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Mar 4, 2009

"I have inherited a belief in community, the promise that a gathering of the spirit can both create and change culture. In the desert, change is nurtured even in stone by wind, by water, through time." --Terry Tempest Williams

Bringing Peace Corps Home

It all started when Mark Rembert and Taylor Stuckert decided to put aside work in the Peace Corps to see what they could do to help serve their own community. The two friends believed the Peace Corps philosophy, of helping communities help themselves. Last fall, Rembert wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper with an idea. "Let's designate Clinton County as the first green-enterprise zone. We had no idea what that meant," he says with a laugh. But it did get people talking, which is what they wanted. Soon they had a Web site and an organization called Energize Clinton County, whose plan was to get funding to weatherize thousands of county homes. They say it will create more than a thousand jobs and save homeowners $3 million a year in energy costs. NPR shares more.