The Impacts of Moving Your Money
Submitted by WeStrive on Tue, 03/02/2010 - 09:17
Moving your cash out of big banks and into local banks and credit unions is one way to move your money, but even this choice doesn’t address one of the major issues I have with banks, regardless of size: how are they lending the money I’ve deposited? Can you even find out if their lending practices align with your own values?
Two years ago, I embarked upon an effort to move my money away from Bank of America (where I had my checking account) and ING Direct (where I had the bulk of my cash savings, both in a savings account and in several laddered CDs), and into banks whose activities I felt were more aligned with my own values. Read more »
Balance for Zimbabwe - The Rimbi Farm Project
Submitted by WeStrive on Mon, 03/01/2010 - 11:35
The Rimbi Farm Project is a concept to create a community based, supported and benefitting Biodynamic farm in Eastern, rural Zimbabwe. Through community engagement, the wish is to introduce a new type of agriculture that not only has the potential to boost harvest quantity through crop rotation and Permaculture, but also create job opportunities, a space for cultural exchange and, ultimately, a new source of hope. The intent of this project has many different levels and aspects but one main goal is to harvest awareness to the potential that lies within this community, in and of itself. The aim is to create a space to start conversations that can lead to healthy community development; through Biodynamics, create a new way for people to work together, closer to the earth, and from that work, build deeper relationships with one another that will perhaps fulfill a wish for a more integrated, supportive community where no one is left to fend for themselves. Read more »
Co-creating Intimate Partnerships
Submitted by WeStrive on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 21:25
Nicanor Perlas was interviewed by David Schubert on the components of relationships and intimacy. Nicanor is the winner of the Right Livelinhood Award (the alternative Nobel Peace Prize) in 2003 and is now running for president of the Philippines. His words here on how we can find the right relationships, shape them, and understand the beauty of love--and its authenticity, naturally, will inspire anyone. Read more »
UK Farming is on the threshold of crisis - Soil Association
Submitted by WeStrive on Wed, 02/10/2010 - 09:36
SIXTY years of farm intensification has put the UK food system on the threshold of crisis, the UK’s leading organic lobby has warned at its annual conference ... - Wednesday, February 3.
Patrick Holden, Soil Association policy director, painted a bleak picture of UK agriculture which he said had been farming unsustainably for too many years.
He called for a seismic change towards low input farm practices ‘before it’s too late’. “Business as usual is not an option. Our vision is for a radical transformation of agriculture within the next 15 years,” he said, adding organic farming was the only truely sustainable option. Read more »
The New Economy Challenge: Implications for Higher Education
Submitted by WeStrive on Wed, 02/10/2010 - 09:26
Institutional change is perhaps the most important and yet most neglected of the crucial changes we must navigate. If we humans are to adapt to 21st century reality, we must restructure or replace the economic institutions of the 20th century, which lock us into a dynamic of perpetual economic growth, with institutions designed to support ecological balance, shared prosperity, and living democracy...
This presents an unprecedented challenge for institutions of higher learning organized to prepare young graduates to succeed in a world that we must now put behind us. They are ill-equipped to prepare people of all ages for their necessary roles in creating and staffing the institutions of a new civilization. They must rethink, retool, and reorganize. Read more »
This Emerging Food Source May Get Banned from Organic (and it's not GMOs)
Submitted by WeStrive on Sun, 01/24/2010 - 11:21
Debate heats up about sustainable agriculture.
The USDA's National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), which determines which products can be certified organic and carry the valuable organic sticker, is leaning against allowing innovative growing systems, such as aquaponics, from the program.
Why? Because, according to their logic, food not grown in soil cannot be organic, even if no pesticides, herbicides or hormones are used. Yet vegetables grown in recirculating systems are proven to have exactly the same nutritional value as any other and are perfectly healthy. Decades of research have shown this. Many vegetables on our store shelves now are grown hydroponically, but this question of plant health or nutritional value has not come up.
Read more »
La vida locavorea: can you eat locally, locally?
Submitted by WeStrive on Wed, 01/20/2010 - 13:33
You may not have noticed it, but nestling between “frenemy”, “staycation”, and the 97 other words that were recently added to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, was the less than silky term “locavore”.
I have said it to several people this past week, and without exception, nobody has had a clue what I was talking about. Yet the movement it describes – one that encourages people to eat only produce that has been grown or reared in their immediate area – has, in the UK, Europe and the US, become one of the fastest-growing food trends of the last few years. Read more »
Interview with Nicanor Perlas on Blogwatch: after COMELEC's re-qualification.
In this very recent two hour long interview, easily watched in segments, Nicanor Perlas addresses his vision for New Politics and reveals pertinent information regarding the growing recognition of movements coming together to support his presidential campaign.
In it he addresses the diverse challenges the Philippines faces, with a profound and refreshing clarity of thought, all the while answering questions from his audience about the most pressing and urgent of their national concerns by engaging in a living and very down-to-earth dialogue with them. Read more »
Rev. Nelson Johnson, interviewed by Otto Scharmer
Submitted by WeStrive on Thu, 01/14/2010 - 15:42
"I think at the base of this new possibility is growing into a higher level of our humanity. I think we have to invent social structures that are reflective of that way of thinking."
Rev. Nelson N. Johnson, Pastor and Founder of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, NC, has been active in the movement for social and economic justice since high school in the late 1950’s. He served as a local and national student leader including Vice President of the SGA at North Carolina A&T State University, in Greensboro, NC in 1970. As a student leader, he worked closely with the local NAACP on voter registration, redevelopment, housing, education, open public accommodations and worker justice. Both survivors of the November 3, 1979 tragedy, he and his wife, Joyce, helped initiate and continue to be instrumental in the groundbreaking Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project (GTCRP). Read more »
Nicanor Perlas makes it to the official list of candidates in the Philippines' May polls
Submitted by WeStrive on Thu, 01/14/2010 - 07:58
More than a month after being disqualified, Nicanor Perlas and Danny Lim are now official candidates for the Philippine elections in May 2010.
Through Resolution 8743, the Comelec en banc announced that presidential aspirant Perlas and Liberal Party senatorial bet Lim have been included in the final list of candidates for the elections.
According to the resolution, Perlas was allowed to participate in the presidential race because of his "distinguished track record in public service" and capacity to launch a nationwide campaign through the environmentalist’s "access to national media" and "organized group of persons… who volunteered to support for his bid for candidacy." Read more »
