Brentwood Residents Invited to Green Living Workshops

Brentwood residents have been invited to a six-week series of free workshops on green living put on by Sustainable Works beginning Tuesday evening.

"We want people to know about these workshops," said Lisa Harrison, Development and Marketing Program director for Sustainable Works.

According to the organization's website, SustainableWorks.org, Sustainable Works is a non-profit environmental education organization based in Santa Monica and partly funded by that city. However, the group is presently expanding its reach into other communities, particularly Los Angeles.

Sherri Akers, co-chair of the Mar Vista Community Council Green Committee, wrote in an email to Patch that Sustainable Works had put on the workshop for her community last year and was a major success.

"More important, it sparked an incredibly high level of involvement in the community in our sustainability efforts and we really feel it enhanced everything that our MVCC Green Committee has gone on to do," Akers wrote. "It became our quest to see this rolled out as an ongoing program in the city of L.A. and Councilmember Bill Rosendahl worked with us to make that happen."

Rosendahl represents Brentwood as part of Council District 11. Akers wrote that she and Rosendahl's planning deputy Paul Backstrom continued working with Sustainable Works to try and expand the workshops throughout the district. When the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced grants for community education, Backstrom contacted Akers and the application was put through.

The DWP grant was awarded, and residents of Council District 11 will be able to attend the workshops for free.

The workshops will be held at the Aldersgate Retreat Center, 925 Haverford Ave. Pacific Palisades, CA  90272, starting Tuesday, August 30, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Residents can sign up at this link, which also has contact information for Sustainable Works.