Sustainable Alachua County

Thanks to everyone who came out to our 2010 SAC Meetup  and FUNdraiser atSharab.  The second floor (the elevator was out so apologies to those needing wheelchair access!) was packed and with great local food from The Jones and Leonardo’s 706 as well as sample brews from our new friends at Gainesville’s only micro-brew, Swamphead Brewery (thanks Luke!). Special thanks as well goes to Sharab (they go well beyond their recycling requirements) for allowing us to turn down the house music while we went through a short presentation on the past, present and future of SAC.  In the process of raising awareness about SAC’s mission and goals for this year, we raised over $300 for the upcoming Gainesville Environemental Film Festand over $125 for ourselves (thank  you!!).  We received a lot of good feedback on what you the community, would like to see SAC focus on for the next year and I believe we have some new volunteers to help create a few new working groups including one of particular interest to me, the Built Environment Working Group.  Please check out our sidebar on the right of our homepage now that has four topic areas that you can access and create comments to current postings on those topic areas.  This will hopefully lead to the creation of some intesting conversations and eventual working groups.  Also please click on the new youtube tutorial from our web guru, Chris Cano on how to successfully create your own profile, join a group and post events.  Hope to see you at the Gainesville Environmental Film Fest and don’t forget to check back soon and often!

-Michael Amish
SAC Board President

Wednesday, February 17^th, 6-8pm, $5-$10 sliding scale, Sharab Lounge, 109 S Main St., Gainesville

Review the year and brainstorm 2010 strategies for creating a more sustainable future with Sustainable Alachua County, while enjoying networking and beverages. Event is organized in cooperation with Green Drinks and all proceeds will be donated to the Gainesville Environmental Film & Art Festival happening March 19^th-28^th. Please join us for this follow-up session to the 2009 Stakeholder Meeting. Action starts with ideas and ideas start with people!

RSVP michaelamish@gmail.com or visit SAC online at http://sustainablealachua.org for more information and updates.

We are quickly approaching our one-year anniversary, which marks the re-emergence of Sustainable Alachua County as an active organization in the community. We’ve spent the last year attempting to reform an organization that will effectively support, and help to coordinate,  sustainability efforts throughout the county. And though in some ways it feels like we are just getting started, we’ve accomplished a lot over the past year.

I’d say that one of the most exciting developments is this website itself. We are still just learning the ropes and capabilities of the site, working on getting members of the community signed on, and smoothing out the technical bumps, but we know how incredibly amazing the powers of communication can be. This site allows us to share our ideas and visions, collaborate, and support each other in our efforts to build a more sustainable community on a daily basis.

During our most recent Board Meeting, we board members had an opportunity to look back at our efforts over the course of the year and to begin strategizing for what’s upcoming. We were able to discuss our successes and our shortcomings. Most of our success has been in the facilitation of collaborative efforts and so we talked about how important it is to continue to bring people together – so that we can help to make connections, and strengthen the intricate web that binds us as a community.

We’ve got the Food Working Group which has come together, quite organically, over the course of the last many months. This group is made up of a variety of individuals and organizations, independent businesses, farmers, gardeners, advocates and policy makers. We meet roughly once a month to provide updates on current projects that fall under the general topic of local food issues, to brainstorm ways in which we can work more collaboratively, and to work cooperatively to build a more robust local food system. Since this group has formed, we’ve been witness to the beginnings of fruitful collaborations. Most recently, we’ve seen the development of a local community kitchen initiative and the receipt of a grant for a Buy Local Food Campaign. We hope that we’ll see more of these working groups emerge this year.

And we have lots of exciting, inspiring events to look forward to. We are planning a Sustainability Summit sometime in February and are hoping to be involved in Earth Day events with the Office of Sustainabilty at the University of Florida. We also hope to contribute to the Florida Food Summit in mid-April. More on all these things later…

We sincerely hope to continue to translate the collective wants and needs we have for a more sustainable community into action. But we need your help! Take the time to contact us and get involved.

Liz N.

Hi all, thanks for being patient as we have developed the website for Sustainable Alachua County. We are now in the BETA testing phase, before the official public release, and would appreciate any feedback regarding your experience joining and using the site.

Problems that have been reported:

1. Image cropping is problematic for some users
2. Links throughout the site sometimes resolve incorrectly – i.e. www.website.com resolves as http://sustainablealachua.org/www.website.com - reported by nwtaylor
3. In events area, cannot view events beyond current month – reported by Sally

We will continue to improve the site and would greatly benefit from your input.

Please become a member and comment on this post to tell us what you think!