"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." ~Margaret Mead
Community-Minded Enterprises offers a package of tools and services through which geographic communities become stronger.
Any self-identified community member, group or governmental body can initiate change for their neighborhood or city. Under the framework of our "Community First" Program, we help community representatives increase collaboration between residents, organizations, and systems, and create plans for economic and energy independence, enhance care and support for all community members, and develop greater local resilience in the face of economic and energy challenges.
Community First Program Elements:
Introductory Keynote Presentation: To introduce key audiences to the opportunities and urgencies of community sustainability.
Assessment: Community-Minded Enterprises will assess your community's status in terms of the "3-E's" of community sustainability: economy, ecology, and social equity. Then we will offer recommendations and support regarding how to measurably increase your "sustainability index."
Local Unification Strategies: One key challenge to effective re-localization is the disconnection between local systems and sectors such as government, business, faith institutions, and neighborhood councils. To increase community sustainability, these systems must collaborate intensively, with an increased focus on local outcomes. We promote and guide this kind of collaboration.
Community First Workshop: This workshop helps diverse individuals and groups within a community organize for the transformation toward local self-reliance and resilience. It involves as many as thirty different modules covering issues as diverse as youth development, local food production, access to healthcare, local alternative energy, strengthening the "small" economy, collaboration between community systems, and more.
Community-Minded Energy Planning: How do communities make energy more local, cleaner, and less dependent on distant energy supplies which are becoming increasingly costly and unreliable? We will educate planners regarding cutting-edge approaches and ways to move forward more sustainably.
Local Economic Development: Strengthening the local "small economy" is the key to the future economic security of communities. We help communities organize new approaches to this dimension of local self-reliance.
Greener Youth Initiatives: In many parts of the United States, the high school dropout rate is approaching 40 percent. However, we have found it possible to engage, or re-engage, young people around local youth initiatives that build a sustainable world and at the same time prepare them for careers in the future economy.
Community-Based Media: Local resilience is in part a function of local voices being heard. If most community members are tuned into national media sources every night, it's hard to get a feel for local needs and strengths. Through digital media, there are new ways that communities can awaken to their own diversity and unity, becoming storytellers and advocates for their own local priorities. Our Community-Minded Media team gives communities tools for developing community media opportunities.
Custom-Designed Implementation Strategies: Based on our track record of implementing community-centric solutions in a variety of fields, we are dedicated to designing locally based solutions for the communities with which we work.
Please contact us for a discussion on how our Community First Program can be tailored to your community's specific interests.
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Sustainable September is a program committed to growing strong partnerships in the community in creation of a series of events, and illumination of existing events, that will increase public awareness and lead to significant new steps toward sustainability in the greater Spokane area.