Green Light New Orleans

Why did you look to Serve Louisiana to help grow your organization’s capacity?

Serve Louisiana and its members have played a vital role in our success. We’ve had a member on board for six of nine years beginning in 2009, just 2.5 years after we started. They have been hugely instrumental in taking Green Light from a young organization to a self-sustaining one. In fact, Serve Louisiana members helped us become so successful that by 2013, we reached the point where we could hire full-time personnel. At that point, we stopped partnering with Serve Louisiana, but more recently we’ve renewed our partnership with additional members. 

What kinds of work have Serve Louisiana members done for you? 

From 2009-13, Green Light’s Serve Louisiana members and volunteers changed 252,534 light bulbs. In 2016, Green Light again applied for members to help in refining two newer initiatives: a backyard vegetable garden program and a rain barrel program. Serve Louisiana members focused on measuring successes and finding areas for improvement within the garden program and also began creating best practices for large-scale implementation of the rain barrel program. As of 2018, Green Light’s Serve Louisiana members and volunteers have installed more than 565 vegetable gardens and more than 130 rain barrels. 

What did you gain from being a partner? What were the biggest benefits?

Green Light New Orleans is based on the idea that a lot of individual actions can create a mass movement and lead to large-scale improvements in New Orleans’s sustainability and health. Serve Louisiana members have been crucial in building grassroots support for the organization while also building our capacity, which helps ensure that we can continue serving the city we call home. 

As we work to increase demand and capacity for the garden and rain barrel programs and bring them to the same self-sustaining point that the light bulbs reached in 2013, we anticipate Serve Louisiana members being integral to our programmatic success for at least the next 2-3 years. Including the two current members, Green Light’s staff comprises three people, so member contributions to the organization are invaluable. 

Learn more about Green Light New Orleans.