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Video is something everyone can use as a tool to create social change. Video for Volunteers 101 is designed to get you started creating video content that you can use to build awareness, raise funds and tell the world all about the great work you've undertaken. We'll cover basic concepts of video creation, guidelines for planning your video, the fundamentals of shooting and strategies for editing your piece.

From Victoria Gershik, Guest Blogger

Entry 2 on Junior Composters

On another Saturday, a second class of the Junior Composter Course took place. It was a beautiful day like the Saturday before. I was traveling on the train from south Brooklyn through Manhattan to Queens with no local stops on the 7 train. I was carrying with me a quartered watermelon chunk and a leaky bag of thawing fruit and veggie scraps, leaving a puddle of water on the train wherever I stood.

Heed warning: A tree killer is on the loose in southeast Queens. Three trees were found murdered on Hillside Avenue in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. The Queens Coalition for Parks and Green Spaces is rightly sickened by this atrocity which has robbed the block of it's right to breathe fresh oxygen provided by these trees. 

From Victoria Gershik, Junior Composter Instructor

Saturday, August 6th was the first day of the Junior Composter Course, though since meeting Stephanos through a field trip with TreesNY, some of the Junior Composters have been coming out to help him on Saturdays with transporting the organic materials collected from the farmer’s market public drop-offs. “It’s fun hanging out with Stephanos,” they told me. Fun is important when it comes to lighting up people about composting. 

Date: Saturday, August 20th

Beginning Time: 10:00 AM

Neighborhood:  North Crown Heights

Address:  685 Nostrand Avenue (Between Prospect and Park Places)

Following our meeting with Gary Giordano from Community Board 5 Queens, Eushavia, Mario, and I decided to get another opinion regarding the Ridgewood Reservoir.  Monday afternoon we trekked out to Howard Beach in Queens to meet with Joe Addabbo, New York State Senator.

Gary Giordano, the District Manager of Queens Community Board 5, agreed to meet with me and the three other ioby interns a couple weeks ago at the Ridgewood Reservoir. Around 2 o’clock, Giordano pulled into the Highland Park driveway off of Vermont Avenue in his old Chevy, a modest yet fitting car for the Queens local.  He looked like a young Dustin Hoffman: casual in his appearance and calm in his demeanor, and he spoke slowly and carefully with a thick New York City accent.

Hey guys, this is Mario, the third ioby intern. Following the flow of this week’s theme, today we’ll go over some of the ills of bottled water and the waste associated with it.  Bottled water is a relatively recent phenomenon. Fifty years ago, you would have been hard pressed to find anyone willing to shell out hard cash for water when they could just turn on their tap.

Hey everyone, I’m Eushavia, one of the new interns at ioby, and I’m here with the weekly update on some of the larger issues taking place in NY state! Continuing with our theme of water this week, I thought it would be very appropriate to dive into the controversial topic of hydrofracking--an issue that hits very close to home.  Hydrofracking, or  hydraulic fracturing, is a process used by gas and oil companies to extract natural gasses located deep in the earth’s crust

Hey!  I’m Jansyn, one of the new interns at ioby!  Eushavia, Mario and I are all working with ioby this summer, helping with outreach, making ourselves useful around the office, and learning how a great non-profit organization, like ioby, works!

Our friends at the North Brooklyn Compost Project are teaching a worm composting workshop this week! 

Helen Ho, Trash & Transportation Thursday blogger, tells the sad tale of a seatless hybrid.