It's All Happening!!

Last Thursday, Muhammed and I hosted our first official block meeting on the 3600 block of Lyndale Avenue in Belair-Edison. We had called our participants the week before to invite them to the meeting, but had only gotten two definite responses. We also advertised for the block meeting with fliers, which we put in each resident's mailbox.  By the day of the meeting, however, it still looked like not too many people were interested. Nevertheless, it was time to hold a block-wide meeting, so rain or shine, good turnout or poor turnout, we decided to go ahead with it. The objectives of the block meeting were (a) to talk about the installation of the IHD devices with participants who are receiving them (b) to refer our participants to the Baltimore Neighborhood Energy Challenge (BNEC) and (c) to try to recruit the rest of the block. We loaded up our cars with sandwiches, lemonade, BNEC kits (full of energy-saving devices and resources), and a table and chairs and set out to Lyndale Ave with a bit of apprehension...

By the time we reached Lyndale the storm clouds had passed and a lot of residents were outside working in their yards and enjoying the weather. With the aid of our block captain, Mrs. Morgan, and a couple of other participants, we swept the block one more time, knocking on doors and inviting residents to the meeting. The table full of sandwiches and cookies, and the large pile of BNEC kits certainly helped in the recruiting process. The meeting was a huge success!!! We recruited 11 new residents during the one-hour meeting...that's more than we've ever recruited in a given day, maybe even in a given week. These block meetings are definitely the ticket to full-block recruitment. By the end of the meeting, everyone was very excited--some residents were having a lot of fun posing for photos with CFL lightbulbs and Project Lightbulb Challenge signs. We hope to have similar meetings (with similar recruitment success!) on each of our other participating blocks within the coming weeks. Next on the agenda is the 2600 block of Robb Street in Coldtream-Homestead-Montebello (CHM), which will be this upcoming Thursday, May 5th at 6:30 pm. We're keeping our fingers crossed for an even bigger turnout...and this time we'll bring a LOT more sandwiches!!