What do You want the future to look like?

It’s July 2020 and the people of Cherry Hill, NJ are just waking up to start their busy days. Mom hops on the new Cherry Hill bio diesel fueled jitney as she makes her way to work on the other side of town. She calls a friend to meet her for lunch at one of the many restaurants certified by the South Jersey Green Dining Association. Daughter Hannah is on her way to her new, state of the art, energy efficient, solar powered LEED certified school with a reusable lunch bag packed with fresh, local produce from Springdale Farms. Son Joe hops on his bike to run a few errands before he has to be at his job at one of the hundreds of Green Certified businesses in town. He shakes his head in disbelief as Dad reminds him that riding a bike or walking across Cherry Hill used to mean dodging cars and trucks. Once the house is empty, Dad readies the food waste from last night’s dinner and puts it in the curbside container, next to the big, blue recycling bins in preparation for the municipal composting truck to swing down the street. He glances around his yard and house with a satisfying look and recalls those “not so good old days”. The native plants he used to replace his lawn need barely any water and his home is so energy efficient that his utility costs have gone down to next to nothing. He puts on his walking shoes and hits one of the many pedestrian paths that wind throughout the township as he heads towards the Cherry Hill Library. He is excited to attend a free class on starting an organic kitchen garden. On the way over to the class, he meets his friend Julie, who is heading to PATCO for a trip to South Camden to work with the residents in their thriving community garden.

Think this is just a fantasy? Well, not if the participants of Cherry Hill 2020: Shaping a Sustainable Future have their way. On July 16-18, 2009, 90 people representing a microcosm of the Cherry Hill community joined together for 16 hours over three days of hard work. Their mission was to help build a healthy physical environment, a strong local economy and an equitable society with the formation of a shared vision for sustainability. The non-profit, Sustainable Cherry Hill hosted the event, which was by invitation only and of no cost to participants. Participants ranged from teens to seniors and represented businesses, faith groups, education, community groups, government and environmentalists. Everyone came to the conference with their own unique set of talents, backgrounds and opinions, but were united in their desire to foster and improve community. Professional facilitators, trained in the research based “Future Search” method spent hours working with participants in small and large groups to reach the final day of agenda setting. Task forces were created to move the vision forward with the goal of engaging others in the community to join in and expand the reach of these initiatives beyond conference attendees.

Task forces include: Green Building, Educating for Sustainability, Community Composting, Green Business, Bike Path/Sidewalks, Transportation, Renewable Energy, Local Food/Gardening, Land, Air and Water Conservation, Zero Waste and Urban/Regional Partnerships for Environmental Justice. Group leaders, initial meeting dates, as well as preliminary goals and agenda for each task force were also developed.

Sustainable Cherry Hill is encouraging all community members to find their niche in one of the eleven task forces and to be part of the solution. Our soon to be revamped website (courtesy of World Wide Web Communications) will serve as a communication hub for the task forces. Please contact Lori Braunstein at lori.braunstein@sustainablecherryhill.org for more information or call 609.238.3449.

Join the group on the first Wed of each month for GREEN DRINKS, an informal social and professional networking event for people thinking and talking about sustainability. It is held at PJ Whelihans in Cherry Hill from 6-8pm. The next one is coming up on August 5th. We’ll have sign up sheets for the task forces out that night.

Below are some of the words participants used to describe the conference…

“awesome, motivating, cool, enlightening, optimistic, challenging, impressed, proactive, encouraged, connected, hopeful, necessary, thankful, determined, pump up, beautiful and more…”

Check out these articles about the conference…
Here
Here
and Here

Please see the sidebar of our blog for a list of our generous sponsors.
www.sustainable-cherryhill.blogspot.com

July 21, 2009 Posted in: visioning