Our yearly fund raising letter -- October 15, 2009

Current Neahtawanta Center Program and Activities

Upcoming Events this Fall

Great Lakes Bioneers Conference 2009 <glbconference.org>
This will be the 8th year that the Center has co-hosted the conference with SEEDS, our sister organization. Scheduled for October 16 - 18, at Northwestern Michigan College, the conference offers hopeful, positive solutions to many of our most pressing problems. This year’s theme, /Community Resilience/, reflects a major project focus here at the Center. The three day conference features plenary speakers beamed live from the main Bioneers Conference <bioneers.org> in California; many workshops on topics such as renewable energy, wellness based health care, water, and more; great local food and music; and, perhaps most important, an opportunity to connect with others, to cross-pollinate ideas and create collaborative projects. The Great Lakes Bioneers Committee of about 20 people, another dozen people on sub-committees and countless volunteers make this conference happen. It is the grassroots!

350 Campaign: Addressing Climate Change <tc350.org>
Founded by author Bill McKibben, the campaign to lower the CO2 levels back down to 350 parts/million; NREC and MLUI (Michigan Land Use Institute) are collaborating along with an ad hoc committee of individuals and other organizations to organize locally on Oct. 24th, the International Day of Climate Action <350.org>. We’re hoping to draw at least 350 people to the Open Space park in Traverse City where we’re planning a giant skit in which we spell out the number 350. A photo will be taken that we will send on to the 350 Campaign where it will be uploaded onto a web site. Afterwards, there will be a rally with music and speakers at the TC Opera House <tc350.org> and an opportunity to send messages to our congress people about this critical issue. If you are a local, or want to come to Traverse City to participate, please show up at the Open Space at 1:00 PM, rain or shine. You will be able to participate in an action of global significance, sending a message to national leaders as they prepare for Global Climate Treaty negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

Post Bioneers Conference: Building Community Resilience
NREC and ISLAND (Institute for Sustainable Living, Art and Design) are co-sponsoring a one-day conference, /Building/ /Community Resilience/, the afternoon of November 7th at the Oleson Center on the campus of NMC. This is an opportunity to put some of the resilience principles into action on personal and community levels and keep the Bioneers energy flowing. The event will highlight some practical do-it-yourself projects, as well as offer opportunities to get involved with local movements and organizations, such as Bay Bucks, the Grand Vision and Transition Town. There will also be lots of Open Space to continue conversations that were generated at the Bioneers Conference. Join us for a practical and inspirational afternoon!

Ongoing Projects

Investigating Resilience in our Community
Last spring we began a conversation about the concept of resilience with interested folks who gathered at the Inn. The Center launched a project called Investigating Resilience. We invite you to help us investigate, report on, and tell stories that illustrate the characteristics (principles) of resilience in our social-ecological system (SES), which can be thought of as our community.
We will explore the state of our community’s resilience through the use of various social and ecological indicators. We are looking for examples of resilience in some specific areas within our social community, such as food systems, health care, culture, energy, art and economics. We plan to use a multi-media approach, including video, audio, and face-to-face conversations. Let us know if you’d like to get involved! Several projects in the works:

• Culture/Art: Barns Quilt Video Project: supporting, preserving and promoting art and culture is an important part of the resilience movement; Bob is creating a videotape of the hanging of quilt squares on barns on the Old Mission Peninsula.

• Phragmites Video Project: in collaboration with the Watershed Center, the Neahtawanta Center is producing an educational video which explains the serious threat to the Great Lakes, specifically Grand Traverse Bay, of the spread of a wetland invasive, phragmites.

Media/Internet
The Center hosts four web sites that reflect our work: <www.nrec.org <http://www.nrec.org>>, which contains general information about the Center as well as resources and relevant articles that are updated often; <traversepeacealerts.org>, for current information about the local peace activities; <traverseareaprogressives.org>, which has the calendar of local events, and ventingmedia.com, which contains videos on various events and actions. In addition, our server hosts other community organizations’ websites.
• two recent videos that Bob produced can be seen on ventingmedia.com:
• a recent talk by attorney, Candace Gorman, who spoke in Traverse City about the situation with the Guantanamo prisoners
• a couple of health care videos that Bob put together; one showing local support for health care reform; the other comparing the pro-rally and the anti-reform rally, called /A Tale of Two Rallies./

The Center supports and utilizes a local media resource, the Northwest Michigan Community Media Center/Upnorth 2, housed at LIAA (Land Information Access Association). Bob recently spoke at a summit to try to prevent “channel slamming”, a proposal by Charter Communications to move the channel to an obscure programming location. Let us know if you would like to know more about this, and how you can help.

The Center is very fortunate to have David (Grips) Krumlauf on our board. David is the chief technologist for the Pierce Family Foundation and helps keep the center’s technology current. He has become active with NTEN (Nonprofit Technology Network <nten.org>), and one focus is the use of social networking technology for nonprofits.

Collaboration with Other Groups

The Center continues to play an important role in the community through collaboration with other groups. Joining forces and sharing resources with other nonprofit organizations is an efficient way to maximize all of our efforts and reach as many people as possible.

Peace work
The Center continues to collaborate with local area peace groups, especially Mideast Just Peace, to educate and organize around peace issues, as well as videotape marches, speakers and other peace events.

For the past seven years we have helped to sponsor a peace march to protest the war in Iraq. This year, there were several speakers before the march and a rally afterwards at the Post Office where the names of Michigan’s fallen soldiers were read. You can see this and other videos on one of our web sites, <ventingmedia.com>

Each year, the Center sponsors the Hiroshima Candlefloat on the Boardman River. The gathering begins with a circle in which we share our hopes and thoughts about peace, followed by the creation and launching of the little candlefloats; participants walk along the river in silence as the candles float down the river. This simple ritual, which we have done for more than 20 years, symbolizes our commitment to peace and honors the victims of all wars.

Traverse Area Progressives
This is a loose-knit coalition of organizations and individuals who are active in various progressive causes, such as: peace and justice, water and land, social change, environmental sustainability, human rights, and Bioneers. NREC has helped with organizing at least one meeting a year, usually in January, in which each group has a chance to share its plans and projects for the coming year. We host the Progressives Calendar where groups can post their events at <traverseareaprogressives.org>

SEEDS, Earthwork Music Collective and Island (Institute for Sustainable Living, Art and Natural Design) The Center continues to work with these organizations by collaborating on projects, helping to spread their news and supporting their work in whatever ways we can. We are thrilled at the emergence of younger activists becoming a force in our community.

Michigan Land Use Institute is the current convening organization assisting the Food and Farming network. Bob has continued to work with the Food and Farming network, helping to facilitate meetings and managing the technical aspects of the their web site: FoodandFarmingNetwork.org