Project Porchlight Blog
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On October 22, Olympia, WA’s Verle Ketchum (pictured here, right, with his daughter Lerae) showed up for his weekly Rotary Club of Lacey meeting. But that Thursday’s meeting was different from others. Project Porchlight was on hand to distribute free compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs, and inform the members about our partner Puget Sound Energy’s upcoming Rock the Bulb campaign event at the Lacey Lowe’s.
After hearing about the cost and energy savings that come from replacing just one light bulb with a CFL bulb, Verle was on board with Project Porchlight. “If we had more people working on projects like this, our world would be a much better place to live,” says Verle, Fleet Manager at All Star Ford. He went home that Thursday night and introduced his family to our campaign. When he told them about the October 24 Rock the Bulb event he planned to volunteer for, his daughter was quick to offer her time as well.
The father-daughter team showed up for their shift at 9:30am and were delighted to find a full breakfast awaiting them. Once they’d fuelled up for the day’s activities, Verle and Lerae got to work helping Lacey-area residents pick out the right CFL bulbs for their homes. “We both had a blast!” says Verle. “We got so much satisfaction from knowing that we personally helped others in Thurston County discover a great way to start saving energy.”
Not only did the Ketchums empower others in their community with the knowledge that simple actions matter, they also took the message home with them. The family replaced every light bulb in their house with a CFL bulb, and signed up for PSE’s Green Power Program.
Verle is delighted that he and his neighbors will be doing their part to help protect the environment. Best of all, he knows he was able to make a difference with Lerae at his side. “I was so proud to see my 14-year-old daughter helping folks understand just how much energy they could save if they replaced all their light bulbs with energy-saving CFL bulbs,” he says. That’s a message worth passing on to future generations.
Washington state’s oldest local energy utility, Puget Sound Energy serves more than 1 million electric customers and nearly 750,000 natural gas customers in 11 counties. A subsidiary of Puget Energy, PSE meets the energy needs of its growing customer base through incremental, cost-effective energy conservation, procurement of sustainable energy resources, and far-sighted investment in the energy-delivery infrastructure. PSE employees are dedicated to providing great customer service and delivering energy that is safe, reliable, reasonably priced, and environmentally responsible. For more information, visit www.PSE.com.
This was a new experience
This was a new experience for me but it was SUPER fun, (as far as helping out with Project Porch light goes)! I met some new people and even saw some people from my school there, even my elementary school councilor. (not that i had issues in elementary school) but anyways it is good for me to know that i am helping our earth one step at a time...and that our community is trying to make a difference! And when i came home, after helping out with Rock the Bulb, i knew ALOT more about were to use the different types of light bulbs and learned how different the regular light bulbs are compared to the new energy efficient ones. So knowing that i helped in a part of making this earth a better place makes me feel good and I know that I would definitely do it again!!! :)
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