Resilience.org is a publication that focuses on creating platforms to stimulate conscious conversations about community building strategies. The Sustainable Solano Communications Committee recently stumbled across an article regarding trade policies that we feel is an eye-opening conversation starter. The article, titled “Why are my Highly Educated Friends so Ignorant About Trade?”, was written by Isabel Marlens and presents a straightforward, stimulating concept that makes the case quite well for local economy. In an interesting way though, Martens does this not by exploring the benefits of localizing, but instead by pointing out the practical drawbacks of international trade partnerships and how they holistically affect resource allocation around the globe.
The title is jarring, though the thought process left me identifying as one of the “ignorant friends” that she refers. She explains reasons for why so many reasonable people fall into this category and even adds ways to lift the veil and shape the ways in which we do business, business that aims to fulfill the primary intention of what trade seeks to offer: mutually beneficial exchanges between well-intentioned parties.
Overall, there might not be anything inherently wrong about large scale trade. It does, however, in its application, open the door to leaving out the little guy. This piece is a wonderful jumping off point for beginning the discussion about why that is and what can be done about it. Upon reading this article, I was left with 2 questions: 1) In what ways can we support the local economy? and 2) In what ways might a local economy improve the way we conduct large scale trade partnerships abroad? Have a look at this short article and let us begin to discuss your answers to these questions and see if we as a community can come up with some uplifting solutions.
Sustainable Solano would like to share a video that a friend, Kristian, made! It certainly highlights the most meaningful moments and makes us reflect on how moving of an experience this was for us.
Join us in co-creating a world that works for everyone. Whether you were with us for the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium, or you want to learn more about how you, with your own unique values, skills, and concerns, can commit to creating the change you want to see, a good place to start with with the Game Changer Intensive. Offered by Pachamama Alliance, it is a seven-week online course designed to educate, inspire, and equip you to be a pro-activist leader, a game changer in your community.
Sustainable Solano is partnering with Pachamama Alliance and Solano County libraries to offer, in conjunction with the online session, regular meeting spaces for residents of Solano County to meet, build, and support our communities together. If you are interested in registering, please submit your interest here. Pachamama and Sustainable Solano will contact you with more information according to the respective cities that you live in. For any additional information, please contact info@sustainablesolano.org.
As I am looking back at the eventful and transformative year of 2016, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all people who helped co-create Sustainable Solano: the Board, our volunteer leadership team, our funders and supporters, and all of you who made a personal commitment to make a difference, to participate in something bigger than ourselves, to nurture heart-based initiatives for the good of the whole.
In 2017 we will continue to refine and shape the vision for the organization, to deepen our understanding of our current situation and to develop strategies to help making Solano County more environmentally and economically sustainable, socially just and personally fulfilling place to live and work.
We will continue with meaningful conversations in the community, beginning with a seven-week “Game Changer Intensive” offered by Pachamama Alliance as a follow up to the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium. Everyone can participate in this program! Our goal is to provide opportunities for face-to-face meetings in Solano County allowing us to deepen the connections we felt so profoundly with each other at the Symposium and to engage with each other in new and existing initiatives that facilitate change at the local level and beyond. Learn more and to register.
We invited professional landscapers, both established and new, to explore our Land Caretakers Program. Sustainable Landscapers Association of Solano County is forming now – please email info@sustainablesolano.org if you are interested in learning more.
Calling all the players in Solano local food movement to get to know each other and to join our efforts to create a robust, healthy, inclusive local food system in the county. We are planning to have a Solano Local Food Summit in the spring of 2017. If you are interested to learn more, please email info@sustainablesolano.org.
For cooking classes and talks on healthy, local food throughout the county, please check our calendarregularly (and let us know if you would like to promote your efforts of brining wholesome local food to our communities through our website and newsletter).
I am looking forward to see you at these upcoming programs and events. Please let me know if you have suggestions, ideas or questions. I wish you a peaceful and restful holiday season!
In gratitude,
Elena Karoulina
Executive Director
Sustainable Solano
Over 150 people gathered at the Empress Theater in Vallejo to watch the premiere of the documentary “SEED: The Untold Story”. It was an alarming and moving account of seeds, its story and its modern fate to become a commodity just like anything else these days – nature, land, money, people….
Few things on Earth are as miraculous and vital as seeds. Worshipped and treasured since the dawn of humankind, these subtle flecks of life are the source of all existence. Like tiny time capsules, they contain the songs, sustenance, memories, and medicines of entire cultures. They feed us, clothe us, and provide the raw materials for our everyday lives. They are life itself!
Yet in our modern world, these precious gifts of nature are in grave danger. In less than a century of industrial agriculture, our once abundant seed diversity—painstakingly created by ancient farmers and gardeners over countless millennia—has been drastically winnowed down to a handful of mass-produced varieties. Under the spell of industrial “progress” and a lust for profit, our quaint family farmsteads have given way to mechanized agribusinesses sowing genetically identical crops on a monstrous scale.
For eons, cultures around the world have believed seeds to be our birthright: a covenant with the earth shared by all and passed down across generations. But today, our seeds are increasingly private property held in corporate hands. A cadre of ten agrichemical companies (including Syngenta, Bayer, and Monsanto) now controls more than two-thirds of the global seed market, reaping unprecedented profits. Genetically modified crops (GMOs) engineered in their sterile laboratories dominate farmers’ fields and dinner tables in the United States and countries around the world.
People everywhere are waking up to the vital importance of seeds for our future. Seed libraries, community gardens, and a new generation of passionate young farmers are cropping up to shift the balance toward a more sustainable and sovereign seed paradigm. A David and Goliath battle is underway, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
How can you participate on the right side of this battle, right here, in Solano County?
Get educated, demand our right for seed and food sovereignty, grow heirloom and open-pollinated seeds, use seed banks and seed exchange, and support local farmers who are doing things right – through our Community Supported Agriculture and Solano Grown.
Save the Date: Awakening the Dreamer Symposium Comes to Solano County
Are you ready for a deeply transformative experience? On December 3rd, 2016 from 10am-2pm, the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium comes to Solano County at Solano County Events Center in Fairfield, offering a dynamic multimedia half-day workshop that uses videos, personal reflection, and group activities to engage people everywhere as the co-creators of an environmentally sustainable, socially just, and spiritually fulfilling world.
Having everything we need to create a sustainable, just, and fulfilling world
Understanding the unique contribution you can make in your community
Feeling hopeful about the future of our planet and species
You don’t have to just imagine these things–together, we can make them real. Participants will leave the Symposium empowered to take clear steps to embody their vision for a better world, and having established new connections to work with others on common issues for the common good of the whole.
The Symposium is developed and distributed by The Pachamama Alliance, a San Francisco-based nonprofit started at the invitation of indigenous people of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest. Through the Symposium and other workshops, they work to generate widespread awakening at the grassroots level and a transformation of our worldview, such that humanity becomes committed to restoring and protecting the environment and moves towards social justice and spiritual fulfillment.
For even more details on the Symposium and The Pachamama Alliance, please visit:
This Symposium will be open to anyone who wishes to take practical steps to bring about transformation to the environmental, social and spiritual presence of humanity on the earth. We hope you join us!
