The Purposes behind 4RCommunity.com:
The purposes of this site are to support the social, environmental, and economic development of Alpine, CA and the surrounding communities in East San Diego County. To the extent possible this site will provide a way to stay connected to the Revitalization Efforts underway in Alpine, and over time, other similar initiatives around the area. It is a tool for increasing the vitality of Alpine and surrounds and for strengthening community participation as the area evolves.
Social Development: This site provides a forum for community members, local businesses, and government representatives to exchange information, ideas, dialogue, and connect with each other. It will provide a record of the major events of the Alpine Revitalization effort, which was launched in 2004 and continues today. A directory of service groups, non-profits and other organizations will help people connect – one of the cornerstones of a sustainable community.
Environmental Improvement: This site will provide a place to post information, events, resources, and project updates about environmental issues in the area. These may include watershed rehabilitation projects, wildlife habitat projects, sustainable agriculture and green building projects, educational opportunities, and so on.
Economic Development: This site will provide several kinds of resources to support East County economic development including links to various funding sources, business support agencies, consulting services, a directory of local businesses, and trend data about the larger economy in which we are a player.
Principles:
The principles underpinning this site come from the most credible and proven sources possible. Taken together they make a very useful set of tools for creating robust, resilient, responsible and renewing communities. The resources highlighted below are illustrative of the sources we look to for guidance and direction:
Asset Based Community Development - This approach assumes that we will do best by understanding what assets, skills, talents, tools, and uniqueness we have and leveraging them to the hilt. Rather than focusing on the limitations of our community, it’s problems and deficiencies, let’s collaboratively develop our vision and find ways to make it easy for our community members, and ourselves, to be of service in making the vision come to life. To learn more go to the Asset Based Community Development Institute
Environmental & Ecosystem Health- Of the many approaches to assessing environmental and ecosystem issues, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment sponsored by the United Nations in 2001 and was completed in 2005. It is one of the most credible and comprehensive. The MA’s four technical volumes underwent two rounds of review by experts and governments. Together with 44 governments and 9 affiliated scientific organizations, over 600 individual reviewers worldwide provided around 18,000 individual comments. The MA was designed to meet the needs of decision makers and the public for scientific information concerning the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being and options for responding to those changes. The principles and distinctions offered by the MA give us a framework for thinking about our ecosystem in Alpine, its value to us, and how to enhance and cultivate it indefinitely.
Sustainable Economic Development – Some of the best material on this subject can be found at the Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado. Economic Renewal as RMI has been doing it for 25 years “is an economic-development process that empowers communities to develop sustainably—to prosper over the long term without compromising core values or eroding the local resource base. In contrast to conventional approaches that rely on recruiting new industries, Economic Renewal stresses self-reliance, diversity, and more inclusive decision-making. Taking the view that many small efforts work better than a single one-size-fits-all solution, its priorities are resource productivity, support of existing businesses, encouragement of new local enterprise, and recruitment of compatible new business—in that order.” This is one approach that is very consistent with the social and environmental approaches above and has demonstrated results.
Web Site Business Model:
This site is supported by donations, volunteers, corporate sponsors and advertizing. As the site matures, there will also be various products made available for sale by the site. Currently Sterling Insights, Inc. produces and manages the site. For more information about this site or to learn about opportunities to work with Sterling Insights contact us at 619-659-1234 or send an email.
For those wishing to help support this site there are several ways to do so:
Donate – You may contribute by credit card via the secure “PayPal” link in the right sidebar. Any and all donations are appreciated. If you wish to make a donation through one of our local non-profits to support this effort, please see the list of Alpine area non-profits to learn how. Volunteer – This site needs all kinds of help from soliciting local sponsors to writing new content to proofing old content. We’re looking for great links to useful outside resources and making links between ideas and projects inside this site already. Drop us a line at Sterling Insights or call at 619-659-1234 and we’ll be glad to tell you about opportunities to participate. Online skills helpful, but not required. Sponsor – If you are a local business or non-profit and would like your company or group associated with wholesome community building, sustainable economic development, and forward thinking, this is the place. We provide sponsorship programs to fit every budget. Sponsors receive prominent placement in this site’s pages and in our community resources directory.
In my role as founding editor and moderator, I’ll do my best to keep the site crisp, up to date, and of greatest possible utility to our community. I welcome your comments and improvement ideas and your support in implementing them to enhance the site.
Cheers,
Joe Sterling
Sterlng Insights, Inc.
Alpine, CA
619-659-1234
Joe@SterlingInsights.com