You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘NWEI Developments’ category.
It’s hard to believe, but NWEI’s 20th Anniversary is just around the corner. One short year from now NWEI will turn 20, and in preparation for our 20th Anniversary we’re creating a map that will “pin” locations where NWEI courses have taken place over time. Whether you participated in 1993 or just last week, in one course or all 11, we invite you to “pin” your location on our Alumni Map.
Click here to complete a very short web form, and we’ll use your City/State/Zip Code information to create a pin on our NWEI Alumni Map.
Thanks for helping us demonstrate the reach of NWEI’s programs and our impact across North America! As an incentive to create your Alumni “pin” on the map we have a couple of swell raffle prizes that everyone who completes the form will be eligible to win–including a free pair of KEEN shoes and a KEEN bag.
The Northwest Earth Institute is excited to announce that Colorado Mountain College has become NWEI’s newest formal partner, and NWEI’s first formal higher education partner!
Colorado Mountain College has been using Menu for the Future in several courses over the past few years with positive feedback from students, hence a commitment to integrating both Menu for the Future and Hungry for Change into ongoing and future sustainable food related courses.
A perfect resource for CMC’s Sustainable Cuisine program, NWEI course books will be used in classes ranging from Introduction to Environmental Science, Food Politics, Policies and People, Introduction to Sustainable Cuisine, and Agroecology. The NWEI course books will also be used in CMC’s Bachelor of Arts Program in Sustainability Studies.
Colorado Mountain College serves nine counties in north-central Colorado. Each year, nearly 25,000 students take classes at CMC’s 11 locations and online. We look forward to serving faculty, students and staff at CMC in the years to come, and are grateful to be a part of inspiring young people to take responsibility for Earth in new ways!
The Northwest Earth Institute is excited to be a part of 21 Acres non-profit school‘s offerings on sustainability and stewardship in 2012!
21 Acres, located in Woodinville, Washington, is dedicated to teaching people how to grow, eat and live sustainably. Its new series of core courses is beginning in February, with continuing education classes focusing on principles of sustainable agriculture, including those related to not only food and food systems, but also home energy and water conservation, tools for local economic development and quality of life improvement. Future courses feature NWEI’s Choices for Sustainable Living, Sustainable Systems at Work, as well as health and climate change issues.
If you are in Washington in the Sammamish Valley area, first courses are on Backyard Farming and Food Processing. For more information, call 425-481-1500 or email deb@21acres.org. You can also visit the 21 Acres website.
This spring the Sound Policy Institute at the University of Puget Sound will host one of NWEI’s community discussion courses, Menu For The Future. The Sound Policy Institute builds the capacity of individuals and groups, both on campus and in the regional community, to actively and effectively engage in environmental decision making.
The Menu for the Future group will meet on Wednesday afternoons from 12:00-1:50, beginning January 25th, 2012. Participants should bring their own lunch. There will be reading packets available for you to purchase for the cost of $21.00.
Registration is required. Please contact Katharine Appleyard at kappleyard@pugetsound.edu to reserve your space. We are excited that the University of Puget Sound is offering this course to the community!
One of NWEI’s long time volunteers, Betty Shelley, will be offering a “Reduce Your Waste, Reduce Your Impact” class beginning Tuesday February 7th – hosted at the NWEI office in Portland. Alarmingly, since 1900 the US population has tripled but use of materials has increased 17-fold (from David Wann’s Simple Prosperity). If you would like to reduce your waste and lessen your impact on the planet, this class is for you! Below is information from Betty regarding the class:
I will be offering my three-session “Reduce Your Waste, Reduce Your Impact” class this winter at the Northwest Earth Institute office beginning Tuesday, February 7th from 6:30 to 8:30pm. The class will deal with solid waste, aka garbage, but will also touch on reducing water, energy, and other resource use. The format is interactive with the goal of engaging participants through discussion and assignments to explore their actions and behaviors, and learn ways to make lasting changes. Learn my techniques and share your own.
*To sign up for the class, either email or call no later than January 31st. The number of participants needed is a minimum of eight and a maximum of twelve. The class will be cancelled if fewer than eight sign up. The $25 fee (cash only) is due in full at the first meeting.
Please share this with anyone you know who is interested in making a commitment to reducing their impact.
