We (Natalie and Gabrielle) just returned from a 5-day regional training in Chicago organized by Grand Aspirations and man, was it awesome!  We met and became friends with fellow Summer of Solutions program leaders from the Twin Cities, Detroit, Iowa City, Chicago, West Virginia, Hartford CT, and the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts.  Our Middleton, WI program, Growing Food and Sustainability, was the only brand new program that was part of this Midwest gathering, so we had the incredible experience of receiving advice and support from many seasoned program leaders.  Thank you for sharing your stories of success, failure, and personal insight with us!

Every single training was engaging and eye-opening, so it’s almost impossible to share only a few thoughts, but here are some ideas that really stuck with me.

• EVERYONE cares deeply about at least one of the four values that Grand Aspirations embodies: sustainability, prosperity, justice, and community.  By integrating all of these, Summer of Solutions programs like ours can involve people traditionally left out of the “environmental movement”.

• Our current social, political, and economic system is not working for a vast number of American (and global) citizens, and their failures hit already marginalized groups the hardest.  We can choose to create new systems that strengthen communities, sustain individuals, and value our environment.

• The transition is already happening. Cities like Detroit led the way for the expansion of American manufacturing, and they were also the first to be abandoned by our economic system.  Now, out of necessity, they are leading the way again, this time in revolutionary green economy ventures.

• Creating the future that we want to see means making it sustainable, both environmentally and financially.  By thinking about ways to grow businesses out of
  

  Raised bed vegetable garden installation...this could be your yard!

  our projects, we can provide needed products, services, jobs, and job training to our communities.  In Middleton, we plan to start a raised bed vegetable garden installation business and a bike-powered composting business.  Both will train high school students and post-high school youth in green entrepreneurship, nonprofit administration, and hands-on job skills.

• Personal (and community) transformation is dependent upon personal sustainability.  We should strive to create jobs and experiences that people will be happy and satisfied dedicating their lives to.  In other words, we have to take care of each other and ourselves.

Whew!  I know that was kind of heavy, but I do believe in taking a step back every now and then to realize that our little project here in Middleton, WI is part of something much bigger.

We arrived home with a great sense of empowerment, inspiration, and responsibility.  We have so much to do to get our program ready but there is so much possibility!

We are starting our collaboration with the Middleton High School Ecology Club and AP Environmental Science class next week.  We are also starting to bring together a team of students and community members who plan to help launch Growing Food and Sustainability in a number of ways.  If you are interested in taking a more active role in the creation and running of this program, please contact us!  We are dedicating a lot to this project and we would love to expand our team!  In addition to “adult” community members, our goal is to have 5 full-time youth (under 30) participants and 5 high school interns signed-on by June.  Please see the “Get Involved > Participate” page of our website for more details.

** If you are interested in becoming a full or part-time participant in our program this summer, please fill out this online application.  If you are interested in becoming a high school intern, we will be posting an application soon! **

Let’s rock it, Middleton!
Gabrielle

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

For those of you watching the development of this blog as a space for solutionaries growing the green economy, check out this report on the growth of our blog in 2011:

Click here to see the complete report.

Last week was the second of three regional Summer of Solutions gatherings hosted by Grand Aspirations.

For those who aren’t clear, Summer of Solutions (SOS) is a program of Grand Aspirations (GA), a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit.

As with the Eastern Gathering in West Virginia and the Central Gathering in Chicago, the West Coast Gathering brought together a circle of incredibly talented organizers and bore the fruit of their collective brainpower and energy.

The idea that such groups of people are working together to create local solutions on the national scale leaves me very inspired. The potential of such a powerful cast of Solutionaries collaborating together is truly explosive (in the reciprocal sense, of course).

With such invigorating conferences taking place across the country this month, I can only imagine what the energy level will be come August, when Solutionaries from every program gather in one city for our national gathering.

As we continue to share our stories, lessons and successful practices, we will continue to grow and spread change to local communities. We hope you will join us.

Sorry about the audio problems last night.  We were in an internet free area, and had to try and do the best we could with what we had.  New streams are up (with real audio) and can be viewed in the channel’s archive.  More updates about live streams will be forthcoming.  Streaming live now

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sos-sessions

Session: GA History, Vision and Case Studies

Tonight at 7:30-9:30 p.m. CST we will be live streaming from our session at this site:

http://www.ustream.tv/user/SOSMidwestGathering/shows

Click on the channel that SOS Sessions.  There will be advertising, but after a brief commercial you will be able to view and hear the session.  If you are unable to view it live, there will be an opportunity later to view the archived footage from the live session.  

