BUILDING COMMON GROUND: LAUNCH THURSDAY, 2/2/2012

29 Jan BUILDING COMMON GROUND: LAUNCH THURSDAY, 2/2/2012

Ongoing Discussions of Community, Civility and Compassion kick off with Transition to a Slower Future: How Community Resilience and Slow Money could lead to less work and more fun

The Telluride-based New Community Coalition partners with the Wilkinson Public Library to create a Building Common Ground program. The series is funded in part by the American Library Association and the Fetzer Institute – see related post. – and we have invited very special guests to start things off.  In our previous post, we talked the Transition Town movement and our speaker Michael Brownlee. Next up: Woody Tasch of the Slow Money Alliance .

I was privileged to meet Woody at the first Slow Money gathering held in Santa Fe in 2009. I had read Woody’s book, “Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered,” and was fascinated by the information and concepts it contains. The writing presents “the path for bringing money back down to earth – philosophically, strategically, and pragmatically – and with an entrepreneurial spirit that is informed by decades of work by the thousands of CEOs, investors, grant-makers, food producers and consumers who are seeding the restorative economy.”

Woody formed the non-profit Slow Money organization to “catalyze the flow of investment capital to small food enterprises and to promote new principles of fiduciary responsibility to support sustainable agriculture and the emergence of a restorative economy.” In 2010, Utne Reader named him one of “25 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” and a whole new term has been coined around his ideas – nurture capital – that cuts to the heart of the matter.

Woody is Chairman Emeritus of Investor’s Circle, a nonprofit network of investors that facilitates the flow of major funds to sustainability-minded companies and venture funds. In the 1990s, he was  treasurer of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and founding chairman of the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance, pioneering the integration of asset management and philanthropic purpose.

At these inaugural local events Woody, with Michael, plans to delve deeper into Slow Money principles, give us a some background on the current speed of monetary transactions in the world and why slowing things down makes sense at the local level.

As a sustainability professional and high-altitude farmer, Slow Money principles resonate deeply with me. One of the ideas asks us to consider three questions:

• What would the world be like if we invested 50% of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?

• What if there were a new generation of companies that gave away 50% of their profits?

• What if there were 50% more organic matter in our soil 50 years from now?

I strongly believe our future depends on understanding, embracing and pushing the boundaries of these concepts and bringing them to fruition with local ACTIONS. Please join TNCC, the Wilkinson Public Library, and our two stimulating speakers. For more information call me at 970-728-1340 or email: coordinator.tncc@gmail.com

EVENTS DETAILS:

These speakers present:
Thursday evening, February 2nd at 5:30 p.m. at the Wilkinson Library Program Room. We’ll have a community pot luck and gather to hear our speakers. The library will provide a few basic dishes, and we’re asking those who come to bring a dish to share – of any kind or flavor.

Friday morning they will speak at our regular Green Business Roundtable at 8:30 a.m. in the Program Room of the Wilkinson Library. Breakfast is provided, with donations greatly appreciated.

And a special Ridgway event will be held Friday evening at 7:00 p.m. in the Ouray County 4-H Center just outside of Ridgway.

As always, for more information, check out our website at www.newcommunitycoalition.org or call us at 970-728-1340 or email coordinator.tncc@gmail.com.

To learn more, press the “play” button and listen to Susan Viebrock’s interview: