CIP Writers' Bureau

Youth Entrepreneurship / Agricultural Training

‘Home Grown’ Employability Through Work Experience Program

Description: “Home Grown” is a 30 week program designed to provide youth with the skills, tools and support they need to gain hands-on work experience in the small scale agriculture, horticulture and local food sectors.

Who: 10 youth aged 15-30 who face barriers to employment. Participants selected for the program will receive a weekly stipend of $240 week based on 30 hours of participation in class or on the job.

What: Home Grown is a well rounded, comprehensive program that includes personal development, entry level employment certification (Food Safe Level 1, Superhost, WHMIS), and small scale agriculture, horticulture and food preparation basics in order to prepare youth for hands-on work experience with an employer in the community.

Classroom Workshops and Training include:

· Goal Setting, Communication, Conflict Resolution and other critical employability skills

· Time & Finance Management

· Resumes, Job Search and Interview Skills

· Foodsafe Level One

· Superhost

· WHMIS

· Food Security 101

· Basic Food Prep Skills & Safe Food Handling

· Agriculture & Horticulture Basics

When: The program runs from April 12th – November 5th, 2004. There will be 5 weeks of classroom training followed by 24 weeks of ‘on the job’ work experience. The program will conclude with a one week job readiness and wrap-up session.

Required/ Note: participants must be referred to the program through a local employment support agency and completed an action plan. Youth should contact ‘Supportive Employment Transitions’ or ‘Nanaimo Youth Services’ regarding completing a process to become referred to this program. Once youth have been referred to us they will be asked to fill out an application form and will be contacted for an interviews. All applications must be in by April 2nd.


For more information about Home Grown contact:

Sheryl Harding - Greenway, Coordinator

Nanaimo Foodshare Society

271 Pine St. Nanaimo BC V9R 2B7

foodsharehome@shaw.ca

Tel: 250-753-9393

Community Building / Nanaimo Event

April & May Free Gardening Workshops at our Mid-Island Co-op

April

1. Gardening with Nature
Friday April 2 12 - 2 pm
Co-op Garden Centre, 2517 Bowen Road
Free/pre-register 729-8400
Learn about environmentally safe gardening products from Raingrow Organic Fertilizers

2. Master Gardener Seminar
Saturday, April 17: 10 - 4
Co-op Garden Centre, 2517 Bowen Road
Free/drop-in 729-8400
Drop in and ask questions of 4 Master Gardeners all day

3. Tablecentres and Living Wreaths
Saturday, April 24: 10:30 a.m. - noon
Co-op Garden Centre, 2517 Bowen Road
Free/pre-register 729-8400
Make beautiful wreaths and centrepieces

May

4. Special 2 Part Mother's Day Gift Workshop for kids!
Saturday May 1 & May 8: 10:30 to 12:30
Co-op Garden Centre, 2517 Bowen Road
Kids under 12/pre-register only/must attend both

Paint your special plant pot on May 1, fill it with soil and a plant for Mom on May 8th.

Donation to the Nanaimo Area Land Trust welcome.

5. The Art of Moss Baskets
Saturday, May 15: 10:30 to 12:30
Co-op Garden Centre, 2517 Bowen Road
Free/pre-register 729-8400
Make your own hanging baskets

6. Compost: Nature's best fertilizer
Saturday, May 22: 10:30 to noon
Co-op Garden Centre, 2517 Bowen Road
Free/pre-register 729-8400
Learn how to compost effectively.

7. Make a Hypertufa Pot for your garden
Saturday, May 29: 10:30 to 12:00
Co-op Garden Centre, 2517 Bowen Road
Free/pre-register 729-8400
Make attractive garden pots from a mixture of perlite, peat moss, cement.

Community Currencies

But why local currencies?
In today's global economy our national currencies tend to flow where money is concentrated, rather than where money is scarce. As money is centralized, so is the productive economy­the part of the economy that produces real wealth. Manufacturing locations are chosen based on access to cheap labor and technology rather than out of ecological and humanitarian considerations. This trend has undermined regional economies and created economic, social, and environmental imbalances throughout the world. It is a trend that cannot be reversed by electoral politics or street demonstrations. Change must happen at a local level aided by the implementation of local and complementary currencies.

To create a local currency is not a form of local isolationism; it is not cutting oneself off from the rest of the world; it is simply a movement of citizens taking responsibility for the well being of their own community. Local and community currencies do not seek to replace national currencies, but to supplement them, hence the increasingly popular term "complementary currencies." Ultimately the goals of complementary currencies are to renew and uplift community, to create a sustainable and environmentally beneficial economy, and to empower all people with a new sense of what's possible.