Betty Shelley 503-244-8044 greenhouseone@gmail.com
“It was great to talk to other people about their efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle. Just going to the class made me feel great and inspired to take more action.” Barbara
“Even knowing as much as I know, I still learned quite a bit that I take and use at home and in my business.” Lane’
“The activities and lecture portions were just short enough to keep people interested. The small tips had the best impact for me.” Jessica
Download the class flyer here: BettyShelleyWasteReductionClass
The Northwest Earth Institute is seeking an experienced development associate to join its team. This 15 hour a week position will provide key coordination and support of NWEI’s fundraising efforts in the areas of annual giving, campaign support, database management and miscellaneous department support. The Development Associate reports to the Development Director.
Please see the complete job description for more details and application instructions: NWEI Dev Assoc Job Description.
We are excited to announce that two of our classic discussion courses are now offered at a reduced rate.
Published in 2008, NWEI’s first course on climate change, Global Warming: Changing CO2urse is now available for $15. This four session course contains useful information about our current state of affairs based upon human-caused climate change, how we got here and what we can do to change course. Place your order online, or call us at 503-227-2807 to purchase this informative and useful discussion course. Also, stay tuned for info about an upcoming supplement to this course, available in spring 2012!
Healthy Children, Healthy Planet is now available for $12. As relevant today as it was when first published, Healthy Children, Healthy Planet examines the impact of media culture on our children, explores alternatives to the material focus of celebrations, considers the importance of nutrition and healthful eating, and addresses the importance of a child’s connection to nature. Healthy Children, Healthy Planet shows that to care for Earth is to care for your family.
We encourage to you to promote sustainability in your community by organizing an NWEI course this winter! Remember, the right conversations can changes lives. Happy New Year!
Tomorrow, November 15th, is the deadline to take advantage of our offer to Hungry for Change course organizers! If you convene a group and place your order by tomorrow, we will give you (the course organizer) a free copy of the course book. Just give us a call if you are ready to go!
*As a special preview of one of the articles in the new course book, below is a quote from Vanessa Barrington’s The Ecology of Food, which you will find in Session One, The First Bite.
“…Ultimately, I think we need to look at food and nutrition ecologically. Each nutrient is part of a functional system and each food that we ingest is a part of the body’s functional system. Beyond that, the food we eat is also part of our larger socio-economic and cultural system around food. When I shop for food I think a lot about the different levels of nourishment in it. Does it nourish my heart, my soul? Does it nourish my pleasure centers by tasting good? Does it nourish the relationships I have with the people I’m eating with? Does it nourish the environment, or cause harm? Does it nourish the people who produce it, or exploit them?
To take an ecological view of food is to understand that the physical, cultural, social, environmental, and economic results of ingesting a food or nutrient cannot be predicted or understood in isolation. Foods interact with one another, in the body, around the table, and in society—all of which contribute to their overall ability to nourish… Next time you’re shopping, instead of thinking about whether the food in your cart is going to provide you with the proper balance of Omega-3s and 6s, sufficient antioxidants to prevent cancer, or enough fiber to lower your cholesterol, think about how it will taste, who you will eat it with, how you will prepare it, where it came from, who produced it and if it’s in season. In short, think about whether that food is the right thing for you to eat right now. The marketing of functional foods is not just annoying because it takes advantage of consumer confusion and fear around nutrition, it’s also dangerous because it assumes we don’t have our own holistic understanding of food and, in the end, dis-empowers us to make our own decisions about what to eat…”
Food for Thought:
1. Do you agree with Barrington’s statement that we need to look at food and nutrition ecologically? Why or why not?
2. When you are food shopping, what filters do you use? (Omega 3s, antioxidants, fiber, vitamins, packaging, seasonal, local, organic,
nourishment, cravings, family, etc?) Would you like to use other filters?
3. What is one food choice that you make or could make to nourish the environment more and cause less harm?
Northwest Earth Institute courses have been used in the business community and at workplaces of all kinds since our founding in 1993. In fact, the first discussion course to take place was in a law office, setting the template for thousands of organizations to follow in gathering employees to discuss pressing environmental and social responsibility concerns. As the former Director of Business Partnerships for NWEI, I was particularly excited to find a communications blog, Change Conversations, where blogger Sally Kieny wrote about how NWEI’s discussion course on Voluntary Simplicity prompted a business group to reflect on how our written and verbal communications can be simplified through getting back to basics. Read below for Sally’s reflections and find the full post here.
