It’s interesting to see how our “living local” idea is picking up steam.
No sooner does the EFCL start talking about a campaign that encourages people to find activities close to home – such as community league events – and all sorts of groups want to get involved.
One such group is Keep Edmonton Original, a collection of Edmonton-owned businesses that want people to buy locally.
Another is the Greater Edmonton Alliance, a church-based organization that is getting heavily involved in the development of a local food security initiative. Their goal is to ensure that Edmontonians support local producers and that the city does something to protect its rapidly diminishing supply of prime agricultural lands.
Still another group is the city’s CO2 Reduction team, which among other things wants to reduce the amount of distance Edmontonians travel every day. We have worked with them since 2008 on the Green Challenge and now we will increase our partnership to include this campaign.
All of these organizations have stated they want to partner with us. Our challenge now is to find a way to focus our energies so we can all benefit from a group effort.
One idea making the rounds is that we pick a day next September, where we ask all of the leagues to hold an activity of some sort to promote their membership campaign. This could provide an outlet for Edmontonians across the city to do something close to home, with their neighbors and friends.
With the help of other organizations, such as those mentioned above, perhaps we could turn this into a significant event, where citizens across the city decide to give their car a rest that day and do something close to home. That could include buying local products. That could include supporting local businesses.
All of this seems to fit quite nicely into a program promoted by Seattle community organizer Jim Diers, who was invited by the city’s community services department to give a series of speeches in Edmonton last week.
Diers talked about neighbors banding together and doing a variety of local improvement projects, like community gardens, fixing up derelict buildings or turning vacant lots into local parks.
He stressed the value of finding individuals, companies and organizations in your area that are willing to partner with you on a local project. He said the trick was to find those resources and tap into them.
He also said it really helps if you can identify activities that look to be a lot of fun.
I could be mistaken, but this sounds exactly like what is happening to us at the moment.
Local partners are popping out of the woodwork. People are talking about block parties, street parades, antique car shows, pot luck dinners, movie nights, wine tastings, painting bees, garage and bake sales, carnivals, dog shows, big bin events and street dances. Every one of these is a local event and all of them sound like fun.
We can’t help but feel the making of a major campaign is taking shape. And all it took was a little musing about “living local.”