One of the objectives of "Local Currencies in the 21st Century" is to bring the concept of local and complementary currencies to a broader audience. We are very excited about the remarkable group of conference co sponsors who have agreed to help with this task, featuring such prominent publications as The Nation, Acres USA, Resurgence, Orion, Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues, E Magazine, In Business, and Dollars & Sense. In addition, a host of prestigious and pioneering organizations are supporting the conference including Co op America, BALLE, Investor's Circle, Chelsea Green Publishing, Institute for Local Self Reliance, NOFA Mass, Center for Community Futures, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, New Economics Foundation, and the Hawthorne Valley Association. And lastly, some of the ground breaking practitioners and pioneers of local and complementary currencies will be joining us from the ACCESS Foundation, Community Information Resource Center, Ithaca HOURS, Maine Time Dollar Network, and the Time Dollar Institute. With this team of visionary co sponsors we are confident of taking the local currency movement into its new role in the twenty-first century. All that is needed is your participation and enthusiasm to bring this transformative tool to your community.

We are pleased to announce that Pete Seeger will be attending as our honorary guest along with Gandhian economist, Dwarko Sundrani. Pete will be performing Sunday evening at the Local Food Fest, a closing cookout with festivities to celebrate and honor local and family farmers. The closing event will be open to the public; so those with family and friends in the region, please welcome guests for a night of home-grown food and entertainment. For conference attendees who plan to stay Sunday night, Bard College is providing the opportunity for you to keep your dorm room an extra night for an additional $20 (less then half-price).

In addition to a stellar cast of keynote speakers, the conference program, still in preparation, will feature workshop presenters from all over the world. Joining us from Sweden is Per Almgren, designer of the interest-free savings and loans system developed in 1973 and used by the Swedish JAK bank (http://www.jak.se) that is owned and managed by its 23,000 members. Per will be giving presentations on his experience with interest-free banking and will talk about ways to secure a local currency with conventional money.

Another extraordinary person taking part in the program is Auta Main, executive director of the Maine Time Dollar Network (soon to be the New England Time Dollar Network), who has helped build the MTDN into a model for others throughout the rest of the country and the world. She now serves as the interim Community Revitalization Director for Time Dollars USA, where she and other Time Dollar pioneers from around the country are working with Edgar Cahn (founder of Time Dollars) on organizational development for the new national network.

Coming from Japan are Ikuma Saga and Takanori Yamamoto. Together, they will be representing the Earth Day Money Association, a community currency in Japan that promotes environmentally friendly behavior. They will report on the local and complementary currency movement in Japan and how it is helping many Japanese communities deal with the problems facing the nation today.

The story of money has been obscured from public view. Monetary reform has appeared sporadically throughout our nation's history as a heated topic of aspiring politicians who championed it as a central platform in their election bid, but whose passion for reform died down once in office.

According to Thomas Jefferson, "If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers occupied."

Please join us in June at Bard College for a conference dedicated to Understanding Money, Building Local Economies, and Renewing Community.

Chris Lindstrom,
Conference Coordinator,
E. F. Schumacher Society,
140 Jug End Road, Great Barrington,
Massachusetts 01230 USA
(413) 528-1737
chris@smallisbeautiful.org
www.smallisbeautiful.org

"True economics never militates against the highest ethical standard, just as all true ethics to be worth its name must at the same time be also good economics. An economics that inculcates Mammon worship, and enables the strong to amass wealth at the expense of the weak, is a false and dismal science. It spells death. True economics, on the other hand, stands for social justice, it promotes the good of all equally including the weakest and is indispensable for decent life."

Mahatma Gandhi, Harijan, October 9, 1937

"A way of life that ever more rapidly depletes the power of earth to sustain it and piles up ever more insoluble problems for each succeeding generation can only be called 'violent' S In sort, man's urgent task is to discover a non-violent way in his economics as well as in his political life S Present day economics, while claiming to be ethically neutral, in fact propagates a philosophy of unlimited expansionism without any regard to the true and genuine needs of man which are limited."

E. F. Schumacher, 1960

"The power of money creation is an indispensable prerequisite of 'sovereignty.' Whoever has the money creation power is sovereign, and the rest is for show."

