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