Recently I signed up for a discussion course entitled Voluntary Simplicity, offered by the Northwest Earth Institute. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but was intrigued at the thought of bringing more simplicity into my life. Immediately I was conjuring up ideas of clean and organized closets, a streamlined home office and less stuff in my life. And while I hope to reach that level of uber-organization in my personal life, I’ve also come to realize that this concept offers much for the marketing-communications world.
I think this particular quote on the course booklet says it all:
“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”—Hans Hoffman
Think about it. Removing the clutter from your marketing, your written and verbal communications, is so important. It ensures that your message is clearly defined and to the point—and that’s essential if you want to be effective. It’s all about being focused and deliberate with your marketing...
Simplifying and Getting Back to Basics: We use a tool called a positioning worksheet to help our clients bring focus to their marketing activities and determine how they want to be perceived in the marketplace. Through a series of work sessions, we work with our clients to develop a statement that identifies the business they are in, the specific needs of their customers, who their competitors are and the unique benefits of our clients’ products or services. Using this statement, we are then able to evaluate all potential marketing activities (advertising, sponsorships, PR activities, etc.) to determine if a particular activity would support—or detract from—the client’s positioning. This tool simplifies and brings a clear focus to their marketing activities.
So the next time you find yourself weighing various advertising options or determining which trade shows to attend, ask yourself, with your positioning statement in hand: Is this activity taking my business where I want it to go? Will it meet the needs of my customers? Is this activity “on position” for us?
If you can’t answer “yes,” then ditch the activity and move on.
The bottom line: Simplicity can be a wonderful thing in your life and your work. Don’t make things more complicated than they need to be. Don’t try to do too much. Simplify to bring clarity, to discover what’s important and to be deliberate in your marketing activities.
A good reminder that simplicity can work in all areas of our lives…
NWEI recently learned that Menu for the Future, one of our sustainable food discussion courses, inspired Pat Wilborn and Amy Otis-Wilborn to initiate the Port Washington, Wisconsin Aquaponics Model through their organization, Portfish. Portfish’s vision is to create a working model of an aquaponics system based on best practices that can be replicated to promote and engage communities in local sustainable food production. They are actively working to raise awareness of issues and concerns regarding our current and future food supply and to educate local communities about sustainable and healthy alternatives to food production and supply. They’ve also started a Winter Farmer’s Market and have compiled a local foods database for their community.
Below is an excerpt from their organization’s website:
Pat and I initiated the Port Washington Aquaponics Model in March of 2009. Our interest in local sustainable food production, however, developed over time – and, only in the last few years has it taken on a more urgent tone.
Pat and I come from very different food “histories.” His includes a very large family garden, necessary to feed a family with 8 children. His mother stretched and used everything in creative ways. This included okra, not one of Pat’s favorite vegetables to this day. And, he can only eat spinach in certain ways. Pat’s memories include being assigned a row in the garden to take care of. Punishment also included going to the garden to weed. Canning was an annual event to supplement winter menus. My history is like many my age – we were a city family growing up in the 50’s. My food memories include meals from cans and boxes. Cream of mushroom soup had a million uses and a treat was a TV dinner.
In 2006, we were introduced to Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). We signed on to receive fresh vegetables from Wellspring Farm in Newburg, WI. I couldn’t name most of the vegetables we received in the first year. I also had no sense of the growing season. We continue to buy shares from Wellspring and have learned how to cook “root” vegetables and anticipate the lettuces we receive early in the season and the black radishes, celeriac, and squash that come later.
But, our commitment to doing something about food grew out of a Menu for the Future discussion course. Menu for the Future was developed and sponsored by the Northwest Earth Institute in Portland, Oregon. Pat and I met with friends weekly for eight weeks, hosting our group in our homes. We read articles, talked about our food histories, our concerns about food, the environment, and sustaining healthy lifestyle options for our children. At the last meeting, the question posed was, “What do we do next?”
Pat took this question very seriously. His first idea was to develop a local food council. We had read about food councils and ways in which a council could help to focus communities on local food, sustainable production practices, and to serve as a catalyst to creating local food options.
While the group didn’t settle on this idea, it did decide to visit a local food operation in Milwaukee; Growing Power. Growing Power was receiving a lot of attention, locally and nationally. According to its website, Growing Power “is a national nonprofit organization and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds, and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities.”
