Quilen Blackwell: Solar Power in the Hood

How can we help the inner city's economy? Quilen Blackwell, president and founder of the Chicago Eco House, discusses how his non-profit uses sustainability to alleviate poverty. Quilen talks about his grandfather, who was a sharecropper, and his parents, who moved to Wisconsin from the South. After doing Peace Corps in Thailand, Quilen volunteered in the Englewood neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, where he got the idea for Chicago Eco House. He and his wife, Hannah, started Southside Blooms, a solar-powered flower farm on a vacant lot on Chicago's Southwest Side, and have expanded to Detroit, Milwaukee, and Gary, Indiana. Blooms is hyper-local; they grow and deliver their own flowers in communities without using any herbicides, pesticides, or chemical or synthetic fertilizers. Quilen says he is blending community organizing and a sustainable environmental business while exposing young people to opportunities in areas of crime and trauma.

The Green Sense Show is sponsored by CEA Technology, providing a sustainable modular indoor growing system. To sponsor this program, go to www.greensenseshow.com