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Vibrant Communities
All communities have the energy and creativity to
develop innovative, lasting solutions to local economic, environmental, and
social challenges. Helping people get beyond conflict and work together to overcome their challenges is a core component of our work.
We believe connections between rural and urban communities, and collaboration between diverse interests and individuals, are essential to achieving long-term economic and environmental health.
Through partnerships with community leaders, businesses, local citizens, and diverse interest groups, we help develop collaborative, locally adapted approaches to conservation and economic development.
Features of a vibrant community:
- Fosters and celebrates healthy people and biodiversity, and the linkages between them
- Continually invests in capacities, institutions, and partnerships that protect, restore, and enhance natural, social, and economic capital
- Actively monitors and disseminates status and trends, and shares knowledge and know-how
- Promotes inclusive, collaborative, stakeholder-driven planning and adaptive action in response to changing conditions and knowledge
- Prefers local products and services that result in triple-bottom-line profits
- Has growing options and opportunities because its citizens choose to increasingly internalize the local, regional, global, and intergenerational impacts of their decisions and actions
Stories of Vibrant Communities
- Interfaith Network for Earth Concerns
- The Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon created the Interfaith Network for Earth Concerns to better organize the faith community around environmental concerns.
- Rebuilding Center
- To reunite and meet the needs of the neighborhood, Shane Endicott started the non-profit Our United Villages, and the Rebuilding Center was its first success.
- FREE GEEK
- Oso Martin pursued a good idea and created a successful non-profit that refurbishes unwanted computers for free and recycles what isn't given away or sold.
News
- Oregon House Committee meets on klamath dam removal; diverse settlement leaders urge quick action
- A group of stakeholders representing diverse interests urge quick action on a bill that would remove four dams on the Klamath River and serve as an important step forward toward Basin restoration and salmon recovery.
- Klamath Tribes Build Partnership to Develop Biomass Facility
- The Klamath Tribes announce plans to develop a biomass cogeneration facility in the upper Klamath Basin to advance renewable energy, forest restoration, and local community development.
- SNW Board Chair wins 2008 Kerr Award from High Desert Museum
- Jane O’Keeffe honored for sustainable economic and natural resource management.