Village Vancouver Newsletter and Calendar of Events
June 2012
Welcome to the June 2012 edition of the Village Vancouver monthly newsletter and Calendar of Events!
Okay, so the weather hasn't been all that stellar going into June, but we're excited it's summer nonetheless because of all the great things going on over the next couple of months! For one thing, June means CAR FREE DAY (June 17th), and this year Village Vancouver will build the biggest Demo Transition Village ever at Main and 13th! Drop on by to see Transition in action in about 40 different ways, and lend a hand if you can!
At the end of May, several VVers headed down to Portland for City Repair's annual Village Building Convergence - an event that turns all of Portland into one big demo Transition Village for 10 days each spring. Jordan Bober is one of the VVers who made the pilgrimage this year, and you can read about his experiences in this newsletter.
The Demo Village and the Village Building Convergence are just two sources of inspiration for what we can be doing on a larger scale - and every day - here in Vancouver. Village Vancouver is here to help make it happen - and we need all of you to do it with us! Our strength lies in a strong membership base, and that is why we would like to urge all of you to become a formal member of the Village Vancouver Transition Society today. We will be holding out first Annual General Meeting on July 17th, and we want you to be there to help set the course for Transition in Vancouver!
Happy reading!
Jordan, Sharon and Ross
Jordan, Sharon and Ross
The Village Vancouver June Newsletter Editorial Team
Portland's Village Building Convergence
-Inspiration from a West Coast neighbour
By Jordan Bober
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| Dunbar Salmonberry Days Festival provided a great opportunity to introduce the community to emergency preparedness efforts underway. Members of the DEEP planning committee (Dunbar Earthquake and Emergency Preparedness) in front of the VECTOR bus (city emergency communications). A fire truck was parked just out of view. Lots of families and children came by to look at the emergency kit on display and talk about the program to increase neighbourhood resilience block-by-block. |
Village Vancouver Quick Updates
- Our first Annual General Meeting as a Society is coming up on July 17th! Become a member of the Village Vancouver Transition Society now so that you can participate fully and help us accomplish our common goals! Please note: Being a member of the Village Vancouver website does not confer automatic membership in the Society.
- Village Vancouver will build its biggest and baddest Demo Transition Village at Main Street Car Free Day on Sunday, June 17th! Read more below!
- Village Vancouver has teamed up with Langara College to make its annual Transition School bigger and badder than ever before as well! See below or click here for the down-and-dirty!
- Congratulations to everyone in the Village Vancouver community who was granted a Neighbourhood Small Grant or Greenest City Grant to engage in Transition-related projects! From collaborative gardens to composters, solar ovens, seed libraries, workshops, street painting, emergency preparedness and more, this year will see a lot happening to boost sustainability and resilience in Vancouver. We'll keep you updated on these projects in this newsletter and on our website. If you've received a grant for a Transition-related project, please let us know at newsletter@villagevancouver.ca so we can spread the word!
- Do you live in Surrey? Due to interest expressed by some VV community members in getting Transition activities going in Vancouver's neighbour across the Fraser, we have just added a Village Surrey page on our website. If you call Surrey home, please join this page to connect with other Transitioners in Surrey!
Sustainable Communities Summer School and Village
Vancouver Transition School at Langara
The Sustainable Communities Summer School is a gathering of people who want to make their neighbourhood and wider world sustainable: a society rooted in social and environmental justice. Join us to learn skills, gain knowledge, develop strategies, and create visions, for creating sustainable communities.
Courses are offered in three streams: Community & Cultural Development, Communication & Facilitation, and Social Ecology. Workshops are interactive and provide participants with practical knowledge and skills.
Again this year, we will be collaborating with Village Vancouver's Transition School to offer courses on Re-Skilling, Community Building and Big Picture.
Join today, and help set the course of our movement at our AGM on July 17th!
-Ben Brangwyn, co-founder of the Transition Network
Village
Vancouver turned four years old last month, and we continue to enjoy
very healthy growth. The worldwide Transition Movement, of which we're a
proud member, has spread like wildfire, and currently includes over 950
initiatives in more than 30 countries. Our Village community numbers in
the thousands and we're one of the largest and most active Transition
initiatives on the planet. Read more...
Click here to join the Village Vancouver Transition Society today! Our strength lies with a strong membership.
The Village Vancouver Demo Transition Village at Main Street Car Free Day ~ June 17th at Main & 13th
Village Vancouver's Demo Transition Village is back at Main Street Car Free Day for the third year running!
Join the party at the biggest VILLAGE ever built by Village Vancouver, on Sunday, June 17th at the intersection of 13th Avenue and Main Street.