Richard Kotlartz, 2003

Earth Science / Environment / Our Shifting Focus

Pioneering Plant Geneticist - More About Wes Jackson
GREAT BARRINGTON, MA, Mar. 20, 2004 (E. F. Schumacher) - Wes Jackson, a farmer, world-renowned plant geneticist, author, and teacher, lives and works at The Land Institute, Salina, Kansas, which he co-founded in 1976. E. F. Schumacher was the first honorary member of the The Land's Board of Trustees. The Land Institute (www.landinstitute.org) conducts pioneering research into the development of a sustainable agriculture based on the model of the prairie. Wes Jackson was a 1990 Pew Conservation Scholar, in 1992 became a MacArthur Fellow, and in 2000 received the Right Livelihood Award (known as the "alternative Nobel prize"). He is the author of several books including New Roots for Agriculture and Becoming Native to This Place. With Wendell Berry he co-edited Meeting the Expectations of the Land: Essays in Sustainable Agriculture and Stewardship.

His two E. F. Schumacher Lectures Call for a Revolution in Agriculture (1981) and Becoming Native to This Place (1993) are newly published in pamphlet form and available for five dollars each, postage included. Checks are payable to the E. F. Schumacher Society and should be mailed to 140 Jug End Road, Great Barrington, MA 01230. Credit card orders may be placed by calling (413-528-1737) or emailing (efssociety@smallisbeautiful.org) the Society's offices The entire text of both lectures may be viewed for free at the Society's web site www.smallisbeautiful.org.

Excerpts from both lectures follow for your enjoyment.

Wes Jackson is one of our favorite raconteurs visionary, a risk taker for a more sustainable future. Please join us for his talk if you are in the Berkshire region.

Best wishes,
Susan Witt, Executive Director
E. F. Schumacher Society
www.smallisbeautiful.org

* * * * * * * *

from Becoming Native to This Place, by Wes Jackson
Thirteenth Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, October 1993

I came to talk about becoming native to this place this continent. I can do no better than to quote Wendell Berry in The Unsettling of America. He said that we came to this country with vision but not with sight: "We came with visions of former places but not the sight to see where we are." Later, in a letter he wrote to me, he said that as we came across the continent, cutting the forests and plowing the prairies, we never knew what we were doing because we have never known what we were undoing. Dan Luten, the now retired geographer at Berkeley, in a paper maybe twenty-five years ago, said that we came poor people to a seemingly empty land that was rich in resources. And based on that perception of reality "poor people," "seemingly empty land," "rich" political, educational, economic, and religious institutions. Now we've become rich people in an increasingly poor land that's filling up, and the old institutions don't hold. So here we are. We patch things up, give them a lick and a promise, and things don't quite work. . . .

From Oklahoma to Saskatchewan, from east of Denver deep into the Midwest, thousands of small towns and rural communities are dying. Thousands of them!

Schools are being closed, churches are being closed. This decline is the consequence of what Wendell Berry talked about in The Unsettling of America, explaining the title¹s double meaning: the unsettling of these towns and communities with the migration of people to urban areas has led to an unsettling of the culture at large with its rising crime rate, increasing national debt, increase in soil erosion, and increase in chemical contamination of the countryside. We have to face it: the reward for destroying communion is power: power over nature, power over the indigenous, power over the constantly newly emerging redskins. Rather than looking to Washington, we must start thinking that small is beautiful. One way to effect this change would be to introduce a second major into our universities and colleges. Right now there's only one major: upward mobility. It's the major which accommodates the original set of assumptions we settled the continent with, the mind-set that fuels the extractive economy. The new major would be "homecoming." It would educate people to go back to a place and dig in. We need a new generation of settlers, people who could go into these places with a fundamentally different mind-set, with the skills for what we might call "ecological community accounting."

* * * * * * * *

from: Call for a Revolution in Agriculture, by Wes Jackson
First Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, October 1981

Homo sapiens is now a species out of context, and the most out-of-context activity, it seems to me, is the very production of food. . . .

In my view agriculture will remain a tragedy so long as it is kept separate from the problem of the human condition. And the human condition will remain a tragic problem as long as it is kept separate from the problem of agriculture. . . .

To get at both what the human is and what agriculture is, I think we must study and understand what Wendell Berry calls the "natural integrities" that preceded agriculture. For my part of the country that would be the abundant prairies, which had supported the Indians and greeted the settlers. Here in the east it would be the deciduous forests. . . .