Growing Power’s founder and director, Will Allen, attributed his growing success to worms. He has perfected growing worms as an organic medium for growing plants. He also has developed quite a composting system that heats hoop houses, sustaining a growing season through the winter. But, the project that most intrigued Pat was raising fish. Growing Power raises tilapia using an aquaponics system. Aquaponics is a system that cultivates plants and fish in a recirculating system. It is a combination of aquaculture and hydroponics.
What is the advantages of such a system to food production? It’s local, it is safe, and it is sustainable. A closed system continuously moves water from the fish to the plants. The plants take up the nutrients provided by the fish waste and send clean(er) water back to the fish environment – the cycle continues. The system relies on a natural relationship that maintains an environment that supports the fish and the plants.
Our interest in aquaponics as a means of supporting local and sustainable food production grew as we continued our research into food, food production, distribution, and the industrialized food system that has developed since World War II. Some facts that convinced us that investing time and money in aquaponics was important:
- Less that 1% of food is local; on average, food travels 1,500 miles;
- Most people, saddest of all children, do not know or pay attention to where their food comes from;
- Current large scale industrial farming depends heavily on petroleum products for planting, harvesting and distributing;
- Food safety is at stake with chemical fertilizers and pesticides that degrade farmland and waterways;
- Growing concerns about access to safe food sources, particularly protein-based foods;
- Increasing use of additives and genetically modified foods in processed food;
- Increase in obesity, illnesses, and diseases that can be attributed to poor diets and limited access to healthy food alternatives.
Thanks so much Pat and Amy for your work!
Can it be true? Is holiday shopping really upon us? As we turn towards the upcoming holiday season, many in the NWEI community are asking how we can shop sustainably and give socially responsible gifts. A recent Choices for Sustainable Living group in Kingston, WA at the Stillwaters Environmental Education Center wrestled with the question and wrote about it in the Kingston Community News. Read on for Naomi Maasberg’s musings on how to make choices for a sustainable future.
It seems like summer is barely over and it’s time to think about holiday shopping.
The holiday gift-buying season will be here soon! This is the time of year that gets some of us to the malls and the stores even more often than we would ever like to be. It was in the midst of that shopping season that a sustainability discussion group at Stillwaters Environmental Center was discussing the topic of “Sustainable Buying.” This is one session of the course, with readings from “Choices for Sustainable Living” by the Northwest Earth Institute.
While it was tempting and we felt motivated after the discussion, most of us in the class did not abandon our Christmas shopping entirely. We did discover some good ideas about how to make purchases count and help to determine the real environmental impact of products we might buy. These would apply no matter what the season, of course!
Any product or service is sustainable if it is made, used and disposed of in such a way that it could continue to be made, used and disposed of indefinitely. This is because it would not be extracting any additional resources from the Earth to do so.
In the production of a product, the natural resources used need to be available from generation to generation; this is what sustainability is all about — making sure future generations will have adequate resources to support them. Also, the waste from a sustainable product must stay within the manufacturing loop and not build up or cause pollution.
Right now, there are very few totally sustainable products in the marketplace, but some are much better than others, of course. As shoppers, there are some things we can look for and things to ask ourselves.
- Do I really need the product? Even if a product is “green,” if you don’t really need it, it’s better not to use up the resources — the greenest product is the one you don’t buy! Often, second-hand things will suffice or be better, and certainly not use up more resources.
- Is it safe to use? Check for toxins that are in so many products. They’re not good for you or the environment.
- Is it durable, well made, of good quality that will last? Inexpensive things that wear out quickly require replacement resources to be used. If you need to use some of Earth’s resources, make them last!
- Is it made from recycled or renewable resources? Are the materials taken in a sustainable way? Are the raw materials used renewable ones, like plants? Or non-renewable, like petroleum? How much of the content is recycled goods? Are the materials organically grown or sustainably harvested? It should have this information on the label.
- How will I dispose of it? Think ahead and look for things that have little packaging, and packaging that can be easily recycled. Then, think ahead to when you or someone else no longer needs this product; how can you dispose of it in a way that will not put it in the landfill? Can it be re-used? Recycled?
- How far was this shipped? We get products from all over the world now and think little of it. But many natural resources are used up in transporting things. “Buying locally” is not enough if the product has been shipped to our local store from across the world!
When shopping, try to think beyond the item you see in front of you. Consider all it took to put it in front of you, and ask yourself if it is worth it.
*If you are in the Kingston area, Stillwaters Environmental Education Center is starting NWEI’s newest discussion course, Hungry for Change: Food, Ethics & Sustainability. If you are interested in joining this group, call (360) 297-1226.
