Green Festival: Party With Purpose

You can “party with a purpose” this weekend at the fifth annual Green Festival, held here in DC. A joint project of nonprofits Global Exchange and Co-Op America, the Green Festival is a two-day event chock full of ideas and inspiration for how to “green” your life.

This year’s speakers include Princeton professor Dr. Cornel West, designer Bill McDonough, author and editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel, and journalist Amy Goodman, among many others. Of particular interest to IT are speakers Bruce Poon Tip, CEO and founder of G.A.P. Adventures, and Julie Sanches, a volunteer with Hostelling International, who will talk about low-impact travel and ways to be a respectful (culturally and environmentally) traveler. We’re also curious about co-host Global Exchange’s “reality tours” through which travelers visit areas of conflict and poverty around the world to learn about injustice firsthand.

In addition to the impressive variety of 125 writers, activists, and educators speaking and presenting, this year’s Green Festival will feature 350 eco-friendly vendors, a live music stage (including the Young Women’s Drumming Empowerment Project), a Natural Food Court, a film festival, free one-on-one yoga sessions, a green home and green building pavilion, and interactive things for kids to do including making your own recycled work of art with the National Children’s Museum.

If you’re not “inside the Beltway” this weekend, don’t despair: the Green Festival will head out to four other U.S. cities later this year and in 2009. San Franciscans can green themselves November 14, 15, and 16; Seattle has its chance March 28 and 29, 2009.

The Green Festival is heading to Denver, May 2 and 3, 2009, and finally, to the Windy City, May 16 and 17, 2009.

Admission is $15 for both days and includes a one-year membership with Co-Op America, 10 percent off in the festival’s store, a two-month subscription to The Nation, and a year’s subscription to Plenty. DC’s Green Festival will be held at the Convention Center, 801 Mt. Vernon Place, NW.

IT wants to know: Have you been to a previous year’s Green Festival either here in DC or elsewhere? What did you learn from attending? Also, has anyone been on one of Global Exchange’s “reality tours”?