Toward the end of Nature's Economy, a fine paperback on the roots of ecology, the author, Donald Worster, builds a strong case for mistrusting ecology as an operating paradigm for future human action. He takes pains to show that the science of ecology has been studied and understood in the language of economics and industry by people who, whether they know it or not, not only betray their belief in the economic system in which we now operate but also betray their belief in the industrial society.

As early as 1910 one of the pioneers of modern ecology said: "Bio-economically speaking, it is the duty of the plant world to manufacture the food-stuffs for its complement, the animal world . . . . Every day, from sunrise until sunset, myriads of [plant] laboratories, factories, workshops and industries all the world over, on land and in the sea, in the earth and on the surface soils are incessantly occupied, adding each its little contribution to the general fund of organic wealth." We may think, "Well, that was a long time ago when such language was used in describing nature," but less than fifteen years ago a noted ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, said, "Like any factory the river's productivity is limited by its supply of raw materials and its efficiency in converting these materials into finished products." The metaphors used in understanding ecology, Worster says, are more than casual or incidental, for they express the dominant tendency in the scientific ecology of our time. Nature has been transformed into a reflection of the modern corporate industrial system.

Unfortunately, ecology has had little or no influence on economics; rather, economics has tainted ecology. It's been a one-way street.

The problem is, where do we begin? What do we build on? I think that a long time ago nature gave us two important ecological concepts that became religious philosophy and which both will need emphasis in a new ecology.

Both are central to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, though in recent times they have been understood in rather shallow ways. These concepts center around the idea of redemption and the idea of transcendence. Regarding the first, nature has shown us that we can damage an area, yet it will redeem itself and to some degree. This idea of redemption is a source of hope: abuse a hillside and the sins of the father will visit the sons even unto the third and fourth generations but not necessarily forever, for redemption of the wasted hillside is possible if loving care is given it.

The idea of transcendence is one that even the most ardent zealot of reductionist science can't ignore. For example, there is nothing about the properties of hydrogen and oxygen that gives a clue about the properties of water. The properties of both are completely transcended by what water can do and how it figures in our lives. We can move up the hierarchy of the sciences and see that at every step of the way more is different. As we approach the cultural level, more specifically the agricultural level, we have a clear example of the power of transcendence in the Amish as compared to the conventional farmer of todayS The Amish farmer probably never had a single vocational agriculture course in high school. The Amish simply believe that the highest calling ordained by God is to be stewards of the land, and this duty is tightly tied to an aesthetic ideal. Because economics is not foremost in their thinking, they are able to make sound economic decisions. By being obedient to a higher calling, "All these other things are added unto them." This is a practical kind of transcendence that all can experience. It requires no guru or priest or minister. That the consistently sound economic decisions are made by people who do not make economics primary should be no more surprising than the fact that water is more than the combined properties of hydrogen and oxygen. The idea of transcendence cuts through all and is essential to an ecological agriculture. It can go a long way toward helping us temper the unfortunate language we are saddled with, the reductionist language of economics and industry, which has been applied to ecology. It should help us soften the utilitarian point of view.

If we do one thing that is ecologically right, we have reason to expect more than a multiplicative effect, indeed a transcending effect, just as when we do something that is ecologically wrong, it works in the other direction. If what we are talking about is not real, as the rigorous reductionists insist, then neither is water.

The implications of an ecological agriculture in which some of nature¹s information is allowed to operate are unforeseeable at the moment, but it is nevertheless something we can trust. This approach to agriculture is clearly in the spirit and teachings of our brother E. F. Schumacher, who really was talking about transcendence in his descriptions of meta-economics. It is both interesting and important that Schumacher, economist that he was, was very much interested in ecology. He was president of the Soil Society of England. He was a strong advocate of planting and caring for trees, which he saw as more than bearers of fruit, for he thought of them as symbols of what he called "permanence," which he used as a synonym for sustainability. He was a man who grew a garden, which by definition consists of patches. A man whose primary message was transcendence of the economic world saw the perennial trees as redeemers of the landscape.

Our Shifting Focus / EcoVersity

Shaking Up Our Beliefs
GALT, CA, Mar. 17, 2004 (CIP, by Carol Brodie) - Book Review: Bowers, C.A. (1995). Educating for an Ecologically Sustainable Culture: Rethinking Moral Education, Creativity, Intelligence, and Other Modern Orthodoxies; State University of New York

If you’re looking for a quick, easy read, this is not the book for you. However, if you’re looking for a book that will motivate you and at the same time shake the roots of what you accept as true, this book is worth it. It certainly was for me, although it truly did unsettle me from what I thought was an educated, well-informed platform. The foundations were shaken, and yet now are renewed, expanded and stronger.

