Current Initiatives

Big Green Summer

Our flagship project, a 10-week summer internship. Big Green Summer provides education and practical experience in imagining, creating, and advocating for beyond-sustainable communities - human settlements that work with natures design to celebrate the abundance of life on earth. Students live in an environment that is a laboratory for what they are learning - high performance buildings built of natural, local materials, utilizing solar and wind power, with organic gardens, rain collection, and community service. Students do classroom study and hands on projects in renewable energy, organic agriculture and local food systems, perennial crops and agroforestry, edible landscaping, water and waste systems, building with local, natural materials, and using biofuels. We investigate the social service, cultural, and political institutions and organizations that make the renewable economy transition practical, possible, and desirable.

Angoon Conservation Initiative

Angoon, Alaska sits on the eastern shore of the Admiralty Island National Monument; a six-hour ferry ride off the cost of Juneau and home to 424 Tlingit tribal members. The community largely depends on subsistence living that includes the gathering of wild resources for food and other local needs. What cannot be gathered locally is shipped from the mainland at a cost that is crushing to the Angoon Tribal community.

On top of transportation costs, tribal members pay 60 cents/kwh (6 to 10 times what we pay here) for electricity. This year the fire station could not afford heat; pipes froze, and tragedy struck the community when a fire could not be put out. The power to the water company was shut off. It was a chilling glimpse into a future where the price of energy begins to affect the very fabric of community life.

The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, sponsors of Lonnie and Diana’s trip, have offered scholarship money for 2-3 Angoon residents to attend Big Green Summer. The plan is to revitalize the Angoon community through community education, community and school gardens, conservation practices, and the completion of a pilot project in which two to three homes will be taken off the grid with solar and wind power with the assistance of MUM students.

If you would like to help this grass-roots sustainability project, you are invited to donate money (any amount will help) to send compact florescent and LED light bulbs to Angoon. The goal is to raise $1,000 as soon as possible. Call Diana Krystofiak at 641-919-3645, or send donations directly to the Sustainable Living Coalition, 2331 Seven Hills Rd., Fairfield, IA 52556. SLC is a non-profit organization, and donations are tax deductible. Please place “Angoon conservation initiative” in the memo of your check.

Analog Forestry

Analog forestry is a system of silviculture management that seeks to establish a tree-dominated ecosystem analogous in architectural structure and ecological function to the original climax or sub-climax vegetation community. It seeks to enhance the well-being of rural communities and their relationship with the natural environment. It encourages economic activity through the use of species that provide marketable products. Analog Forestry provides a promising means of addressing important issues such as forest restoration, soil conservation, carbon sequestration, and community resilience.

Renew Fairfield

Local environmental groups have come together around this community-driven Web site.