Self-Sufficiency and Celebration

Monday, October 22, 2012, 9am – 5:30pm
Location: Commonweal Garden; Bolinas, CA
(Driving Directions–Bus transportation available from the Embassy Suites Hotel at 8:30am)
Registration Fee: $175
(includes fresh, local-ingredient pizza lunch)

Led by expert Permaculture designer Penny Livingston.

Learn how to become an ally with nature and design your farm or garden to provide multiple functions that reduce maintenance while creating a beautiful landscape. Become more self-sufficient and make the world a better place right outside your door by gaining practical Permaculture skills that increase your ability to interact and integrate with the natural environment, people, food, medicine, shelter and water at the urban, suburban and small farm scale.

Permaculture is a design science rooted in the observation of nature. It embodies a solutions-based way of thinking and a practical set of ecological design principles and methods.

Join renowned Permaculturists Penny Livingston, poet Drew Dellinger, master gardener/ culinary artist Michael Presley, M. Kalani Souza, Trathen Heckman, and drummer Afia Walking Tree for a day of learning and celebration of Earth’s abundance.

Enjoy Earth wisdom, great food and participatory music at the beautiful seventeen-acre Commonweal Garden, a certified Salmon Safe Permaculture farm with four acres of herbs, berries, fruit trees, flowers, chickens and goats. Regenerative design elements include solar showers, rainwater catchment systems, grey water systems, a greenhouse, ponds and natural structures of cob, straw, clay and earthen plasters.

Topics:

Designing the farm/garden as an ecosystem			Beneficial insects
Integrating scale, conservation & diversification			Pollinator plants
Soil restoration			Hands-on cheese making
Waste systems			Making herbal medicines
Water treatment systems			Local food foraging

Led by Penny Livingston an internationally revered expert Permaculture designer, teacher, and  founder of the Permaculture Institute of Northern California and the Regenerative Design Institute.

Featuring:

• Drew Dellinger
• Afia Walking Tree
• M. Kalani Souza
• Trathen Heckman

How Women’s Leadership, A Gender Lens and Whole-Systems Approaches Are Re-Inventing Economics That Work for All

Monday, October 22, 2012, 9am – 5:30pm
Location: Embassy Suites Hotel, San Rafael, California
Registration Fee: $175 (includes lunch)

Co-Sponsored by Women Donors Network, Social Venture Network, and RSF Social Finance. 

Hosted by: Alisa Gravitz, CEO, Green America, with Georgie Benardete, Managing Director, Multicultural Capital LLC

Why Feminomics?

When you improve the status, rights and equity of women, global studies consistently show that everything improves around them – from economics to environment, education, health, peace and security.

At its heart, economy reflects what we value, both Earth and people. While current ways of assigning value, doing business and measuring success wreak havoc on people and planet, innovators are re-imagining our economic systems to transform vicious circles into virtuous cycles for the benefit of all of life. New models and pathways are emerging from diverse sectors and disciplines. Matriarchal, indigenous cultures and nature also offer key insights for informing a sharing or gift economy that integrates equity, environment and exchange.

All of the emergent visions and models are deeply informed by the sensibilities and values of women in leadership, by applying a gender lens that seeks to elevate feminine sensibilities toward greater balance, and by whole-systems approaches that take the biosphere, health and justice into account. Yet women are largely excluded from economic decision-making in politics, finance and policy. Throughout the U.S. and most of the world, the struggle to achieve gender equity continues to advance slowly and incrementally. Women are commonly paid less for the same work, and are not economically valued for homemaking or child-rearing.

This one-day intensive will explore how women, a gender lens, and valuing the well-being of people and planet can converge to inform new visions for finance, business, economics and culture. Gather with leading-edge thinkers and doers,innovators and practitioners across investment, business, philanthropy, entrepreneurship, finance, justice, policy and politics. We’ll learn, connect and share promising practices toward an inclusive vision that taps diverse voices, models and innovations to turn the tide toward a life-affirming and just economy and world.