Written in cerebral fashion, this text describes a growing field of interest: bringing environmental sustainability into our elementary, secondary and higher educational systems. However, Bowers goes further. He challenges us to go deep and examine the basic metaphors, hidden traditions and message systems in our culture. He challenges our well-intentioned efforts, what we know about creativity, how our elders are excluded from our educational system and our thoughts on conservatism.

Bowers builds on the propositions put forward by such individuals as Leopold, Durning, Scollon, and Orr. Their approaches to the larger narrative in our cultures – what he calls the metanarrative tradition -- demonstrate how we need to move away from a traditional western approach that sees the individual as the basic social unit and source of moral judgment and, instead, adopt a perspective that sees the individual as giving personal expression to larger cultural patterns.

One of the several cultural traditions that Bowers challenges us to rethink is our modern ideal of creativity. While we have all been taught to think that creativity is a positive attribute, it actually contributes little to an ecologically-oriented relationship between humans and the world around them. He argues that the current ideal of a creative individual needs to be revised in a way that takes the emphasis off the individual. He believes that more attention should be given to the role of creativity modeled by eco-centered cultures, and encouraging an understanding of the artists that have come before us.

One of the particularly motivating chapters in the book deals with bringing transgenerational communication into the educational process. Bowers states that we need to learn to distinguish between simply an older person who is promoting a consumer-driven, technological society and someone who is an elder in the traditional sense. We also need to encourage the re-emergence of the elder tradition, no longer allowing our culture to marginalize the importance of older people in society.

How can we recognize, and learn from elders in our community? First, we need to realize that the teachings of our elders are EVERYWHERE. But, on a deeper level, we should recognize and weed out the messages that are human-centered and environmentally damaging. Bowers feels that part of this task falls on the teachers in our schools and universities. Bringing elders into a school can be challenging – yet rewarding – for the teachers, students and the elders themselves.

Educators have shown that they can inspire us – they were at the forefront of removing gender bias from educational curricula; however, the task of recognizing ecologically responsible elders is even more daunting than finding female artists, scientists, etc. To find an appropriate elder, first look for someone that can communicate the link between human experience, culture and ecosystems through narratives, song and dance. Secondly, seek those that speak and model behavior in ways that help the young experience the connection between their own lives and the accumulated wisdom. And lastly, look for those that keep the past alive by upholding communal ceremonies and folk practices, as well as community practices that do not have an adverse effect on the environment.

Conservatism is another ideology that Bowers challenges us to rethink our ideas about. He says that conservatism is actually a complex and misunderstood belief system, and his brand of it is not represented by Jessie Helms and Rush Limbaugh. Conservatism should be rethought, the author states, because environmental ethics cannot be reconciled with the liberal emphasis on the rights of the individual. He stresses the need for a cultural/bio-conservatism that is concerned with the modes of community, agriculture, work and art that improve the quality of human life by living more in harmony with natural systems.

Cultural/bio conservatism involves some core beliefs and values that are shared by both primal cultures and contemporary thinkers. They include the following:
1.) an understanding of time that is in tune with the cycles of the different elements in nature. When we impose individual needs on other systems of life with longer life cycles, problems can result
2.) place-based knowledge
3.) an emphasis that is not anthropocentric
4.) a dependency upon a community’s elders to carry forward accumulated knowledge

In his final chapter Bowers discusses some of the existing educational models of community and environmental renewal, such as the Foxfire Curriculum, the Common Roots Program, and the Ecoliteracy Program. While he admits that none of them are perfect, he puts them forward as models that hold promise. The Foxfire Curriculum, for example, is one that he feels – if modified – could become an educational model that would connect community with environmental restoration. The challenge for the Common Roots Program, he admits, will be adapting it to urban situations. And the Ecoliteracy Program is a fledgling program, yet is built upon some superb principles: interdependence, sustainability, ecological cycles, partnership, and diversity.

While the author seems hesitant to admit any optimism, he does relate hopefulness about the future. He is confident that, once our culture realizes the danger we are headed towards, it will begin to change its metanarratives and patterns towards a new direction. I would strongly suggest that you make the effort to read this book – even though it may take several times through to grasp it all. The concepts he puts forward fashion the basis for a discussion that should be held – that needs to be held -- by teachers, educational administrators, academia, and anyone else interested in the possibilities of changing the foundations by which we live our lives and educate future generations.

Carol Brodie
Galt, CA
orcalady2003@yahoo.com.