This month, Ellen Dawson-Witt is hosting Choices for Sustainable Living in her 192 square food home in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The group is discussing voluntary simplicity, ecology, food and money…and all things pertaining to living more lightly on the Earth. For more photos of Ellen’s ‘tiny house’ and for the full article entitled “Tour of a Tiny House” in the Yellow Springs News, click here.
When Ellen Dawson-Witt wanted to live a more sustainable life, she didn’t take half-measures. She moved to a farm, went off the grid, and downsized to a house the size of a shed.
Fitting her life into 192 square feet was easy for the 56-year-old — she long ago eschewed television and fashion, and got rid of the stuff she didn’t use — and so was living on a farm in exchange for taking care of goats. And she didn’t mind carrying water, using a composting toilet, keeping a wood stove going and lighting oil lamps in the off-the-grid structure that lacked indoor plumbing and a furnace.
She raised some of her food, carried the water she used for bathing and cooking from a nearby well, collected rainwater from her roof for washing, composted her waste and split wood for her wood stove. There were some modern amenities too — three solar panels, which provided some electricity for a lamp, CD player and laptop, and a 1934 gas range for cooking.
“It was fully living in line with my values,” Dawson-Witt said. “I like to know where my food comes from; I like to be in literal touch with the elements and to work with other people.” …
Thanks to Ellen for setting the example that living this lightly can be done – and for sharing it with others through a Choices group!
This month in the Sequim Gazette (Washington), columnist Beverly Hoffman posed a challenge about shifting our thinking and educating ourselves in order to create the changes we wish to see. She reminds us that Fall and Winter are times to come inside, slow down and gather with friends, family and co-workers in the spirit of educating ourselves more deeply as times change. We hope you’ll host others for an NWEI course this season, too! Read Beverly’s article below:
As I talk with my friends, it seems that many of us have shifted our thinking toward a greater consciousness. Like the Joads in Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” who, in the Great Depression, had to leave their Dust Bowl Oklahoma land and drive to California in hopes for something better, we know things are changing. And how we respond to those changes might define us, as individuals as well as a country.
At least three ideas seem to be intersecting right now — a sluggish economy with food prices getting higher, a wish to eat healthy food and a growing sense of the need to reduce our carbon footprint on earth. Many of us are thinking about a first-time garden or how to increase the size or productivity of existing gardens. I was at a friend’s house the other day and she was showing me how they planned to change a perennial bed into a raised bed where they could grow vegetables and include a hot frame. Another friend is experimenting with hydroponic (no soil) production. I also saw a class on hydroponics recently advertised. Another friend showed me a small second-year garden where she or her husband gather vegetables each evening for a stir-fry.
In Port Townsend this past month, the Northwest Earth Institute sponsored a weekend conference with Will Allen as the keynote speaker. Allen, the son of sharecroppers, who became a professional basketball player and later worked for Proctor and Gamble, shared hundreds of slides of how he has transformed cultivation practices, using raised beds, composting, aquaculture and vermiculture (composting utilizing worms). He is undeterred about his vision and feels he’s in the infancy stage of his wish for the entire world to have access to good food. He composts on a huge scale to create a rich soil — his answer to growing healthy crops. Then he transforms any offered space — asphalt-covered parking lots or an area where there is infertile soil — by heaping his composted soil on top. He teaches people how and when to plant, how to harvest and how to sell at local farmers markets or to restaurants and school cafeterias. He constantly is learning and experimenting. One idea I loved was his wish to build a five-story structured greenhouse of sorts with an institutional kitchen inside where people could learn to can, dehydrate and freeze crops.
On another weekend I again went to Port Townsend for its Film Festival and saw two movies on alternative gardening. One was about a man who created a garden in the back of his truck, adding a vapor barrier and rich soil. He literally was a gardener on the move, selling his herbs and produce around the city. Another film showed a gardener who was growing rows of produce atop New York buildings. He had to have an engineer figure out the amount of stress a roof with wet soil could handle and then with that knowledge, he laid out beds and was able to produce an abundance of food. Another lady, who lived in a city high-rise with lots of windows in the foyer, experimented with hanging gardens made of suspended plastic gallon bottles tied together and attached to a horizontal PVC pipe with holes punched in the bottom, that was the water source trough. Below the hanging plastic bottles tied to one another, another PVC collected the dripping water and pumped it back up to the feeder pipe.
