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EcoRadio KC
EcoRadio KC is a magazine show, including live segments, prerecorded stories, and interviews. The weekly explores our interdependence with the rest of the world, showing the connections between the ways we choose to live and the health of the whole community of life.
We bring you vital information underserved or ignored by mainstream media. We are supported by listeners who share our mission.
Today, rather than hearing Richard Mabion talk to us about a guest, we are going to talk to Richard about his work for a sustainable earth community.
In 2006, Kansas City, Kansas resident Richard Mabion started presenting an energy efficiency program to leaders of neighborhood groups at Livable Neighborhoods, a city-run organization created to consolidate and coordinate neighborhood services and address pressing issues. A pressing issue Richard saw was the need for people of color to get involved in the effort to create a greener, healthier city – and world.
A veteran community organizer and small business owner in Kansas City for decades, Mabion knew from attending environmental conferences that the green movement was still largely white and middle class. He wanted to broaden the movement’s reach and appeal, especially in working-class, inner-city neighborhoods.
Richard Mabion says ignoring potential converts to the cause could have a “negative long-range effect on us as a human race.”
In 2007, Mabion launched Building a Sustainable Earth Community to draw more people of color to the environmental sustainability movement, chiefly through annual conferences. The organization has held five conferences, attended by hundreds. Presentations have covered everything from redressing environmental injustices to helping single moms make their homes more energy efficient.
For his work, Mabion has received various environmental awards and in 2012 was the first African-American elected to the Kansas Sierra Club’s board. Richard continues in talks with the national Sierra Club and the NAACP to bring his green message to other cities. He has been President of the Kansas City, Kansas NAACP, advocating for environmental literacy.
Richard has been a reliable contributor to KKFI’s EcoRadio KC, in fact, he has been on air since our program began.
Now, Richard is involved in the US. Government’s National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program initiative and he talks to Justice 40 members about how federal dollars can be applied to the alleviate the problems of pollution and climate impacts to create sustainable lifestyles in minority neighborhoods.
EcoRadio KC is glad to encourage awareness and protection of our world. Our goal is to ensure our listeners are aware of how we can create a sustainable present for a sustainable future!
We support the work for a future in which humans flourish as members of a thriving ecosphere. We are all in this together and it will take all of us to make the world safe for human habitation for millennia to come.
This will be a great radio hour!
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can about the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
