Draft Mission Statement

From CFI

This community educates about sustainability by example and through academic programs. An organic farm with permaculture and other integrated principles that provides foods and medicine for the community and income through commercial distribution. A center for alternative and holistic healing, and preventive support. A community that thrives on art, culture and music and uses them to spread sustainable practices and embrace the dynamics of existence. A group of people living an example of economic localization, and ecological sustainability. Playing an active role in preparing Mendocino County, and other areas, for life after peak oil.

Jenny's thoughts April 6, 2006

Focusing the Vision to Succeed

Sometimes I think it is a curse to have too many good ideas. Mainly because it becomes unwieldy to try and accomplish them all. Lately we have learned some new skills for planning through John Croft of the Gaia Foundation. He showed us how to create a board game by plotting out our goals and tasks. The key here being astute as how to link the tasks to make headway towards the end goal. The board we created had ambitious end goals but too many of them I think.

I would like to suggest that this group that is coming together to build a community focus on supplying for our very basic needs as the goal of our endeavors. It is certainly my motivation. Our most basic needs are water, food, and the means to produce the energy to use the water to grow and raise our food. One more need that is vital to the success of everything else is the need to reflect and celebrate. Through human evolution we can observe that from the planting to the harvest, from the hunt to the dividing of the meat, providing food for each other is what links our bodies minds and spirits to each other and the spirit of Mother Earth in thankfulness and celebration.

In my mind a code kitchen will be an essential component not only for the preservation of food for the community members but to enable us to label and market our specialties and provide income for future community projects. We also need to fold in the wisdom of indigenous people who knew what native foods and other useful plants were available and how to use them without overharvesting them.

Because we live in a region where many forms of alternative energy are already in use and because it will be essential to our success to provide our own energy let's utilize our opportunity as a 501 c3 public benefit corporation to find the funding sources to pay the experts among us to do research and development in alternative energy production at this site.

I think that if we focus on planning to succeed in accomplishing the above mentioned goals that the money and the expertise that we need will be attracted to the project. I also think the development of the curriculum of the school will prioritize itself in alignment with achieving these goals.