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Prince George’s Environmental Knowledge Web project
Priming the pump of public participation for our environment.

A clearinghouse on land use, transportation and the environment that will strengthen participation by residents in quality of life matters. www.green-pg.org

Now in beta testing, the Knowledge Web is an online service for activists to use in posting info about alerts, local cases, key people and organizations, threats to ecology, and guidance on participating in decision-making on land use in the county.

While recognizing the vital effort by a core of citizen activists in the county, the project is addressing a problem of too-often ineffectual participation by Prince Georgians in decision-making processes on land use and the environment. A root cause of the problem is the isolation of skilled Prince George’s activists from each other. Too often we fail to share our substantive and tactical knowledge and to coordinate efforts with each other. This is a Big County.

We aim to strengthen the information flow and relations among citizens who are working on environmental and land use affairs, as a basis for a more effective movement towards a healthy and sustainable quality of life in Prince George’s County.

Strategy I- Create an information clearinghouse on environmental issues and current activities across the county in protecting the environment.

Strategy 2- To use the tools above, and the better connected activist community, to do outreach and broaden the number and diversity of people involved in environmental and quality of life efforts. (For a future grant…)

With a discretionary grant from the office of Councilman Tom Dernoga and with support from two organizations (Sierra Club-PG and Earth Reports/Patuxent Riverkeeper), we’ve created a prototype of a database that creates web pages. Seven people have worked hard since November 2007: Bruce Jacobs, Sarah Lesher, Beth Gillan, Kevin Cole, Randy Pheobus, Ryan Barolet-Fogarty, and Chip Reilly.

So we can launch in July 2008, we need:

People who will look at the site and help us figure out different “views” on the info, to serve different users.
People who have knowledge in an area of ecology, land use, transportation.
People with a knack for aesthetics of pages.
Beta-testers who will tell us what isn’t working correctly.

Contact Chip Reilly now at (301) 218-3920 or email chip.reilly@mdsierra.org