People are thinking. And creating. And experimenting. And are problem solving. Like the Christ-figure Jim Casy in “The Grapes of Wrath,” many are recognizing that “we” is far more important than “I” and are trying to build communities where people work together and where Mother Earth is protected and honored. Recently I was at a lovely apple orchard party where the hostess invited her guests to pick apples to take home. She also had a cider press where guests filled containers with fresh apple juice. Even the pulp was saved … for a lady to take home to her chickens. While there, I went into the greenhouse and tasted tomatoes right off the vine. So sweet. So juicy. The entire afternoon was a celebration of the harvest and of good friends taking the time to be together sharing a potluck meal.
Times are changing. We might want to visit the Northwest Earth Institute website (www.nwei.org) and look at the courses they offer. During this fall and winter, as our lives slow down a bit, we might want to host a group of like-minded friends to study one of their books, such as “Voluntary Simplicity,” “Menu for the Future,” “Healthy Child, Healthy Planet,” etc. Each book is about $21. At the talk by Will Allen, we all were encouraged to find a way to plant something to eat in our surrounding gardens around our homes. We were challenged to educate ourselves more deeply as times are changing.
I pass on the challenge to you.
For the full article, click here.
NWEI was featured earlier this week on OPB’s Think Out Loud with guests Rich Bruer (board member for NWEI) and Kim Smith (PCC professor and third time participant in NWEI’s EcoChallenge). Here is an excerpt from that coverage:
October 1st marked the start date of the annual EcoChallenge. The event, created by the Northwest Earth Institute (NWEI), challenges participants to reduce their environmental impact in some way for two weeks. The event may have started small, but as awareness of the challenge increases, so do the participants. Mike Mercer, the Executive Director of NWEI says last year only 375 participated, but this year it’s closer to 1,300 people.
Participants can take the challenge by themselves or work in teams and are encouraged to track their progress daily. A few of the categories suggested on the EcoChallange 2011 website are water conservation, energy efficiency and sustainable food options. The website also has a “Check-In” page where participants can log every day that they meet their challenge.
Are you participating in the 2011 EcoChallenge? Did you participate in the past? What do you do daily to reduce your environmental impact? Click here to see the conversation online.
Let us know what you are doing! Learn more at www.ecochallenge.org
This just in from our guest conference blogger, Shelly Randall of SustainableTogether.com, who took the time to recap the events of NWEI’s multi-day biannual gathering a few weeks ago. Thanks Shelly! For those who weren’t able to join, this will fill you in on gathering highlights and outcomes.
Salutations from Port Townsend, a community that is still reverberating with the excitement of hosting NWEI’s biannual North American gathering last month (Sept. 15-18, 2011). The “Will Allen buzz” has yet to wear off, and every one of the 500-odd people who attended his public keynote address seems to still be talking about it. Everyone else in town is eagerly awaiting the video that was shot that night to be edited and released.
Our grassroots efforts to create a more vibrant and sustainable local food economy have gained visibility and been bolstered by the opportunity to host NWEI’s conference, “If Not Me, Then Who? Building Healthy Communities and Local Food Systems One Conversation at a Time.” (Thanks to NWEI for offering reasonable day rates that made it possible for many Port Townsendites to attend the conference part-time.)
In addition to the conversations that started, “Did you hear Will Allen?”, conversations here in Port Townsend are spinning off everywhere:
- Through new NWEI discussion courses that are starting up this month, in homes and churches;
- At a talk this week on reconnecting urban consumers to agricultural producers, presented by the director of our state Department of Agriculture and hosted by Port Townsend’s Citizens for Local Food;
- At this week’s kick-off event for Our Watershed, a NWEI-style, 7-week course being offered at no charge to participants, and available in two geographic versions: the Pacific Northwest and more specifically Puget Sound. Click here to learn more.
- At meet-the-candidate events with conference attendee and local economy advocate Deborah Stinson, who is running for City Council;
- Between my 3-year-old son and the 4-year-old son of a climate researcher I met at the conference whose family just happens to live four blocks from mine!
Best yet, our local Chamber of Commerce has invited me and Judy Alexander (chair of Port Townsend’s NWEI steering committee and Local 2020 leader) to present back-to-back in November, and is dedicating two of its weekly meetings to the topic of local sustainability. The Chamber director was inspired by local media coverage of the NWEI conference, and her phone message was waiting for me at the end of the day Friday. What a wonderful and direct outcome!
