Dec 17, 2016
Sustainable Solano presents 2017 sustainable landscaping classes for general public in Vallejo and Benicia Community Centers.
SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPING FOR YOUR HOUSE
Adults and teens
Winter is a good time to start dreaming and planning about our garden renewal.
This is the perfect class for homeowners who are thinking about replacing a lawn or who would like to make their current landscapes resource-wise.
You will learn about sustainable landscaping: beautiful, productive, life-supporting ecosystem featuring trees and a variety of perennials fed by “secondary” water (greywater and rainwater). We’ll discuss edible landscaping, examine a few simple design plans, look into current turf replacement rebates and tell you about sustainable landscapers in our area.
Class is taught by local landscapers promoting sustainable landscaping practices.
Benicia Community Center:
Thursdays, February 2
Thursday, March 2
Both classes are 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Cost: free ($5 administrative fee charged by the Community Center)
To register: go to Benicia Parks and Recreation
Vallejo Foley Cultural Center, 1499 N. Camino Alto
Tuesday, February 28
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Cost: free
To register: go to Greater Vallejo Recreational District
Fairfield Community Center – coming in the summer 2017!
Dec 16, 2016
Sustainable Solano is looking for Benicia homes to host public Laundry to Landscape workshops (and install simple “laundry-to-landscape” greywater systems in, as part of our continuing Benicia Sustainable Backyard Program funded by the Community Sustainability Commission).
If your home meets the following requirements and you’re interested in participating in our program, please email to us at info@sustainablesolano.org asap. The workshops are scheduled for February 4 and March 4, 2017.
Requirements:
• Homeowner in Benicia
• Laundry room has an exterior wall or accessible crawlspace
• Landscape is within 50 feet of the washing machine with trees, bushes, or larger perennials to irrigate
You receive:
• Free installation (you pay $400 for materials)
Contact: info@sustainablesolano.org
Dec 15, 2016
Dear friends of Sustainable Solano,
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.
Our sustainable landscaping efforts will continue with monthly tours of Benicia demonstration permaculture food forests, installation of demonstration gardens in Fairfield and Vallejo, and a series of talks and workshops in Benicia, Fairfield and Vallejo – watch for regular updates on our calendar.
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 calendar regularly (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
Oct 10, 2016
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.
Register for this free event.
Imagine:
- 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:
www.pachamama.org
Pachamama Alliance Workshops and Events
Awakening the Dreamer: A Transformative Workshop for People and Planet (Video):
https://youtu.be/n8zaUjvCJOY
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!
Aug 31, 2016
By Roman Johnson
As you know, Benicia Community Gardens has become Sustainable Solano, to better reflect what we do.
In our efforts to open the conversation, we asked you to participate in what we have been calling The Sustainability Thought Experiment. We asked you to draw what this topic means to you, how it affects your lifestyle, and how you visualize a world that “works for everyone.” We were extremely pleased with the result and we thank you so much for your enthusiastic and creative input! For the past few weeks, we have been using this input to brainstorm the vision and how to incorporate sustainable living into daily lives.
Sustainability, in business terms, is a taboo phrase. The reason for this is because sustainability is often viewed as an alternative to growth, as a plateau that urges flat-lining instead of moving upward, the difference between surviving and thriving. As a result, environmentalists compromise. We replace sustainability with terms like “efficiency”; “audits” have morphed to “assessments.” Dancing around the essence.
The practical side of my brain embraces this. Speaking for the bees and the trees is a hard sell to business owners trying to hit their bottom lines and for parents struggling with rent and putting food on their family’s tables. I empathize. However, the idealist in me craves more. Of course, ecological factors are important. We are all organisms of this earth, whether we stop to think about it often or not. Survival is based upon the function of these systems. But sustainability is bigger and more relatable than people give it credit. Sustainability is the means by which businesses stay afloat and families keep their kids in schools with a roof over their heads. It’s about spending money, time, and energy within your means.
