Click to access the final schedule (page 1, page 2) for the event: Financial Permaculture: The Greening of A Rural American Community, October 24-28, 2008 in Hohenwald, Tennessee.
Click HERE to view a flow chart of event activities.
Here is a description of the event by Jennifer Dauksha-English, Director, Center for Holistic Ecology
Overview of the Financial Permaculture Green Business Summit
CONCEPT:
The October 24-28 Summit is drawing nearer. We wanted to post some basic information about the Summit process. This Summit is a participatory event. Organizers, facilitators and content instructors will engage course participants in both conversation and design. We’ll be consolidating existing tools and strategies whilst collaborating to expand the working models so that they can be used by a wide demographics. Our aim is to gather together people from as many diverse backgrounds as possible. With diverse representation from the business, environmental and local communities we will engage participatory problem solving and establish forums for communicating about the challenges facing the environment and the global economy.
EVENT BREAKDOWN:
Friday is a full day of content from some of the leading experts in Permaculture and Business. The day is set for the green community to meet the business world and vis a versa. Instructors will be providing course participants with basic principles of Permaculture Design and Business 101. Mid-day course participants will get to break out and listen to their choice of business instructors. We’ll end the day with a world cafe and some social networking.
Saturday’s focus will be on basic financial principles. Catherine will lead a team of 4 other financial experts, as they present strategies for investing in local goods and services to stimulate and sustain local economies. Participants will partake in an investment design simulation on both local investors and the town of Hohenwald. Saturday evening we’ll end with another break out by various instructors and time for social networking.
Sunday and Monday are the primary design days. Participants will choose between participating on one of the following teams: Green Business Incubation, Ethanol Production and Distribution, Building and Designers Association and/or supply and salvage store, Agricultural Cooperatives.
In the evenings these two days we’ll get to hear from Catherine on Solari Investment Circles and hear from a panel of Permaculture experts on successful economic development models worldwide.
Tuesday will be presentations. Teams will first present to all of the business, finance and Permaculture instructors. After a round of feedback the participants will have time to make revisions before they do their final presentations. The final review will be done by a panel of 20 local business experts from Tennessee. These experts will be economic stakeholders in the community.
Details about the break out teams:
Ethanol – most of the people involved so far have shown a primary interest in: small scale home and farm size stills for production and a local county size distribution center.
Green Business Incubation – green business start-up agency, either virtual and/or brick and mortar. The idea is that we may be able to incubate some of the other businesses being designed as part of the simulation.
Building – there are two interests under this category. One is an association of contractors. These contractors might be designers, builders, landscapers, solar installers, etc… and an administrative agency would act as a hub for connecting consumer with contractors. The second piece to this category is an interest in creating a supply and salvage store that carries materials that these contractors would need. Both the store and the association could serve a larger area than just this county.
Agriculture – here also there has been two sub-categories identified. One is the potential for an on-line and brick and mortar farmers market and the other is the development of a community kitchen.
GOALS ARTICULATION:
There are three overall goals for the event:
1. Local Participation:
– Local Economic Development
– New Green Businesses Incubated
– Education
2. Model Green Business Development
– Consolidate and add value to existing models
– Replication of simulated designs
– National participants disseminate model in their communities
– Generic template for green business development
3. Model Community Development
– Consolidate and add value to existing models
– Replication of simulated designs
– National participants disseminate model in their communities
– Generic template for community development
– Networking forum
– International conversation
Summary of possible outcomes:
1. Specific business designs for Hohenwald
2. Generic models for specific businesses
3. Generic business start-up template
4. Specific and Generic local economic development model
5. Specific and Generic community development model and networking template
TEAMS primary focus should be on the development of practical and applicable business designs relevant to Hohenwald and Lewis County.
