Campaign Aims for 3 Million Artworks to Clean New Orleans’ Toxic Soils
So many hard-working and innovative people have stepped in with projects to help rebuild New Orleans in the wake of the devastating 2005 levee failures, but the Fundred Dollar Bill Project is beyond unique.
The project’s goal is to encourage schoolchildren across the U.S. to create their own version of a $100 bill dubbed a “Fundred Dollar Bill” (a blend of “fun,” “fund” and “hundred”) … for a total of 3 million Fundreds in all. Once completed, those 3 million Fundreds will be collected for delivery to Washington, D.C., in a biofuel-powered armored truck in hopes of receiving in return $300 million in real currency to protect New Orleans residents — kids especially — from the toxic levels of lead found in the city’s soil.
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The project is the brainchild of Mel Chin, a Houston-born conceptual artist whose work comments on social awareness and responsibility.
If the Fundred project meets its goals (both artistically and financially), collaborators Howard Mielke and Andrew Hunt — working with Operation Paydirt, a lead pollution awareness project — plan to launch a city-wide Treat, Lock and Cover (TLC) effort to protect New Orleanians from lead-tainted soil. Mielke, an environmental scientist at the Tulane Xavier Center for Bioenvironmental Research, and Hunt, an environmental geochemist from the University of Texas, Arlington, say the TLC process will lock environmental lead into a stable, bio-unavailable mineral material that can then be covered with clean soil.
Taking the TLC effort citywide carries an estimated cost of $300 million, hence the Fundred project’s goal.
Chin plans to kick off the Fundred Dollar Bill Project in New Orleans at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 31. The launch is expected to be held at The Safehouse (2461 N. Villere Street), a house-become-bank vault that will serve as a homebase for the Fundred collection.
By the way, the Fundred project isn’t just for kids, so all you adults out there can contribute your own version of a $100 bill as well. And, with Halloween right around the corner, here’s an idea for spreading the word: print up this post or the information from the Fundred Dollar Bill Project Website (http://www.fundred.org) and hand copies out along with your goodies for trick-or-treaters on Friday night. This is one effort we can all help with.
