthful cooking class, a workshop on healthy living, and chair massage. Along with these educational activities, the fair featured a rock climbing wall to demonstrate the importance of being active. The BAGT team was inspired to capture RichmondBUILD participants' experiences via interviews. The group expressed their deep appreciation for this educational experience, and many made personal promises to improve their lifestyles by incorporating more healthful practices.
A group of participants at the interview station
The rock climbers had fan club - a nursery school next door!
Berkeley High School goes on a Sustainable Agriculture Tour in SF
Visiting at ECOSF's School Farm
This past week Bay Area Green Tours took two classes from Berkeley High School's Green Academy to San Francisco to explore Sustainable Agriculture. These tours highlighted a handful of key organizations that help facilitate sustainable, local, and healthy food systems in their communities. Tour destinations included: La Cocina Community Kitchen, CUESA in the Ferry Building, McEvoy Ranch, ECOSF's School Farm, TCHO Chocolate, Mission Pie, and Rainbow Grocery. Students were excited to learn about these companies and organizations that are community oriented and directly providing solutions to local concerns. We send a big thank you to all of the destinations we visited, and urge you to visit their websites and check out their wonderful work!
Touring Mission Pie
Tasting McEvoy Ranch Olive Oil
Exploring the kitchen at La Cocina
Writing diligently about our visits!
Yummy samples at Rainbow Grocery
Meeting the chickens at ECOSF's School Farm
Inaugural Berkeley Climate Action Coalition Meeting on April 12
This past Thursday The Ecology Center and The City of Berkeley launched the first Berkeley Climate Action Coalition meeting at the PG&E Teen Center where community-based environmental organizations, faith-based groups, neighbors, businesses, city council members and University of California staff met to work together to accelerate local action on climate change with the goal of accelerating implementation of Berkeley's Climate Action Program (CAP) through strategic collaboration that enhances the collective and individual impacts of existing organizations. The group will meet quarterly and sub committees with meet more frequently. If you, your neighborhood or you organization want to participate the Coalition has formed working groups focusing on the following actions:
▪ Improving recycling and energy efficiency for multi-use buildings ▪ Expanding urban agriculture and forestry ▪ Green Your Neighborhood campaign ▪ Community choice aggregation program for local clean energy ▪ Outreach
If you are interested in joining one of these working groups please contact debra@ecologycenter.org
Farm Tours to be Announced Soon!
Suggested Events
Sustainable Enterprise Conference, May 11
The 6th annual Sustainable Enterprise Conference is a day-long learning and networking conference dedicated to helping North Bay businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations transition to economic, environmental and social sustainability. The Conference will focus on addressing the needs of enterprises looking to flourish in the North Bay economy in a sustainable and just way. Participants will have a chance to network with other professionals who have made positive change. The Conference will be held on May 11 in Sonoma Mountain Village in Rohnert Park, CA. Please see the Conference website for more details.
SPONSORSHIP:
We are extremely grateful to our generous sponsors:
WE ARE LOOKING FOR NEW SPONSORS. IF YOU ARE INTERESTED, PLEASE CONTACT US at info@bayareagreentours.org.
MISSION:
To provide educational tours that demonstrate the sustainable economy in action, inspire support of local green businesses, and empower people to incorporate environmental responsibility and social justice into their personal and professional lives.
