PULSE Placement!

Only a couple more weeks here in Indy before I pack up and head to Pittsburgh to start my year with PULSE (Pittsburgh Urban Leadership Service Experience)!  I recently found out that I'll be living with three other women in the newest PULSE house on Collins St.  Once we all get there, we'll have a week of orientation to get settled in, get acquainted with each other, and start finding our way around the city.  We'll also begin to work out what it means for us to be an intentional community, both within each house and as a whole group.  This means setting the basis for finances, household expectations, group activities, and how individual needs or desires fit into community life.

We start our placements on September 3.  I'm spending the year volunteering with Green Building Alliance, a nonprofit that provides knowledge to businesses (mainly) who are interested in environmentally friendly building projects and connects them with the necessary resources.  I'll be doing research on green building practices, compiling and organizing information into resource pages for the website, and tracking green building projects already underway in Pittsburgh.  Green building is not something I currently know very much about, but I'm excited to learn more about what's possible and how it fits with what I do know about sustainability and chemistry.

I'll do my best to keep you posted on how things go, but I'm anticipating a year of meaningful relationships, professional growth, honed community living skills, adventures in the city, and maybe even the opening up of possibilities for where I'll find myself at this time next year.  Wooot!

(P.S. Almost forgot this, but I knew you'd all be jumping to ask...  You're still quite welcome to donate to PULSE on my behalf at http://pulsepittsburgh.org/ruth-maust/.)