After spinning the dial with brief presentations from varied perspectives within the larger economic field, and participating in networking sessions and round-table collaboratories throughout the day, we aim to collectively surface a set of underlying values that may serve as the foundation of a new vision, while connecting this disparate community to each other to accelerate learning, cross-pollinate best practices and leverage mutual support.

Join us to help accelerate learning across the field, to scan the existing landscape across sectors and cross-pollinate ideas, and help clarify a collective future vision. All are welcome.

Confirmed Speakers:

• Rebecca Adamson, President and Founder, First Peoples Worldwide
• Joy Anderson, Principal, Criterion Institute
• Joan Blades, Co-Founder of MomsRising.org and Moveon.org
• Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO, Green For All
• Farha-Joyce Haboucha, Managing Director, Senior Portfolio Manager & Director of Sustainability & Impact Investments, Rockefeller & Co., Inc.
• Dana Lanza, CEO, Confluence Philanthropy
• Ai-Jen Poo, Co-Director, Caring Across Generations, and Director, The National Domestic Workers Alliance
• Lynne Twist, Founder, The Soul of Money Institute, Co-Founder, The Pachamama Alliance
• Judy Wicks, Co-Founder, BALLE, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies; Founder, The White Dog Café

Collaboratory Round-Tables

• Occupy, Coalition and Movement Building – How are popular movements like Occupy, Codepink: Women for Peace and Momsrising.org coalescing people across differences toward greater impacts? What might the particular contribution of this kind of coalition and movement-building be toward reinventing economics?  Conversation initiators Maria Poblet, Jodie Evans and Joan Blades.

• Investing for Change: Philanthropic and Shareholder Activism – How are women’s (often collaborative) philanthropic practices and shareholder activism altering the landscape of donor activist engagement, and what are the particular opportunities and challenges inherent in those shifts? Conversation initiators Donna Hall, Farha-Joyce Haboucha and Vanessa Daniel.

• Banking in the New Economy – How are we moving from the ‘too-big-to-fail’ current models to transparent banking innovations that focus on local connection and resilient communities? How are systems that value relationship, community and exchange altering the financial landscape? Conversation initiator Don Shaffer and others tbd.

• Business, Social Entrepreneurship and Localization Networks – How are businesses large and small innovating to model these new economic values? How are businesses designed based on these values demonstrating cascading benefits? What kinds of insights are networks intended to strengthen local resiliency providing to the mix? Conversation initiators Deb Nelson, Judy Wicks and another tbd.

• Green Innovators: Policy, Workforce, Investment and Eco-Service Valuation – How are prioritizing a green economy and factoring nature’s services fully into the equation altering economic flows and workforce visions? How must valuing nature influence policy and investment strategies, and what are some good models of how that’s working? Conversation initiators Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, and Dana Lanza.

• Women Led Models, including Venture Investment & Key Gender Lens Concepts –How might women carry the new archetype of business in the DNA of our gender?  Explore how women-led businesses are trending differently, and consider how investing with a gender lens alters the landscape. How are women and a gender lens contributing to new (or the re-emergence of old) economic and entrepreneurship designs? Conversation initiators Joy Anderson, Lana Holmes, and Maura Conlon-McIvor.

• The Gift Economy and Matrilineal Cultures –What insights might we glean from indigenous, current feminist and historical cultures, including about gender balance and right relations, to inform economics’ reinvention? How might mothering within capitalistic structures inform us? Consider how integrating values of abundance, gifting and collectivism may be inherent in mothering, nature and the feminine. Conversation initiators Genevieve Vaughan, Bernedette Muthien, Rebecca Adamson.

• Telling the New Story: Transforming Culture and Media From the Micro to Macro – As human beings, we are hard-wired for story. What are the stories of this financial reinvention, as seen through these lenses? How are they surfacing? How might we effectively help disseminate them widely into the culture? Conversation initiators Lynnaea Lumbard, Starhawk, and Rose Aguilar.

A Call to Action and Collaboratory

Thursday, October 18, 2012, 9am – 6:00pm
Location: Embassy Suites Hotel, San Rafael, California
Registration Fee: $175 (includes lunch)
Limited scholarships available