Kids making beneficial mud balls at City of Water Day 2010.

Oyster Restoration Project- a welcome home greeting for oysters.

Associations: might be time again for more local Associations. Associations have organized and actualized Reston, VA since 1964. 60 Thousand people now and how many associations are in Reston? It’s a long list… and the “friends of..” another long list. If people were as active as they were in Reston in the 60’s/70’s there would be even more. It was intended to be a place where people are participating in their community. Now since a lot of the community is organized new comers can just plug in to what is already there. However, in the early days very few community activities were there. It all had to be invented by the new residents.

Bioremediation & fermenting food waste with beneficial microbes.

The model of community organizing might be revitalizing along with community initiatives, artisan products and local food growing.

From the New Economics Institute: Examples of new associations and how they are a useful solution in responding to the needs of a specific community.

The Laurel Hill Association in the town of Stockbridge in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts is the nation’s oldest Village Improvement Association.  Founded in 1853 and still operating, its members pulled weeds, laid sidewalks, installed lamps, planted trees, and helped construct the town library.  It owns the park-like Laurel Hill near the center of town and maintains the trail at Ice Glen.

In the period following the Civil War, Village Improvement Associations (VIA) were started all over America. Small in scale, place-based, citizen driven, they were flexible enough in structure to respond to the needs of a specific community.  The Associations might organize concerts or put up window boxes on Main Street buildings, but just as easily serve regular meals to those in need or build a wing on the hospital or collect supplies for distribution after a flood swept through the town.  In 1903 the Groton, Massachusetts VIA constructed children’s gardens on land loaned for the purpose.

The Associations created a way for citizens to initiate community projects that local government and local business could not. In our age of professionally run non-profits each focused on addressing a single issue, VIAs might be dismissed as generalists and amateurs.  But the Associations were experts in knowing where the resources were in their communities — human, technical, financial, and natural resources — and they were skilled in mobilizing these resources when the need arose.

As federal, state, and local budgets are cut, and professionally run service programs close, it may be appropriate to imagine the emergence of modern day Village Improvement Associations and consider what projects they would now inspire.

Westport Green Village Initiative (www.wgvi.org) started in 2008 with a simple objective: to ban plastic bags in Westport, Connecticut. The project engaged concerned citizens to act together.  The success and fun of the project encouraged the group to stay together and turn their combined energies to other green initiatives.  Westport Green Village Initiative was organized to turn Westport “into a model of social-inclusivity and environmental sustainability,” that could well serve as the mission of Twenty-First Century VIAs.

Relying on much volunteer labor and a little bit of well-placed philanthropy, WGVI has built gardens at the public schools; run educational programs on energy-saving techniques, organic gardening practices, chemical free homes, and the local economy; and identified the resources and local businesses that could help with transitioning to greater sustainability. WGVIers increased membership in the local Community Supported Agriculture farms and organized RSA — restaurants banning together to pre-buy from farmers, saving the farmers from marketing and creating cooperation in the restaurant community.

When the town inherited an historic farm and farmhouse, it was WGVI that organized local contractors to volunteer time in its renovation, keeping its historic characteristics while reducing its ecological footprint.  Members cleaned out the barn and turned it into a community resource center on sustainability; they planted educational gardens where children from the schools come to learn about the history and craft of local agriculture; and they welcomed the school’s favorite teacher and his family to live at the farm, providing tours during visiting hours.

The Westport Library partners closely with WGVI, hosting bi-monthly lectures and films and discussions.  Projects arise as the volunteer members of WGVI stand up to lead them. Much volunteer time matches a little bit of philanthropy to purchase equipment and produce outreach materials.  Members work hard and play hard together. They celebrate their community and achievements with festivals and dances and lots of good local food.

In many ways WGVI employs the open structure and flexible multi-project form of the old Village Improvement Associations, but with a modern emphasis on sustainability.  Dan Levinson, a co-founder of WGVI, runs a successful private equity fund in Connecticut.  Witnessing a growing global ecological,

social, and financial crisis, his response was to contribute to shaping a more sustainable future for his hometown, and by example for other regions around the world.

Westport Village Green Initiative thus carries the particular vision that Dan Levinson brings to it.  That includes an understanding of the importance of producing locally what is used locally, creating jobs for local youth, maintaining production skills and infrastructure, and gradually freeing the region from dependence of goods shipped over long distances.  Westport Essentials (WE) is an effort to indentify basic goods now imported to the region that might be produced locally and setting up conditions to encourage their manufacture — access to land, job training, consumer pre-purchase, and investment.  Westport Essentials, a project of WGVI, uniquely characterizes a new type of Village Improvement Association, citizens reaching to that intersection of ecology, economy, community, and culture to leverage local capacity for change.

WGVI is just over two years old and already news of its accomplishments has spread to neighboring towns.  As a result WGVI recently changed its name to Green Village Initiative in order to serve as an organizational vehicle for volunteer efforts in Ridgefield and Bridgeport amongst other nearby communities.

More Fresh Community Eggs. 2010.