Here are some additional goals that Catherine sent to her church:
1. Have a great time and enjoy the community of being together;
2. Create linkages between networks of economic development,
permaculture and finance leaders;
3. Enrich templates for community development and green business start up;
4. Begin the development of business start up and investments that
contribute to the financial health of Hohenwald on a permanent basis
5. Connect through blogs and videos/audios to collaborate with people
around the world doing similar things;
6. Create a powerfully hopeful vision of how changing the flows of money
in an ecosystem can help to transform our situation that will help
expand options and build political and
economic support for business, community and government leaders
across American
ADDING VALUE:
The strategic value of this event on the local community is three fold: 1. Educational Value: We’re offering a cutting edge educational opportunity to an otherwise disadvantaged rural area. This event is bringing national attention to Middle Tennessee, highlighting the area as a prototype community/region successfully facing current day challenges; 2. Economic Development: Through the event we’ll be simulating the design of 5 new green businesses to be developed in the area. We’ve already held 4 design sessions open to the public to prepare for the October simulation. At these sessions we surveyed the businesses most needed in the region. We’ve enlisted more than 20 local representatives, senators, bankers, brokers, lawyers, etc., to assess the feasibility of the designs produced through the October simulation; 3. Environmental Protection: The event is going to be a ‘Green’ event. We’ll be calculating and then offsetting our carbon footprint. The offset will go directly to planting trees in this county and to local biochar production. We’re implementing every strategy that we can to ‘Green’ the event. We’ll be marketing the event locally as ‘Green’ and educating the local participants about our efforts.
The strategic value of this event on the national or global community will be most noticed through our collaborative post event forum. Documentation, communication and outreach are an integral part of our design strategy because we want the idea of Financial Permaculture and the design model for community economic development that we’re co-creating to permeate media networks. We’ll accomplish this through our organizational network and our outreach campaign.
Our organizational network consists of an interdisciplinary coalition of individuals from the business, non-profit and education sectors who have come together to create a forum to address the economic and environmental challenges of the day. There are eight organizations involved with the event. Through grassroots organizing, participatory design, and democracy we are working with local communities to create holistic and regenerative economic solutions for local and international sustainability. We’re opening up the idea of Financial Permaculture over blogs and wikis on-line to encourage cross-pollination between professions and diverse demographics to further build on the idea and increase media hits. We hope to have open and diverse portals of entry for people around the world to join in this conversation and development.
Some Additional Information and Links
Here are the final team assignments for Sunday and Monday’s design days:
Ethanol
Lead – Pat Therrien
Facilitator – Greg Landua
Finance Expert – Court Skinner
Permaculture Expert – Albert Bates
Incubation
Lead – Jonathan Cloud
Facilitator – Debbie Landers
Finance Expert – Jason Eaton
Permaculture Expert – Andy Langford
Farm and Food
Lead – Eric Wagner and Bob Waldrop
Facilitator – Thomas Hupp
Finance Expert – Anais Star
Permaculture Expert – Ethan Roland
Building
Lead – Connie Sharp
Facilitator – Liora Adler
Finance Expert – Carolyn Betts
Permaculture Expert – Matthew English
*** Each team will also have a Gaia University Associate as IT support and general support for the team.
Location:
The event location has been changed to: the Blondy Church of God at 529 Swan Street, Hohenwald, TN 38462. This location is only 1.5 miles from the original location and all local shuttles will still apply. Emily Wacker will leave local shuttle information at the check-in desk of the Embassy Inn, Good Enough Inn, Fall Hollow Village, Thousand Trails and Ridgetop. You must inquire about ride shares at the Ecovillage Training Center. All other accommodations do not have planned shuttles or ride share available. Most of our instructors and team either have cars or have someone in their party who has a vehicle.
For those of you coming Friday, please plan to be at the Church on October 24 between 7:30-8:30 am. All instructors and facilitators must register to receive appropriate information and name tags. There are 3 large buildings in the complex. The Family Life Center (the largest building) is to the west. The Sanctuary is in the middle. The Office building is to the East. We will be meeting in the Office Building for our first session and registration on Friday. Saturday and Sunday we will be in the Sanctuary building – please come in through the far east doors nearest the office buildings. There will be signs.