meeting notes, podcasts and resources

Sostane Meeting: October

Posted by admin: October 17th, 2008 | No comments

One of the best meetings yet, but maybe I am biased. Twelve of us gathered at the Flying Apron Bakery on this brisk October evening. We pushed a few tables together and got some great tasty edibles via owner Jennifer (who couldn’t make it for Spotlight presentation, but we will try it again soon). Thank you so much Flying Apron!

Main Discussion: Trade & Barter

“How could our group implement a fair trade and barter system?”

Many of the attendees could relate to trading items, whether it was items at local markets or trading child care hours with friends and neighbors. Most of us seemed open to setting up trades in the future, even if they weren’t a business owner. Sounds like we could all be creative enough to figure out SOMETHING to trade such as life skills or items around our home. Talk of needing a triangular type trade is sometimes necessary at times or someone to facilitate the trades. It all depends if what you have to offer is of worth to the trading party. Some of the extra veggie trading groups do not want to be publicized due to a larger need than they can provide.

Some links that came up:
• Barter Faire via Gretchen
• BarterSauce and Fremont Market via Tara
• Growing Food, Growing Community
• And please see links from our previous Discussion post

Organizing an Organization

We then turned to talking about how to manage volunteer and grass-root campaigns. Many of us agreed that keeping your branding and name usage on the right track and not being mis-used would keep the value of your group and it’s members strong. Feed off the strengths of each member, write up a simple mission statement that everyone agrees so and keep referring back to it. Be open to new ideas and change, but make sure the basic premises are understood. A democratic voting system may work in some types of volunteer groups, or you may need to have a central decision maker. Gina brought up a great book, Forces for Good, that she highly recommended we take a look at about this matter. Awesome! I will definitely add it to our book review list.

Represented at the meeting were:
• Phinney EcoVillage via Gina
• Sustainable Kirkland via Lori

Influencing Co-Workers

Gretchen brought up some good points about trying to lead by example at her work, by bringing her own lunch or serve-ware, but was very disappointed with her co-workers easily bought food for lunch in styrofoam boxes and plastic-ware–throwing it all away when they were done. Jessica chimed it about her own initiatives she is working on at her workplace, with asking the city for more containers or pickup, making it easy for workings to participate and forming a committee to show management how beneficial it can be for the whole company. Amy also echoed the notion of putting it numbers or causes that management to relate to, in order to convey your message that something needs to be done. No small task, but thousands of mid-level workers have been chiming in across the country. You can be the voice of change!

Sisters who attended: Amy, Tina, Tara, Julia, Aubrey, Gina, Jessica, Gretchen and Lori for showing up! I know I missed someone, so please email me and I will get this list updated!