In this modern era, we have reached a point in which there are few frontiers left to explore. We are pushing the limits of expansion, setting our sights on “other worldly” entities, most notably space. Our fascination with space is understandable. It carries with it existential questions about our place in this universe. While this topic is for another discussion, I mention it because there are frontiers within our own world worth fleshing out more. Thinking in a more ethereal sense, what about the frontiers of compassion? Teamwork? Sharing? We posit exploring these frontiers in earnest before venturing on to the next.
This is the idea we have been running with. If we imagine this mission as the earth itself, we see these phrases as comprising the core, ingredients of the abstract vision. From there we move to the Mantle, which incorporates more concrete, tangible values that manifest our mission. This is the portion of the map we are developing with care. Once this realm is fleshed out, we will have the foundation to create the soil that makes up the crust, the seeds, and the plants that grow to sustain mutually beneficial ecosystems, our most lofty goal.
We see our role as something like social and environmental midwives, someone who acts as a catalyst, bringing life into this world. Sustainable Solano seeks be the liaison to help bring the fresh ideas of the community to reality. Practically speaking, this means acting objectively, connecting and synthesizing the great work and resources being developed by other organizations in the region and providing the platform to further these conversations.
Essentially, our expanded mission seeks to encompasses each aspect of our identity, how we grow, and how we relate to the broader community. I am in no position to say that I live in a sustainable fashion. My mind: all over the place. My finances: in shambles. My diet: horrendous. However, nature is a struggle for equilibrium, a forever-cycle of adjusting the seesaw back into balance. We are all working for our own sense of that equilibrium. Exploring this realm is exploring what it means to live as a sustainable human within a sustainable society. We encourage you to explore with us and continue providing your input. After all, this is your community.
Dream with us;
Build with us.
Aug 2, 2016
By Rob Rogers
Every Thursday night from April through October, those in search of a healthier meal or a greener lifestyle have prowled the booths and stalls of Benicia’s Farmer’s Market, home to everything from organic dinosaur kale and farmstead cheeses to solar panel installation. On July 22, those visitors gave something back: a recipe for a better world, written in bold strokes of colored chalk outside Benicia’s community garden.
For a few brief hours, couples, families, seniors and teens on their way to and from the market paused to answer the question: “What would a world that worked for everyone look like?”
Not a single visitor mentioned a political candidate, despite the event falling squarely between the Republican and Democratic national conventions. Instead, the responses ranged from the general – “No Cars,” “No Guns,” “People and the Environment on Equal Ground” – to the specific: “Paid Maternity Leave,” “Healthcare for All,” “Walkable Cities.”
“It was the adults, mostly older ones, who added the very specific notes,” said Nam Nguyen, the communications committee volunteer who coordinated the event. “The teenagers had the big ideas. And at the center of the matter, it was the young kids who knew what makes a world work for everyone: love.”
With the exception of one contributor – who wrote “Clean Water for All” across a section of sidewalk – few of the comments gleaned from the market’s visitors discussed community-supported agriculture, the establishment of a local food web, or any of the other initiatives BCG is supporting.
Instead, said Executive Director Elena Karoulina, those ideas written in chalk provide an idea of what “sustainability” really means to the people of Solano County – an inspiration and a framework for the organizations’s future endeavors.
“What gives me a lot of hope is that people did not jump into ‘solar panels’ and ‘conserve water,’ but talked about tolerance and love instead,” Karoulina said. “I see that universal respect and reverence for our own humanity as a root of sustainability. Without this foundation to our work, all our sustainability efforts – practical, measurable programs – would be in vain.”
Of course, not every sidewalk suggestion will become part of the organization’s mandate. Many contributors only wrote their names, while one wrote “meow” – a suggestion, perhaps, that the world might be more workable if everyone adopted a cat.
Perhaps the evening’s most positive comment came from the first visitor to answer the question.
“It looks like Benicia,” he wrote.