Powered by solar energy and fed by an urban garden, we'll be raising chickens, showing off bees, repairing bicycles, demonstrating right livelihood and green building technology, and lounging in our library of sustainability while drinking Fair Trade coffee and tea and homemade lemonade.
Join the nearly block-long Village and help us for an hour or two to demonstrate a better way of life.
To find out more about this year's Demo Village, click here.
To make this year's Demo Village as awesome as possible, we need your help! Please click here to find out what you can do, from helping with overnight storage, transportation, set-up and take-down to making a fun children's area and helping at the various demonstration tables!
Seedstock Community Currency
Seedstock - the community currency project initiated by VVers Jordan Bober, Andrew Perry and others, launched its crowdfunding campaign with a successful community event at the HiVE in May, where nearly $4000 was "pre-deemed" for futures in Seedstock which will be launched this summer. The campaign continues on the popular crowdfunding site Indiegogo, where anyone can support the project - and be rewarded with perks! - by pre-purchasing their Seedstock.
Seedstock is a community currency designed to help create a stronger local economy with money flows and resources to support local food, health & wellness, and the local artistic and maker communities. Learn more on their website, www.seedstock.ca.
VV sponsors new West End Food Scraps Dropspot
If you live in the West End, living in an apartment need no longer be a barrier to recycling your food scraps! Village Vancouver, the West End Neighbourhood Food Network and Recycling Alternative have teamed up to establish a new Food Scraps Drop Spot at the West End Community Centre. The drop spot is located in the lane between the school and the centre, and will be open every Saturday from 10am to 1pm, between June 16th and October 20th.
Volunteers are currently being sought! If you can help out with one 3.5 hour shift per month, please write to foodwestend@gmail.com.
Join the Kickoff Forum on Food Composting Policy and Practice at the West End Community Centre on June 16th at 11am!
Don't live in the West End or near the West End Community Centre? Other drop spots have been set up at the Trout Lake and West End Farmers Markets - see http://foodscrapsdropspot.tumblr.com/ for more details!
Kits Village Permaculture Blitz "PET" Day Work Party June 24
Join us for a community "barnraising" in transforming a property using Permaculture design principles. Last year close to 25 people participated in converting a Kits front lawn near the beach into a Permaculture food forest.
June's Kits Blitz garden party will be held at a home near 5th and Arbutus, and and we'll be working on a front yard and a blvd. VVer Nick Grabovac will facilitate. Nick is a Permaculture Designer and founder of Vancouver Permaculture Meetup.
Sunday, June 24 from 8:30 am to 3:30 pm. Please RSVP. Everyone welcome - it's fun, it's educational, and we feed you! More details to follow on the event posting.
Supported by a Green Neighbourhood Small Grant from the Vancouver Foundation.
(By the way, we're always looking for more locations in Kits Village and elsewhere to do Permaculture blitzes.)
Westside Community Food Markets
New Community Garden Opportunities!
Meanwhile, the Woodland Park Community Garden proposal (in Grandview-Woodland) sponsored by Village Vancouver is also moving forward! A Parks Board staff member has been assigned to shepherd the garden through the approval process, and on June 14th flyers about the garden were delivered to homes and businesses within a two-block radius of Woodland Park.
On June 21st, the folks who put this proposal together will be available at Woodland Park from 7pm to 9pm to chat with people from the neighbourhood and interested gardeners, look at the site and dream about our future garden! If you live in the neighbourhood, we hope you'll drop by to say hello!
If you'd like to be kept informed about the happenings around this project, please contact Jordan Bober (jordan@villagevancouver.ca) to be added to the garden mailing list!
Momentum builds for backyard chickens in North Van
Village Vancouver's Ann Pacey, who raises chickens both in her back yard and on an organic farm in Richmond, is featured in this article from the North Shore News about the City of North Vancouver's current consideration of new bylaws allowing residents to raise chickens in the city.
Did you know...
Germany's investments in renewable energy (solar, wind, geothermal and hydro) are paying off, and showing the way to a more sustainable future!
Call-out for Volunteers
As Village Vancouver grows, we're finding that some of our infrastructure is due for an upgrade! For example, we have received feedback from many of you saying that our website would benefit from a makeover that would make it easier to navigate and use, and we are interested in exploring other ways that we can use IT to make our activities easier and more effective.
Are you knowledgeable about web design and/or development or information technology generally? Would you like like to be able to leverage your skills to help further the Transition movement in the Lower Mainland? If so, please get in touch with us at volunteer@villagevancouver.ca! We would certainly appreciate your help.
Even if you're not an IT-afficionado, there are many other ways we could use your help! If you could be interested in volunteering with Village Vancouver, please fill out this form to let us know a bit about yourself.
