NOLA For Life: What We Accomplished
This past Saturday, July 20th, Green Light participated in the city’s fourth NOLA For Life Day. The NOLA For Life Campaign is part of Mayor Landrieu’s effort to create a strategy for murder reduction that includes community development and neighborhood revitalization.
With the help of 43 volunteers, Green Light was able to install 307 energy efficientlight bulbs in 21 Gert Town homes on Saturday. Over their lifetime, these bulbs will conserve 120,958 kWh of electricity, allow residents to trim a total of $14,122 off their energy bills, and prevent 37,229 pounds of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere. In addition to the 21 homes that received light bulbs on the day of the event, 22 residents signed up to get the lights in their homes changed by us in the future.
Green Light also partnered with various organizations to bring additional services to the residents of Gert Town. We worked with CORE USA to provide energy audits to 6 of the residents who got our light bulbs. We also aided the New Orleans Fire Department’s smoke detector program in providing free smoke detectors to 12 residents receiving light bulbs. Our partner, Bayou Land RC&D, was also able to mark 80 storm drains. These markings are there to remind people not to dump chemicals or trash into the catch basins.
NOLA for Life Day made an impressive impact in Gert Town. More than 207 volunteers came out to revitalize the neighborhood. Along with the services Green Light and our partners provided, the NOLA For Life volunteers were able to visit 185 homes in order to give out information about city services, trim 28 trees, and clean 2 community gardens. The city departments worked toward beautification of the area through filling potholes, switching streetlights to LED ones, and more that can be read about here.
We would like to thank all of the people who came out to volunteer with us Saturday as well as everyone else who helped out with the event. It was so amazing to see the great work that was accomplished by the community in Gert Town in such a short period of time.