This season,

Get Cozy With CAN

Special! - Sustainability Edition - December 2022

Bryant Resident Gets Solar Panels Installed!



Debra Pulk (left) pictured

alongside Krystal Steward, CAN's Environmental Sustainability Senior Outreach Specialist, is the one of the first Bryant residents to have solar panels installed on her home through CAN's Bryant Sustainability Project allowing her to save substantially on her home energy costs!

What's Happening In The Bryant Neighborhood?

Enhancing Quality of Life Through Sustainable Home Transformations

Imagine creating the first fully decarbonized neighborhood in the Midwest, and doing that by centering the goals, aspirations, and strengths of low-income and BIPOC residents – that’s the vision of the Bryant Sustainability Project!

CAN has partnered with the City of Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovations (OSI) on a pilot program to co-design a path to sustainably enhance the quality of life of families in the Bryant neighborhood. We have created a home assessment tool to identify issues related to comfort, health, and safety that can be addressed, improved, and add economic, social, and cultural value to one’s home and neighborhood! Read on to discover what we are up to and what's to come!

19 More Households To Receive Upgrades

Thanks to a grant from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority,

19 of the 31 households that have completed an assessment so far are next up to receive upgrades that will move the Bryant neighborhood closer to carbon-neutrality!

Energy Cost Reduced To Just One-Fifth Original Bill

To date, CAN has installed solar panels on two homes in the neighborhood. This led to one of these residents’ energy bills going from $150 to just $30 a month! In addition to these life-changing savings, an energy assessment revealed that a resident's gas stove was leaking and another's roof was in need of repair. CAN was able to remedy both from the audit's findings and funding from the project.

CAN's Second Resilience Hub Is In The Works

With expected completion in early 2023, Bryant Community Center will be equipped with robust solar panels and batteries to ensure the largest food distribution site in Washtenaw County remains open even if the electrical grid goes down!

Future goals include making CAN's Green Baxter Court Community Center a resilience hub too!

CAN knows that climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and the negative effects of climate change will continue to disproportionately impact under-resourced BIPOC communities. This is why CAN addresses our stabilization pillar from a variety of angles. When the City of Ann Arbor put forth its A2ZERO initiative in 2020, CAN immediately became a community supporter and quickly decided to partner with the city’s Office of Sustainability and Innovations on this project. 

We recognize that opportunities to incorporate sustainable practices into our programs and services are abundant. That's why we are taking steps like these...

Sustainability is the driving theme of our educational programs this year! We kicked off Our Friend, Earth in June of 2022 with our educational summer camp where campers learned all about climate change, recycling, ecosystems, solar power, and so much more!

Perhaps one of our most looked-forward-to events, Bryant's Annual Community Clean-up, that is held every summer to help residents clean house, got a sustainable re-boot! Called Swap Days, ahead of the event, we encourage residents to place their unwanted items on the curb so that others might find a way to repurpose them saving truckloads from the dump!

We are so excited to continue finding ways to make our every-day operations and events more sustainable!

If you are interested in learning more about the Bryant Sustainability Project, please contact Krystal Steward at ksteward@canwashtenaw.org or (734) 994-2985 ext. 178

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PO Box 130076

Ann Arbor, MI 48113

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Do you have a Kroger Plus card?

Take advantage of their Community Rewards program and donate to CAN when you use your Kroger Plus Card! Just login to your Kroger account, under "account summary", scroll down to Community Rewards. Then search for CAN by typing in our

organization number:

SJ915

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Community Action Network partners with children, youth, and families from under-resourced Washtenaw County neighborhoods to create better futures for themselves and improve the communities in which they live.

Community Action Network

info@canwashtenaw.org

www.canwashtenaw.org

(734) 994-2985

PO Box 130076, Ann Arbor, MI 48113