From Smart Growth America
Choosing Our Community’s Future is designed for citizens who want to make a positive contribution to shaping the growth and development of their neighborhoods, towns and regions. This guidebook will help readers make rational, compelling arguments against poorly conceived plans, but more importantly, it will help them paint a vision of what they do want.
Launching a Solarize Campaign
Double the Solar in Your Town in Just 15 weeks
June 17, 2015, 12 – 1 p.m.
Solarize Upper Valley has helped residents in 24 towns go solar – over 300 residents to date and over 450 expected by the end of the year. What’s the secret to their success? Join New Hampshire Local Energy Solutions to find out. Hear from Vital Communities, the nonprofit responsible for coordinating Solarize Upper Valley, as well as the volunteer-installer team who brought Solarize to Randolph, Brookfield, and Braintree last winter. Many communities are launching Solarize campaigns across the Northeast, yours could be next.
Presenters:
Posted on Monadnock Sustainability Network
Monadnock Sustainability Network teamed up with students from Antioch University New England to bring community solar to the Monadnock region. This collaboration yielded a comprehensive evaluation of community solar; a public presentation and the formation of the Monadnock Community Solar Initiative (MCSi) steering committee. We are pleased to announce that the Monadnock Food Co-op will be the host site of our first community owned solar system.
From the Monadnock Time Exchange
On Thursday, June 4, the Monadnock Time Exchange (MTX) will host the documentary Time as Money 6-9pm in the auditorium of the Keene Public Library, Winter Street in Keene, NH.
Time banking began in this country in the 1980s while civil rights lawyer and former speechwriter for Robert Kennedy, Edgar Cahn, was lying in a hospital bed after a heart attack. This experience of feeling helpless, similar to the disenfranchised and unemployed, gave him the idea to adapt this system of money called ‘Time Dollars’ invented in post WWII Japan as a tool to connect people and neighbors.
“Time banking reinvents the means of getting what you need and want,” says MTX Membership Coordinator, Susan MacNeil. “Becoming a time bank member creates an alternative avenue for reciprocal interaction with one another by removing the need for cash outlay, thus reinventing currency from dollars to hours, or time. Need yard work done, rooms painted, transportation to medical appointments? Want a massage, organic meal prep, advice on how to organize your life? There is something for everyone when you’re a member of the Monadnock Time Exchange.”
The film screening is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served and a Q&A will follow. For more information, email us or call 603.313.0052.
Arts Alive has been selected to be the local host for the New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA) bi-annual conference on the creative economy, the Creative Communities Exchange (CCX), on June 2 and 3, 2015 in downtown Keene, New Hampshire.
Baked Beans and Fried Clams: How Food Defines a Region
June 6th: History Weekend at The Hancock Inn
On Saturday morning take a trip to nearby Harrisville, New Hampshire for a tour of one of the Monadnock region’s most exciting farms. Mayfair Farm is a small scale diversified farm and kitchen. On the farm they raise a variety of fruit, lamb and pork, specializing in artisanal sausages. Passionate about bringing the bounty of the farm into the kitchen, Sarah Heffron and Craig Thompson create foods that showcase a moment in time for private events and farm dinners.
For dinner at the inn on Saturday, join Edie Clark, writer for Yankee Magazine and author of ten books, for a talk that offers a celebration of regional food specialties along with an examination of how contemporary life has distanced us from these classics. What makes them special and how do…
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When Opportunity Stops Knocking: NH’s Kids and the American Dream
Roundtable Discussions
Tuesday, May 12, 6pm-9pm (sign in start at 5:30pm)
Kay Fox Room, Keene Public Library
More info and registration
Free Event – Everyone Welcome
This May, New Hampshire Listens is hosting twelve local conversations across the state that will engage residents in an important conversation about the increasing barriers our state’s children face in achieving their dreams. Research from the Carsey School and other sources will help frame the discussion. Attendees will learn about what the gaps are between the opportunities children have today compared with those of previous generations in our state. We invite you to join one of these conversations to weigh in with your experience and your perception of the opportunities, barriers, and prospects for future generations.
Via Facebook, Monadnock Buy Local focused on a different building block of our Local Living Economy each week — highlighting the businesses, organizations & individuals who are making these components stronger and more resilient in our region.
Read more about this project – Our Local Living Economy: Connecting the Dots
Building Blocks:
Vision:
Like Aesop’s Bundle of Sticks Fable, separate initiatives working to improve our region’s community and economy can be stronger if bound by unifying goals — connections, not meant to constrain, but strengthen separate initiatives — to help us create a local living economy.
Monadnock Matters Project:
Monadnock Matters, in its next phase, will act as a clearinghouse for all things “Local Living Economy” to improve our region’s community and economy. For more information, contact monadnockbuylocal@gmail.com.
What Does a Local Living Economy Mean?
In November 2009, a group of community members gathered to explore the concept of a Local Living Economy. The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies has its own definition, but what does it mean to us – citizens of the Monadnock Region? Here is a small sample of ideas shared.
The Monadnock Local Living Economy is a place where:
Community well-being, quality of life – whatever phrase resonates with you – here is a report on our Local Living Economy summer reading list:
The goal of the community needs assessment conducted by New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies for the Monadnock United Way and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation Monadnock Region was to provide community leaders with a firm understanding of the gaps between the current state of community well-being and what might be desirable in the region.
Monadnock Complete Economy Project 