To kick off 2017, we'll focus on a different building block of our Local Living Economy each week — highlighting the businesses, organizations and individuals making these components stronger and more resilient in our region.
We invite you to help us identify what's missing from our inventory of Local Living Economy Building Blocks in the Monadnock Region. Stay tuned and engaged!
What is a Local Living Economy? In November 2009, a group of 70 local entrepreneurs, community leaders, students and engaged citizens gathered at Keene State College’s Seventh Biennial Symposium “From Local to Global” to answer this question. The consensus: A Local Living Economy is a resilient system that improves our quality of life, meets everyone’s basic needs and creates an engaged citizenry.
With that definition agreed upon, we now move on to the next question: How do we cultivate a stronger Local Living Economy? Judy Wicks, co-founder of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and key participant in the November 2009 discussion, shared, “In order to build a local living economy, we must first determine what one looks like—what are the components, or building blocks, a vision of a local living economy that we can work toward achieving?”
Monadnock Buy Local continues to identify the building blocks of our Monadnock Local Living Economy—and we invite you to participate.
One way to join the conversation is virtually. Monadnock Buy Local is engaging its 3,500 online fans to help identify our region’s building blocks. Each week, we will focus on a different Local Living Economy component, from agriculture to transportation, gleaning from you—the individuals, businesses and organizations currently engaged in this work. Connect with the conversation on our website and Facebook Page.
Together, we are looking at the system that drives our Local Living Economy. This type of holistic thinking takes work, but it can result in better problem solving leading to more positive and lasting changes in our community.
As scientist and systems thinker Peter Senge states, “Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing patterns of change rather than static snapshots. Fragmentation, competition, and reactiveness are not problems to be solved -- they are frozen patterns of thought to be dissolved.”Save
The Local Crowd Monadnock - Keene, NH
