Community Learning describes the process  by which communities transition from business-as-usual to more just and sustainable ways of living and doing.  The idea of community learning is not to achieve fixed goals, but to gradually work towards common ambitions through innovation, integration, and transition processes.   Community learning is premised on the idea that the outcomes of any social change process are highly uncertain and thus require collective experimentation — learning-by-doing and doing-by-learning.  Community learning involves community conversations and project-based experiments in new ways of doing things.   The power of community learning is that everyone can contribute in his or her own way and in doing so the search itself becomes the process of sustainable social change.

Current Community Learning Projects:

• Stone Soup Projects: EcoPraxis, in collaboration with BALLE-Seattle, Sustainable Cascadia and Findood, is experimenting with a new model of launching community projects, we call Stone Soup Projects.  The model borrows from open source projects used in software development  and design charettes in urban planning.  The first Stone Soup design event took place in November 2009 with a focus on Urban Farming in Seattle.   The result was three projects that are off and running.  They are all designed for people to plug in and contribute small or large amounts of effort according to your capacity.  For more information about the Urban Farming Projects, visit our networking site for the projects (http://stonesoup-urbanfarmingseattle.ning.com/).

• B-Sustainable Indicator Mapping Workshops: These cross-perspective dialogues are a core process in development of the B-Sustainable Information Commons.  Workshop participants select indicators that will describe progress towards a sustainability goal.   Participants are chosen to provide multiple perspectives on an issue.

• Economic Sustainability Reading Group: Beginning in January 2010, EcoPraxis will host a reading group on economic alternatives.  To receive a notice on when and where it will be held, please send an email to ecopraxis@oz.net.

• Transition Management Workshops: Transition Management is a policy approach to systemic change.  The intent is to initiate system change - a transition - by turning social and technological innovations into sustainable ways of fulfilling individual and social needs.  The transition management approach describes a strategy and development process centering on the articulation of needs and the experiential coupling of social values, needs, and technological and organizational possibilities.  This workshop grounds participants in the principles and methods of transition management.  In development.

Past Community Learning Projects:

• Economics as if Community Matters Workshops

• Sustainable Community Development Circle

• Sustainable Business Circle

Resources:

Sonntag, Viki.  2009.  Let’s Reframe Food Costs. Article written for May/June 2009 Natural News, Madison Market’s bi-monthly newspaper.

This cover article for a local food coop’s member newspaper describes some ways to think about the seeming paradox between food justice — access to fresh, healthy, good food for all — and its price at the checkout counter.

From the article: 

These days, most of us have to think more often than not about what food costs.   Rolling up to the check-out stand certainly prompts me to reflect on how to save more and spend less.  My musings on the cost of food before the economy collapsed were way more abstract.  But rising food prices and a feeling of greater economic precariousness has brought the issue home.  I can readily sympathize with people wanting to get the best deals possible.

At the same time, as an economist whose work explores alternatives to the industrial food system, I get frustrated when I hear well intentioned local food advocates repeat the myth that eating local costs more.   It doesn’t.   And I wonder if saying it does confuses us, especially when it comes to thinking about how to achieve a sustainable food system that guarantees food security for all.

Read it all: Let’s Reframe Food Costs

Sonntag, Viki.  2006.  Cultivating Community Linkages: Experiments in Creating Local Linkages.  Paper written for Greening of Industry Conference.

This paper describes several community learning projects EcoPraxis collaborated on in greater detail.

Link: Cultivating Community Economies Paper

Abstract:  In the emergence of localization as a response to the ravages of globalization and the longing for community, we find an opportunity to re-imagine the organization of the economy. At the same time, change is hard to effect without practices to support its realization – particularly, in a complex world, practices in self-organization. This paper/presentation considers three experiments in the creation of local economic linkages in Seattle, Washington (U.S.A.): (1) the development and use of the local multiplier as an indicator of community sustainability; (2) a business practice circle engaged in sustainable community development in an economically marginalized neighborhood; and (3) the launch of a community loyalty card system to support the formation of a community-driven marketplace. Each initiative focuses on the development of sustainability practices within the context of building community economies. Each invokes participation, relationship building, communication, discovery and alignment as key social sustainability processes. Each aims to re-embed values in business and the economy in community. The hope is to effect resource sustainability through the conscious cultivation of local economic linkages.