Jumpstarting the New Green Economy

Capstone – Action-Learning Workshops

Workshop Sessions / Initiative Launches / Communities of Practice

1. Transition New Jersey (Paul Nick, Community Green)
2. Neighborhood Green Incubators (Gerald Bishop, Robert Robinson)
3. Transitioning to Green™ Careers (Jeana Wirtenberg, Sarita Felder and Linda M. Kelley)
4. GreenTech Angel Network (Bill Russell)
5. Sustainable Leadership Forum (Jonathan Cloud)
6. Community Clean Energy Aggregation (Stefano Crema, CALL)
7. Creating New Business Models and Enterprises (Blane Friest)
8. Enough Already! A Sufficiency Dialogue for Creating a Sustainable World (Miriam Hawley and Gina LaRoche)
9. All The Trained Workers You Need: What Service-Learning Can Provide NJ’s Green Businesses and Industries (Elyssa Serilli)

Here are some workshop descriptions and details:

1. Transition New Jersey

A project of Community Green, the TransitionNJ.org initiative is designed to assist communities to start transition programs in their local communities. The Transition Movement (also known as the Transition Towns Movement) is based on permaculture design principles, community organizing strategies, and participatory action on the part of a broad range of individuals and institutions, to strengthen local resilience in response to the challenges of peak oil, climate change and the economic crisis.

Transition Town initiatives are grassroots actions, and develop locally-appropriate strategies, in cooperation with existing groups and institutions, to strengthen communities in very specific, practical, and immediate ways. The web site, like the movement, is self-organizing; Community Green simply provides resources, suggestions, contacts, and events, to assist local initiating committees to follow the step-by-step program laid out in Rob Hopkins’ Transition Handbook (2008), and in many other sites and publications.

Community Green is an interconnected coalition of people and organizations promoting eco-conscious lifestyles. Its mission is to “provide learning through direct action with simple, healthful, community based activities. We bring people together to take positive action.” The Transition NJ Workshop will be led by Paul Nick along with other members of Community Green.

2. Neighborhood Green Incubators, Newark

The Obama Administration has promised to devote $250 million to building local green incubators, especially in disadvantaged neighborhoods across the U.S. We are currently working on two such projects in Newark, with community activists such as Gerald Bishop, of Corinthian Housing, and Robert Robinson, of Halsey Street Enterprises.

This Workshop session is designed to present ideas for the kinds of neighborhood businesses that such local incubators can foster, and to describe a process for developing such incubators through an intensive, 5-day planning process, bringing together local stakeholders with experts in sustainable business, economic development, and business incubation practices. Members of the NJ Business Incubator Network (NJBIN, NJBIN.org) will also support this discussion, and explore some of the options for obtaining funding for these programs.

3. Transitioning to Green™ Careers

A World of Possibilities

The Green Economy holds a wealth of untapped opportunities waiting to be discovered and seized. How can you navigate this seismic shift to position yourself for sustainable success?

This session explores what you can do in your professional life to tap into this shift and make a meaningful and fulfilling contribution to a more sustainable economy. Highlights include:

• Recognizing the “old, grey economy” as it relates to industries and functions
• Juxtaposing the “old, grey economy” with the new, green economy
• Creating bridges from the “old, grey economy” to the new, green economy, thereby evolving professional opportunities that foster a healthy global future that starts here and now

This workshop will be an inspiring, informative and dynamically interactive experience. It will foster self reflection, creativity and collaboration. As well, it will give participants an introductory taste of a newly-established initiative, Transitioning to Green™, www.transitioningtogreen.com. This initiative has been designed to be a catalyst and guiding hand for linking talent within the web of opportunity in the Green Economy.

Descriptions and registration materials will be available at the conference to attend theTransitioning to Green™ Forum, participate in Transitioning to Green™ career coaching and sign up for a Transitioning to Green™ Knowledge Network Portal.

Some of the workshop content draws from and builds upon The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook: When It All Comes Together, edited by Jeana Wirtenberg, William Russell and David Lipsky with the Enterprise Sustainability Action Team, Greenleaf Publishing and AMACOM, 2008, www.thesustainableenterprisefieldbook.net.

This workshop will be led by Jeana Wirtenberg, Sarita Felder, and Linda M. Kelley.

4. The GreenTech Angel Investor Network

We have invited a number on angel investors interested in green to get together to discuss forming a network associated with the Sustainable Business Incubator and the other sustainability-oriented incubators in the state – the Meadowlands Business Accelerator and Rutgers’ EcoComplex.

The SBI is also entering into an agreement with the Township of Woodbridge to develop a physical green technology incubator at a 107-acre current brownfields site on the Woodbridge River. The businesses associated with this development will be some of the potential candidates for investment, along with companies such as those in small hydro, small wind, electric vehicles, energy conservation software and other services, several of which are currently being supported by the incubator program at FDU.

The discussion will be led by Bill Russell .

5. The Sustainable Leadership Forum

The Sustainable Leadership Forum is a new network and leadership development program for those seeking to drive the transition to a green economy. The SLF will have several classes of membership, a number of signature transformational programs, business affiliates of various kinds, and supported community development initiatives. As a new nonprofit membership organization, it seeks to bring together, train, and deepen the skills and connections of sustainability leaders, and to support them in both new and existing projects.

Doug Cohen will present ideas for a youth leadership section.

This Workshop will be led by Jonathan Cloud, with assistance from Victoria Zelin, Mary Reilly, Kerry Mowry, Doug Cohen, and others.

