What we want to get done
Sustainability Action Programs are how we affect positive change. Each Program addresses some aspect of our triple bottom line: Ecology-Energy-Economy. We are working for ecological sustainability, energy descent, and economic resilience – each one being impacted by and at the same time reinforcing the others. The core principles that guide our Program activities are:
- Action oriented solutions
- Personal lifestyle change and institutional policy change
- Societal in scope through mobilizing people locally
- Re-localizing our economy
- Re-skilling people
- Social justice
We are not a coffee klatch or a book club or a salon. Members organize activities like solar dehydrator workshops, community gardens, or air pollution monitoring. Or we spur group advocacy for policy change in bicycle transportation, urban agriculture, or environmental preservation. Some Programs have “champions” who energize the actions, while others are more or less dormant, depending on who is active in our organization. We’re always interested in new members with new strategies and new energy. Check us out. One of the following Programs may be just for you.
Some ideas we’re working on
Bicycles & Alternative Transit
Promoting bicycles, complete streets, car sharing, and neighborhood electric vehicles, including public infrastructure and pro-active public policy
Food Sovereignty and Permaculture
Local control of food and food policy, permaculture workshops, tours, and crop mobs
Lawrence Food Not Lawns
How to turn your yard into a garden, and your neighborhood into a community
Prime Farmland Preservation
Protecting Capability I & II farmland from urban development and industrial land uses
Diesel Health Project
Promoting environmental justice in neighborhoods exposed to pollution, by monitoring and enforcement
Energy Conservation & Renewables
Reducing our carbon footprint by promoting a carbon diet, an energy diet, conservation, and decentralized renewable energy.
Lawrence Creates Makerspace
A co-operative community space as an innovation incubator with tool sharing, reuse, and recycling
Water Rights & Watersheds
Protecting the water commons, the source of all life, from privatization and contamination, and restoring our watersheds.
Local Money Local Food
Fostering money literacy, and implementing a local currency through a buy-local campaign focused on local food