Focus on Home Community
by Village Earth Intern Michael Battey
Village Earth was doing more than promoting our projects and training seminars in our booth at the Sustainable Living Fair in Fort Collins, Colorado this past September. Although our work usually takes us to remote corners of the world, we decided to ask people attending the fair about their vision for sustainable living right here in our own community.
Respondents to the query wrote a brief statement summarizing their vision on a piece of paper and taped it to a banner behind Village Earth’s booth. Many respondents’ visions for a more sustainable Fort Collins were very simple. A lot of people just wanted more local fresh food at a reasonable price and better public transportation. Other respondents said they would like to see efforts to encourage more people to become bilingual in an effort toward more global solidarity and an initiative to end the use of plastic grocery bags.
“Village Earth believes that social change can only be achieved when a community comes together and creates a vision for the future,” said Kristina Pearson, Village Earth’s Director of Marketing. “If you just focus on individual problems, you can spend your whole life solving one problem after another without ever creating the change you ultimately wish to see.”
The community is the basic unit of planning and action in Village Earth’s approach to sustainable development. Our cornerstone belief is that the everyday people who live and work in a community should set a community’s priorities and vision for the future. Village Earth seeks to empower groups of people by forming an alliance and working with those people to help them meet their own goals. Our future plans include working with an alliance of local organizations finding solutions to combat poverty right here in our home community.
Village Earth was doing more than promoting our projects and training seminars in our booth at the Sustainable Living Fair in Fort Collins, Colorado this past September. Although our work usually takes us to remote corners of the world, we decided to ask people attending the fair about their vision for sustainable living right here in our own community.
Respondents to the query wrote a brief statement summarizing their vision on a piece of paper and taped it to a banner behind Village Earth’s booth. Many respondents’ visions for a more sustainable Fort Collins were very simple. A lot of people just wanted more local fresh food at a reasonable price and better public transportation. Other respondents said they would like to see efforts to encourage more people to become bilingual in an effort toward more global solidarity and an initiative to end the use of plastic grocery bags.
“Village Earth believes that social change can only be achieved when a community comes together and creates a vision for the future,” said Kristina Pearson, Village Earth’s Director of Marketing. “If you just focus on individual problems, you can spend your whole life solving one problem after another without ever creating the change you ultimately wish to see.”
The community is the basic unit of planning and action in Village Earth’s approach to sustainable development. Our cornerstone belief is that the everyday people who live and work in a community should set a community’s priorities and vision for the future. Village Earth seeks to empower groups of people by forming an alliance and working with those people to help them meet their own goals. Our future plans include working with an alliance of local organizations finding solutions to combat poverty right here in our home community.