6. Community Clean Energy Aggregation

Community Energy Aggregation (CEA) is a unique tool that allows counties and municipalities in New Jersey (as well as in California, Ohio, and Massachusetts) to procure and produce their own energy. Residents in such communities automatically become customers of the system, and businesses may opt in if they find it in their interest to do so.

The energy that is “aggregated” by the county or municipality can be electricity or gas or both; it can be whatever combination of renewables, conservation, and traditional sources the community determines; and it is delivered by the regulated utilities to the consumer in a standard way. Unlike investor-owned producers, municipal and county governments have no incentive to promote consumption, since they are nonprofit entities. They can invest in clean technologies, support local economic development, enhance efficiency and conservation, purchase energy from a variety of providers at a scale that makes it cost-effective, and provide energy savings to both business and residential consumers.

This workshop will be presented by CALL (Cooling America thru Local Leadership) and led by Stefano Crema.

7. Creating New Business Models and Enterprises

A unique brainstorming session presented by Blane Friest, with Leslie Spielvogel and Steve Cleary:

In 2- 2 ½ hour session we will run the attendees through an interactive brainstorming session utilizing the following structure:

1. 15-20 minute PowerPoint presentation establishing relatedness; who we are, what we’re doing, and an agreement to participate unfettered.
2. The room will then be broken into 4 quadrants, each addressing the questions from their quadrant’s POV. Attendees may be asked to move from one into another quadrant if a quadrant looks to be populated primarily by people of like background or interest. If enough attendees are present each quadrant will break into teams of 6-8 people. This works best if each quadrant has multiple teams each but also works extremely well with 1 team each.
3. Question 1; 5 mins: Getting to know your teammates. Question may be: # years in business, public or private sector, etc.
4. Report back from teams and introduce quadrants and ground rules of the game. I propose the X axis is financing: private vs. public (grants/stimulus package) and the Y axis; materials/structure: new construction vs. reusing/recycling/retrofitting existing materials. These axes create 4 quadrants (as seen as a compass): NW) private financing utilizing new construction, NE) private financing utilizing existing materials, SW) public funds utilizing new construction, SE) public funds utilizing existing materials. I have used these axes for the purposes of this proposal. I welcome input into the actual subject matter for the session.

8. Enough Already! A Sufficiency Dialogue for Creating a Sustainable World

In this workshop Miriam Hawley and Gina LaRoche will further explore the ideas presented in the keynote The Power of Enough. Participants will come away with action steps they can take toward living a sufficient and sustainable life.

Our inquiry will consider the following questions:

• What is the indelible link between scarcity and sufficiency?
• How do we transform the global conversation from one of scarcity to one of sufficiency so the preconditions for sustainability are attainable?
• Are you awakening from the trance of scarcity and choosing to live in the truth of sufficiency?
• What is your experience of sufficiency in your life right now?
• What conversations do you need to alter, what new stories do you need to tell to replace the experience of scarcity with the experience of sufficiency?
• How do we launch green and sustainable businesses grounded in the practice of sufficiency?
• What committed actions will you take or practices will you engage in to ensure sufficiency as the ground for your green ventures?
• Where are the sustainable business models that focus on the triple bottom line–people, planet and profits–and the fourth–the possibility of flourishing?
• What will it take to create a just, compassionate and sustainable future for you, for your organization or business, your community and your world?
• Who are your partners in creating this future?
• What actions could you take today that would create a shift toward sufficiency in each of these contexts?
• If forty years from now we realized our dreams of a sustainable future, what would our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren be saying about what we had begun today?

9. All The Trained Workers You Need: What Service-Learning Can Provide NJ’s Green Businesses and Industries

Opportunities for innovative sustainable businesses to create a healthy, emergent Green Economy are growing daily. As yet, however, the economy lacks a trained workforce for many green ventures. Come see how using service-learning programs like AmeriCorps can connect New Jersey’s green businesses with trained workers and innovators.

Federal Funding for Service-Learning Programs in the US more than tripled last month with the Serve America Act. This legislation increased the AmeriCorps program from 75,000 to 250,000 members annually and mandated the creation of a national Clean Energy Corps. There is a need for NJ’s businesses to help shape what green service learning will should look like in our state. Come see yourself as 1 of the nodes in the green business network and discover/create your place in the vision.

This action workshop will describe the nodes in a functionally-interconnected green business network being put together by Green Collar Futures and consisting of Green Businesses, Schools and Environmental Education Centers, Service-Learning Organizations, and Young Adults in Transition. It will discuss the needs and yields of each sector, and illustrate the explosive potential for green businesses to cost-effectively support and incubate their own future workforce.

We have reached a pivotal moment. This time is ours – and uniquely ideal – to grow healthy, local economies, and sustainable, regenerative businesses. Our role is connecting an emergent corps of well-trained workers and leaders to open jobs in exceptional new fields.

Co-Moderator: Doug Cohen, The Inspired Futures Campaign, Chair – Resource Council, National Youth Initiatives, US Partnership for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Co-Moderators:

• Elyssa Serrilli, AmeriCorps Alums Policy Liaison, enviropreneur, Green Collar Futures co-founder
• Douglas Cohen, The Leadership Center
• Kevin Burke, AmeriCorps Alum, Former Director Mississippi YouthBuild residential construction trades training program
• douglassFrances Subbiondo, ‘nature works’ founder, permaculturalist, agro-ecologist, Green Collar Futures co-founder

Detailed Event Locations: