Post Author's Photographer By Kristin Eggen January 31, 2022

This year’s GIA team is small but mighty! Max has been working with WED since June and Maddi joined us in December.

Since the start of their terms, the team has been completing energy efficiency efforts and volunteering around our community.

With COVID numbers back up, the team has been focusing their efficiency efforts on Bright Boxes. These boxes of custom packed lightbulbs offer households in our community high energy and money savings without having the team in their homes. Interested clients fill out a form online or over the phone, reporting how many high-efficiency LED bulbs they’ll need for each zone of their house. The team then packs all the needed bulbs into a box, calculates energy and dollar savings for the homeowner, and delivers the box to their door. Interested in a box? Sign up here.

The team is also hoping to begin offering a limited number of in-home audits to fully vaccinated households starting in mid-February. These audits will be dependent on COVID cases in our area. If you’d like to get on the wait list, and your household is fully vaccinated, sign up here.

Max and Maddi have also been volunteering in many different ways. They helped pack welcome boxes for Afgan families coming to Iowa, helped in the Butterfly Garden, and are working with the Habitat for Humanity crew in Decorah. In addition, they lead Walking School Bus twice a week and have just started helping ArtHaus with a few projects.

As we turn towards spring, the team will work on buckthorn and garlic mustard invasive species removals, trail and river clean-ups, and other outdoor service projects.

Stay tuned for more team updates! If you know someone who would like to join our team, we have spaces for additional team members for both 6 month and summer positions. They can apply on the Green Iowa Americorps webpage.

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Kristin Eggen first came to the Winneshiek Energy District as a Green Iowa AmeriCorps member in 2015. Eight years later, she is thrilled to lead the grassroots clean energy movement in Winneshiek County. Kristin deeply appreciates rural communities, Northeast Iowa, community sustainability, and nonprofit management. She uses The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter methodology and graphic recording services to drive strategic conversations around community sustainability, justice, fundraising, and nonprofit health.

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