Sustainable Communities

Heartwood member organizations and network participants are active in community organizing, permaculture, and local self reliance. Following the model Heartwood successfully adopted to coordinate regional forest protection efforts, Heartwood's intention is to coordinate similar efforts across the Heartwood region and to highlight models of alternative energy and transportation, local and regional food networks, and community and sustainable forestry. The keynote address at last year's Heartwood Reunion was offered by Peter Bane, the publisher of the Permaculture Activist and a leading practitioner and consultant in permaculture design. The year before, we featured Gary Anderson, who with his wife Beth developed Integrated Forest Management, a system of forest management that makes 10-30 times more money per acre per year than conventional forestry, and 1.5-4 times more money per acre per year than agriculture, while producing nutritional food and high value hardwood lumber.

Plan of Work

Recognizing that education and public engagement are critical to informed community choice, Heartwood is collaborating with the new Caldwell Center for Culture and Ecology, the Center for Sustainable Living, the Hoosier Environmental Council, and other Southern Indiana based groups to develop educational curricula for K-12. These materials will be distributed through the Harmony Education Center's 34 regional centers around the country. Heartwood activists and volunteers will help identify and contact local and regional self-reliance, food, farming, energy, transportation, and permaculture organizations to explore opportunities for greater communication, coordination and mutual support. This will include participation in the annual Heartwood Forest Council and Reunion and featured articles in the Heartbeat and on the Heartwood website. Through these and other means we hope to offer the residents of our region a range of models for local organizing and long-term sustainability, while increasing Heartwood's membership and reach. As local, state, and national governments increasingly fail to provide either a vision or meaningful choices to the challenges we face, Heartwood's inclusive, democratic, and cooperative model will provide a way for citizen to take action on behalf of their families, their communities and our planet.