It is becoming more and more apparent that our world is resting on a system that is failing people. The most unfortunate victims of this system are young people. The aim of Full Circles Foundation is to nurture strong girls, a fair economy, and a healthy world in hopes that these young women are able to reach their full potential. Full Circles Foundation was established last year as a Summer of Solutions program in Raleigh, NC. I became one of the program leaders for Full Circles Foundation in Raleigh. After the summer ended, I returned to my home in Lexington, KY, and, with program leaders Austyn Gaffney and Lindsey Jagoe, decided to replicate the program.
In our program, we will be working with girls ages 11 to 15. These are middle school ages, specifically chosen because of the rapid transitions girls experience during this time. We provide a safe space for active learning to facilitate and enrich connections between the human and natural environment. Our program looks to reconcile differences in class, community, age, education, ethnicity, race, religion, and gender in our community. As we look to the future, we want to continue reevaluating these objectives in order to ensure the sustainability of the program.
Our program leaders have had several inspiring meetings with our future partners. So far, we will be utilizing space at Transylvania University and Tuska Art gallery. Thanks to local artists and writers, we have already confirmed fashion design and writing workshops for our campers. We look forward to combining those projects into a showcase of the young girls’ work. Not yet confirmed, but other plans we have for the summer with our campers include gardening, hiking, cooking, feminine studies, all kinds of art and literature expression, and music.
We look forward to this new venture and collaboration with other Summer of Solutions programs in Grand Aspirations!

http://fullcirclesfoundation.org/

Our Program Leaders
Austyn Gaffney aegaffney12@gmail.com
Lauralee Crain lrcrain10@gmail.com
Lindsey Jagoe lindseyjagoe@gmail.com

Greetings from South Charleston, West Virginia! We’ve just wrapped up the first day of our first January Gathering to train program leaders in the skills they need to run their Summer of Solutions programs and to build community across programs. Today got off to a hectic and snowy start, but we closed with a fantastic session on the story of our organization and practice on how we can each tell our own stories.

Looking around the Rock Lake Community Center, I feel that this is a perfect space for us. It’s spacious — enough room for the Full Circles Foundation programs from Raleigh and Lexington to brainstorm together, for Duncan and Evan from Pioneer Valley to play music downstairs, for Jen and Joe from Hartford to make tea in the kitchen, and for four different teams and individuals to prepare trainings and logistics tomorrow. The space is in construction to make room for more, better, and more locally relevant programing — sound familiar? Moreover, it’s being shared with generosity, love, and a dedication towards a better world. Jenny, Dana, and Steve shared their stories and enthusiasm with us to welcome us here.

I am so excited to learn and grow with my fellow solutionaries over the next week!

Chris Morgan here! I’m very happy to introduce everyone to Denver’s Summer of Solutions! First, let me say that I wish I could write this introduction using the “we” pronoun, but I’m still looking for team leaders! Feel free to send any connections my way! Feel like coming to Denver? Email me!

The Idea

So here’s the idea. Let’s find some people who really care about growing, eating, and cooking food in the city, and we’ll live and learn together! What if we produce not only food to eat, but solutionaries to lead in this new, green economy? I’m confident that the handful of people who will come out for the summer of 2012 in Denver will finish as competent gardeners, if not entrepreneurs and advocates for urban agriculture and food justice in Denver. One of the best parts about this is that there are so many options in Denver to accomplish it! I have been lucky enough to connect with a number of great organizations to work in partnership with! I would love to tell you about a few of them! All of them influence me in some way when envisioning this summer! [I'm going to try to let them use their own words as much as I can.]

Greenleaf engages youth in urban agriculture, farming on available lots in neighborhoods that don’t have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. At GreenLeaf young people ages 14 – 18 earn a fair wage while they grow food for their communities and explore issues of health, nutrition, and social justice. The diverse crew of youth interns drives GreenLeaf’s innovative and project-based curriculum of intensive leadership development and asset-based community building. The young people also grow, challenging themselves and each other in an environment that creates lasting, just, and sustainable social change.

Slow Food Denver’s Seed To Table School Food Program creates meaningful relationships between young people and food in order to transform the school food system. By placing an emphasis on hands-on experiences, community interaction, and the pleasures of the table, SFD-STT projects help to strengthen the food communities of tomorrow by engaging youth today.

The GrowHaus is a non-profit urban farm and market in northeast Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood. Their mission is to grow healthy community through food access,production and education.

Cooking Matters empowers families with the skills, knowledge, and confidence to prepare healthy and affordable meals.

All of these programs and more inspire me to help contribute to solutions in our community. I have made several contacts with people to work in gardens, provide grocery store tours, and learn the skills around urban farming. I look forward to solidifying a program [or two] with the coming team leaders who will jump on board!

Chris Morgan

I grew up in Denver, went to college in Minnesota, and am currently part of the Colorado Vincentian Volunteers. I started traveling in 2005, and since then, I have been to El Salvador, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, U.A.E, and (Oh!) Canada. My degree is in peace studies, and I see food as a building block for all kinds of justice near and far! I love to cook anything you put in my fridge or pantry. I have had the best conversations while weeding in the garden. I’m trying to be a disciple of Jesus, which has a lot to do with where I’m trying to go with life. In May 2011, I gave a report to my Peace Studies department from the year 2041 about how I contributed to world peace by helping each yard in the United States to produce food. I want to talk with you. One of my favorite things is listening.

Please, let me know what you think! My email works great! christopher.p.morgan@gmail.com

I see some other programs I want to connect with across the country, and I’m looking forward to talking with those people very soon! Stay tuned for more exciting action from Denver, Colorado! [the only SoS in Mountain Standard Time! "the new frontier"]