Green People

Green Service

Green Planet

Goodwerks is the new nonprofit organization taking over where long-established zero-waste entity Green Mary takes off. We provide creative, human-centric resource distribution and re-distribution, environmental education, the conducting of zero-waste projects, staffing and services to support events, municipalities, organizations, our underserved communities and the planet.

We are assuming management of a water distribution project solidly underway in the East Bay,currently conducted by the Berkeley Free Clinic and an all-volunteer cadre there. In June, Green Mary staff, kept afloat by the Paycheck Protection Program, began learning the water management tasks and then taking over water distribution to ten encampments throughout Oakland and Berkeley. We were shown the locations, and had explained to us the distribution requirements, the strict sanitation procedures and learend how to put together the 275-gallon water distribution systems and the clever hand wash stations. In September, Green Mary spawned Goodwerks and it is the staff of this nonprofit organization that will be carrying on the project.

There are upwards of ten camps awaiting reliable water delivery in these two cities alone, and dozens of others throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, all the way up to Santa Rosa, with its particular issues regarding the regular, forced disbanding of the camps for the unhoused. The organization will continue working with the existing cadre of community activists, Berkeley Free Clinic volunteers and others who have their fingers on the pulse and their hands on the water buckets, as it were, as well as collaborating with those who are envisioning more permanent water solutions. In 2021, Goodwerks seeks financial support to continue and expand this mission.

Project Benefits:

1. Ensuring timely and adequate supply of clean water.
2. Providing bulk water greatly minimizes single-use plastic water bottles from being consumed and tossed. One 275-gallon tank, the average consumed per week at one Berkeley location, is the equivalent of 2,200 16-ounce water bottle.
3. The water stations keep already challenged residents hydrated, provide access to water for cooking, and enables them to clean themselves. The simple hand wash stations increase opportunities for sanitation.
4. Frees up invaluable volunteer resources already stretched thin by passing the project onto Goodwerks for ongoing execution.
5. Allows for the installation and service of more drinking water tanks and hand wash stations.
6. Goodwerks has the bandwidth, existing connections and resources to collaborate with other vested individuals and organizations to see to the immediate and envision the expansion.
7. Goodwerks, as an outgrowth of Green Mary, has the infrastructure to participate in and tackle the clean up of the encampments, extending significantly beyond the water delivery project.

GoodWerks is a Certified Woman-Owned Business

“This is the true Joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it what I can.”

-George Bernard Shaw