Resourceful and Innovative

If you were intrigued by yesterday’s post the Banner has done a follow up article 

Before the fire, Baltimore’s Camp Small supplied wood for fine furniture and elephant toys, Tim Prudente, Baltimore Banner 

I bet you didn’t know that elephants had toys. Now you do. The article concludes:

Former Baltimore Budget Director Andrew Kleine oversaw the initial loan to Camp Small, and the project still holds a special place for him. He hopes Camp Small will recover and reopen.

“We hear so much about how government is wasteful and incompetent,” he said. “This is a total counterexample of government being resourceful and innovative.”

Resourceful and innovative. For some folks that’s a hard sell. I keep reading online critiques of Howard County spending where anything the writer doesn’t understand is described as a worthless boondoggle. They’d probably feel that way about Camp Small, too. 

They’d be wrong.

Camp Small made me think about Upcycled, founded by Orlando Goncalves and Alfred Striano in 2019.  Their goal? To give single use plastic a long-term purpose. Their work keeps plastic out of landfills and turns it into benches, garden beds, and more. They lead area clean-ups which keep plastic trash from harming wildlife and getting into waterways. In short, they start where we are, address a problem we have, and create meaningful and creative solutions.

Now, Upcycled is an independent nonprofit and they pursue funding in a number of ways including local fundraisers. Have they received funding from Howard County? I don’t know for sure but I’m guessing that they have. Addressing the ever-growing problem of single use plastic is certainly a concern for the community as a whole. Pursuing viable solutions would seem to me to fall under the purview of County Government.

Boondoggle? According to some folks, if it isn’t paving the roads and building schools, it’s a wasteful and pointless use of funds. 

I would beg to differ.

I’m singling out Upcycled here because what they do reminds me of Camp Small. But it is only one of many resourceful and innovative HoCoLocal initiatives that receive some County funding. They exist either to help people, to solve problems, and/or to improve quality of life. All good investments in the grand scheme of things because they are all responding to existing needs. 

Isn’t that what we want our community to do? Shouldn’t government collaborate in this kind of work? While it’s true that government funds are finite and choices on how to use them are complex and challenging, that’s all the more reason to be thoroughly informed about initiatives like these rather than send them all to some kind of dustheap of the things one doesn’t approve of or understand.

Village Green/Town² Comments

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Today in Local HoCo: I received a response to my Giving Tuesday post from Sonia Su of Kits to Heart.

Thanks for doing this! I’d love to see my nonprofit Kits to Heart added! We are based in Clarksville and founded and led by yours truly, a cancer survivor that works diligently to ensure no one has to face cancer alone! We provide free care kits for patients and caregivers and offer virtual art therapy workshops.

Kits to Heart is powered by individual donations. Learn how you can help here.