This summer in Milwaukee, Energy Service Corps members are launching a summer campaign called Power to the People, which will involve 2000 free home energy upgrades, community outreach, and K-12 education. Students are reaching out to communities throughout the greater Milwaukee metropolitan area to improve energy efficiency and educate homeowners. Through the free energy upgrades, homeowners are learning how to save on their energy bills and improve the comfort of their homes, all while decreasing the environment destruction that inefficient energy use causes. Energy Service Corps members are also connecting homeowners with other organizations that perform energy audits such as Me2 in the city of Milwaukee and Focus on Energy. These partnerships continue to expand and improve the network of energy efficiency organizations throughout Wisconsin, striving to make a positive impact on the environment and improve communities.

The campaign has also brought Energy Service Corps members to the Boys and Girls Club and Milwaukee schools such as La Causa Charter School, Lincoln Avenue Elementary School, and Carmen High School.

These opportunities have engaged children of many ages in activities relating to energy use. One lesson, called Energy Charades, focuses on where we get our energy and how we can use it more efficiently, by allowing kids to act out different appliances. The kids are reminded after the first round to include a cord and plug in the skit so that the appliance can be used, and the origin of the energy is then traced back through the socket in the wall, the power lines, the power plants, and the miners who remove coal from the mountains. Discussion also includes the path of coal to Wisconsin and the social and economic impacts of coal mining on the people who live in mountainous regions.

As the summer heats up and the air conditioners turn on, the Energy Service Corps will continue to turn up the heat on energy efficiency issues as they tear up the turf of Milwaukee, assessing homes and reaching out to neighborhoods. Now more than ever, Milwaukee is responding to the need to cut down on energy use and improve efficiency in homes and businesses!

This summer, volunteers from around the state of Wisconsin will be working towards further promoting WISPIRG’s Energy Service Corps and our message of energy efficiency. Our focus will be on creating community partnerships while continuously performing hundreds of energy assessments throughout the state. We want to help the residents of Wisconsin save money on their ever-rising energy bills by giving them the tools and the knowledge to lower their energy consumption; aiding both their pocket books and the environment.

To kick off the summer, we partnered with Community Advocates of Milwaukee to hold one massive launch event for our summer campaign: Power to the People.

Teams of semester volunteers, as well as some of our fresh-faced summer interns, went to three separate assisted living homes affiliated with Community Advocates. The three sites consisted of a family homeless shelter, a transition home, and a domestic violence shelter. At each site, we spoke to the residents about issues of energy and energy efficiency.

Volunteers spoke with the residents about the multitude of energy wasters in the average house or apartment and the easy ways one can go about solving those energy problems. Since the adults will eventually be living on their own, we highlighted what to look for when viewing a property; especially things concerning the building’s structure, like drafty doors, leaky windows, or poor insulation. Then we discussed the significant behavioral aspects of energy efficiency once they move in; such as the value of CFLs, the importance of properly utilizing power strips, and the common energy mistakes when heating and cooling a home.

At the sites where the residents have children, the kids partook in a K-12 lesson in which we educated the children on what energy is and where energy comes from by playing a game of Electric Charades. The activity, created by the Wisconsin-based K-12 Energy Education Program (KEEP), has kids act out the process of electricity traveling to our household appliances while our volunteers emphasize the importance of energy conservation.

Some locations were even able to go throughout the assisted living home with both the adults and children explaining what we look for in our in-home energy assessments. Then the residents helped perform some weatherization by caulking windows.

The success of our launch event for Power to the People is only a taste of the great things to come from WISPIRG’s Energy Service Corps this summer.

This past semester I was enrolled in a service learning class, Conservation 201. As a part of this class, we were required to work with a volunteer organization that helped the environment in some way, for 10 hours. I chose to work with the WISPIRG Energy Serice Corps of Milwaukee.

To fulfill my service learning hours for my class, I did many things. One thing I did was teach lessons at the Ben Franklin Elementary school. We taught the first and second graders about what energy is, how to conserve energy, and what they can do in their home to save energy. The students really enjoyed the lessons, and it was fun to see how their knowledge about energy developed from when we initially spoke to them to our final assessment of their energy knowledge. Another thing I learned how to do was in-home energy assessments. I learned how to look for ways that homes were wasting energy. This could include looking for CFL's, looking for cracks in window panes and making sure that freezers and fridges are kept at the correct temperature.

Working with WISPIRG Energy Service Corps for my service learning class has been fun and rewarding. It is a good feeling when a student gets excited about energy use because you educated them. I will take the information I have learned about energy, energy efficiency and energy consumption with me and use it as I continue to grow as a person. It has been fun working with WISPIRG Energy Service Corps, and I look forward to seeing what the organization can do in the future!