Before my inspiration from the conference is redirected to these worthy conversations, I want to present some easily scannable conference highlights from sessions I attended. Below, please find short summaries and relevant links to more information. The conference schedule contains details on all the presentations held Thursday-Sunday at Fort Worden State Park…
*Below are just a few excerpts from Shelly’s full post. To read the full recap, visit www.sustainabletogether.com
Conference Highlights – FRIDAY
Community Building, Sustainable Food and Neighborhood Activism: A Port Townsend NWEI Case Study
Imagine if every Menu for the Future course had a farmer or food producer at the table? That was the case for the 28 NWEI discussion courses organized in our county in 2010. Judy Alexander and Peter Bates (both NWEI organizers) and local Grange President Dick Bergeron shared how they found common ground to pull off this ambitious, and how it helped grow the customer base for local food.
It was an inspiring first session, notable for its outcomes (our county now spends 4% of its food dollars locally, compared with less than 1% nationwide, and there is a push to get that to 20% by 2020), its specificity (how a Google Docs spreadsheet enabled course coordination), and its enduring themes (partnerships, identity politics, how food brings people together).
Peak Moment TV interviewed these three in Fall 2010, and the interviewer’s notes nicely summarize this Town Mouse/Country Mouse collaboration. Click here to read them, and click here to watch the 28-minute video.
Accelerating Community Capital: Developing a Local Investing Ecosystem
I heard this called “the most paradigm-shifting session” of the weekend, and with the Occupy Wall Street protests now in full swing, learning how to promote local investing seems more relevant than ever.
One of the key factors driving Port Townsend’s relatively thriving local economy is the Local Investing Opportunities Network (LION), a clearinghouse between business owners who need capital and potential investors in their community. It’s not a pooled investment or a loan fund, and business owners are not making public offerings—transactions are based on one-to-one personal relationships (which gets around SEC restrictions). Since LION formed in 2006 (it was formalized in 2008), it has facilitated more than $2 million in local investments (primarily loans), with an average investment of $132,000 per active investor.
“It has been not only a huge economic boost for us, but also a profoundly hopeful thing to be a part of,” said presenter Deborah Stinson. She was joined by fellow LION investor Michelle Sandoval and locally financed business owner Crystie Kisler of Finnriver Farm “What we’re finding with LION investors is they have truly aligned their values with their actions and their bank accounts,” said Kisler.
LION’s website offers Local Investing Kits with templates of its legal agreements and forms. Peak Moment TV interviewed LION’s co-founder, an investor, and a locally financed entrepreneur in Summer 2011. Click here to watch the 28-minute video.
Becoming a Hyper-Locavore: Lessons from a 10-Mile Diet
I hadn’t read my conference schedule close enough to realize Vicki Robin would be here, and when I was casually introduced to the co-author of Your Money or Your Life—one of the most influential books of my past year—I couldn’t even speak, I just genuflected. So of course I had to attend Vicki’s presentation later that day.
Who knew it would be so funny? It turned out to be the trial run of her “relational eating” talk, describing her extreme eco-challenge to eat only what grew within 10 miles of her Whidbey Island home for one month in 2010—and she had us all laughing hysterically. Thankfully, she chose September. Thankfully her neighbors bootleg raw milk and cheese, and sell eggs and free range chickens. But at a “shocking” $5/lb, Vicki was forced to cut way back on eating the only meat available to her. In the midst of describing this protein dilemma to us, Vicki happened to look out the window and caught one of Port Townsend’s feral deer in her sights. Instantly, she leaped into a bow-and-arrow stance. “That would’ve been dinner,” she declared, to her audience’s great delight.
Look for her undoubtedly good-humored book to come out next year: Blessing the Hands that Feed Us: Lessons from a 10-Mile Diet (Viking 2012). Vicki blogs at http://ymoyl.wordpress.com/…
To read more about Kurt Hoelting’s keynote address about Harnessing the Power of Place to Build More Resilient Lives and Communities, workshops on community walkability, NWEI’s new course Hungry for Change: Food, Ethics and Sustainability and highlights from Farmer’s Market tour and the Farm Tour, click here.
Shelly Randall blogs at SustainableTogether.com and can be reached at shelly@sustainabletogether.com or 360-301-2540.
Ryan Harper
Deborah McNamara
Kerry Lyles
Mike Mercer
Lacy Cagle
Carolyn White
Rob Nathan
