While Bob Willard’s book The Sustainability Champion’s Guidebook: How to Transform Your Company is more geared toward companies transitioning to sustainability from a not so sustainable model (i.e. corporate companies implementing sustainable practices into their successful business plan), this book also relates to any organization, large or small, by providing seven practices of sustainability champions. These are:
- Establish credibility
- Pursue dialogue
- Collaborate, educate, and network
- Meet people where they are
- Use existing sustainability initiatives
- Influence the influencers
- Practice ‘planful opportunism’
Before I talk about how awesome Rise-Up is again, I want to tell you all how amazing the sustainability program is at IUSB, which very much implements many of these seven practices. First and foremost, we are the first IU Campus to start a program in Sustainability Studies (yes, we were before Bloomington!). As a branch of IU, one can hope that we can “influence the influencers,” in this case being the folks down in Bloomington. In addition, our amazing professors who collaborate and network with existing organization in our city, we also have the fantastic Center for a Sustainable Future that serves as a resource to everyone in the community, specifically those who are active and engaged in the sustainability revolution happening in Michiana. Here is a compilation of many resources that can help out anyone interested in learning about sustainability.
Sustainability at Rise Up is certainly one of the main aspects of our organization. We are a local farm that is here to serve the needs of the community and the people. With that, I would say our main strength is in collaborating, educating, and networking with others. At the farm, we rely heavily on the help of others and actively seek to collaborate with other small-scale farmers in the area. Particularly during this season, we’ve been collaborating and creating dialogue with other farmers on how to survive the drought. We also educate people who are interested in learning how to grow their food. If you are a shareholder, a work share member, or just a person on the street, you are more than welcome to come to the farm to help out and learn, as often as time permits.
Stop on by the farm if you’d like, or if you don’t have the time, like us on Facebook to see what’s happening and to get some yummy seasonal recipes.
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