LEJ quilt is up!

Last year, LEJ youth and staff reflected on their roots and shoots - where they came from, where they are now, and where they hope to go. Each person's patch was sewn together in this beautiful quilt now hanging in the EcoCenter.

Special shout out one of LEJ's Public Allies from 2009-2010, Diana Law, for bringing all the pieces together into one.


If you had to draw a tree of life representing your ancestral and cultural roots, your stable trunk, and the branches and fruits of your dreams and ambitions, what would it look like?


The holiday season reminds us to reflect, give thanks and appreciate all that came before us to make today possible. Much respect and peace to you all!

Photo tour of the EcoCenter

Photography by OpenHomesPhotography.com

EcoCenter Wishlist

Thanks to the City of SF's Virtual Warehouse and UCSF's Surplus Warehouse, we have very useful furniture for the EC's office! Also, much gratitude to the Aquarium of the Bay for donating funds to purchasing 50 chairs. Thanks to volunteers from the Meritus Fund alumni, the office was transformed into a more organized space.

If you're wondering what else we need at the EcoCenter, firstly, we definitely need program partners who want to bring programming, educational classes, or funding to the EcoCenter. We're planning now for EcoCenter programming starting in the spring of 2011. As for physical contributions to the EcoCenter to help us do the education and community engagement we want to do, check out our wishlist:

- Solar panels for solar thermal radiant heating: ~$4k
- On-demand hot water heaters (3)
- Pathway lighting and spotlights on building
- MicroEye microscope with video capabilities: ~$3.5K
- SmartBoard
- Webcamera for living roof
- Microscopes with rolling cart (20)
- Laptops (5)
- Flip cameras (5)
- Bird-safe wind turbine

Contact Tracy at tracy.zhu@lejyouth.org for more info or visit our Amazon wishlist.

We have wireless internet!

Thanks to our amazing tech guys, Tim Pozar, Mike McCarthy, Hal Gibson and company, we now have wireless internet at the EcoCenter!

After they measured the internet speed, it was literally OFF THE CHARTS! How's that for an off-the-grid building?

Because of our wireless capabilities, we can monitor the wastewater system remotely. Soon, we hope to monitor our energy generated and energy usage remotely as well.

Check it out! Wireless network is EcoCenter and password is gr33n.

We have rainwater!

Habitat Gardens installed a meter for our rainwater catchment barrels so that we can see how much rain we have! After this past week's rain, the meter jumped from 4 1/2 feet to over 6 feet!



The first rainwater tank gets water from the standing seam roof, while the second and third tanks receive water that drains through the living roof. The second and third tanks are connected by a pipe underground so the water level in those two tanks will always be the same.



Currently, the rainwater from the second and third tanks are pumped to irrigate the roof at timed intervals. The EcoCenter, as a living building, reminds us that we need to stay in tune with the natural cycles of sun and rain because the building was designed to engage and harvest the power of the elements.

EC at West Coast Green!

The wonderful manufacturers of the EcoCenter's wastewater treatment tanks, Orenco, is featuring the EcoCenter at West Coast Green, the premier green buildings conference of the West Coast!


As an FYI, the wastewater treatment system - which features Orenco's Advantex system, UV disinfection unit, indoor constructed wetlands, and leech field of native plants - is automated and monitored remotely so that an eye can be kept on the building without having to be at the EcoCenter 24/7. A control panel donated by Orenco logs data from the wastewater treatment system and sends the info through WiFi internet to our wastewater monitoring guru, Innovative Systems. What a great resource and learning tool!

Youth media makers from BAYCAT

Youth media makers from BAYCAT's summer media camp (Bayview Hunters Point Center for Arts and Technology) visited the EcoCenter this summer to explore issues related to their summer theme, youth health. They got an interactive tour of the EcoCenter and participated in LEJ's food assessment, a collaboration with SF State Masters of Public Health students to gather the youth perspective on food in BVHP.

Check out the short video they made on the EcoCenter! Thanks BAYCAT!