Tools/Other Valuable Resources
Community-Building
Community Collaboration
Helping communities and organizations build collaboration and consensus. Practical information for building collaboration and partnerships, locating assets and resources, identifying and engaging stakeholders, developing and completing goals and objectives and achieving success.
Citizens Handbook
A guide to building community. Highly recommended. From the 2006 Vancouver Citizens Committee which seeks to pomote community building, citizen participation and local democracy.
The Tool Box provides over 6,000 pages of practical information to support your work in promoting healthy community. The core of the Tool Box is the "topic sections" that include practical guidance such as: leadership, strategic planning, community assessment, grant writing, and evaluation to give just a few examples. Each section includes a description of the task, advantages of doing it, step-by-step guidelines, examples, checklists of points to review, and training materials.
Developer of online community systems for virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing. Ramius CommunityZero™ enables organizations to instantly build collaborative networks of online communities to securely exchange, communicate and expand knowledge.
The official website of Drupal, an open source content management platform. Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.
Empowerment Institute is the world's premiere consulting and training organization specializing in the methodology of empowerment. Its state-of-the-art empowerment tools have been applied over the past twenty-five years to achieve significant and measurable behavior change at the community and organizational level. Its clients consist of public sector agencies, corporations and non profits.
The International Association for Public Participation
Helps organizations and communities around the world improve their decisions by involving those people who are affected by those decisions.
Seeks to foster a cooperative human community in a diverse yet interconnected world by creating and disseminating practical tools and innovative approaches to personal and cultural change.
Emergency Management
Designed to empower individuals and communities as they recover from hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters by providing resources and tools that can help rebuild communities, businesses, and homes using sustainable principles and technologies. Use the links located on the left to explore the many valuable resources available on this Web site.
When Technology Fails
Blog and resource site by Matthew Stein. Information on preparing for, and dealing with: Hurricanes and Other Superstorms; Terrorist Acts; "Peak Oil" and Gasoline Shortages; Disruptions in Supplies and Services; Biological Terrorism / Pandemics; Medical Emergencies; Power Outages; Skyrocketing Energy Bills; Earthquakes. Yikes!
Green Building
Green Building Concepts
Green Building Concepts supplies information exchange on a more resource and energy efficient lifestyle.
A database of over 600 green building materials and products selected specifically for their usefulness to the design and building professions, rather than merely their green material content.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design
The LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Green Building Rating System® is a voluntary, consensus-based national standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. USGBC's members, representing every sector of the building industry, developed and continue to refine LEED.
The Low Impact Development Center
A non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of Low Impact Development technology. Low Impact Development is a new, comprehensive land planning and engineering design approach with a goal of maintaining and enhancing the pre-development hydrologic regime of urban and developing watersheds.
Provides resources for green building: green building professionals directory; green building solutions; and more.
The nation’s foremost coalition of leaders from across the building industry working to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work.
Green Media
Environmental news and commentary. Let's face it: reading environmental journalism too often feels like eating your vegetables. Boiled. With no butter. But at Grist, we believe that news about green issues and sustainable living doesn't have to be predictable, demoralizing, or dull. We butter the vegetables! And add salt! And strain metaphors!
Public service broadcasting for a post carbon world.
This is the website of the Great Turning Times, a free quarterly email newsletter about finding our power to respond to global crisis. Bringing together ecology, psychology, spirituality and global issues, it lists events, news and resources to support the shift towards a life sustaining society.
The purpose of HopeDance is simply to report on the outrageous, pioneering and inspiring activities of outstanding individuals and organizations who are creating a new world--regardless of their spiritual tradition or political agenda.
Hugg
Hugg is a new project by TreeHugger —a source for user-generated green news. What does this mean? It's simple—how many times have you found an article, a video or a website that you’ve wanted to share with all your green friends? Well, Hugg lets you to share this stuff with everyone. Plus, it lets other users rate shared stories by Hugging them. All posts start out in the queue. Each time a story is Hugged, it climbs the ranks. Hugg is a place to post and harvest the latest on green architecture, transportation, fashion, alternative energy, politics, products and technology. It's green media, by you, for you!
Dedicated to helping innovative individuals grow sustainable enterprises … and put smart growth strategies into real world practice. The pages of every issue profile leading examples of small companies and coalitions that connect concepts and people … that provide goods and services needed to improve our quality of life and environmental goals.
Iindependent producer of broadcast dialogues and other quality programming presenting a diversity of views from many traditions and cultures. New Dimensions plants seeds of transformation around the planet through our broadcasts, partnerships, community involvement, and educational endeavors. To sign up for their Email Newsletter visit: http://www.newdimensions.org/mwsubscribe/?what=subscribe&email
Off-the-Grid Resources
Karavans serves as a hub for disseminating emergent ideas, information, tools, and techniques for unlocking the food supply, moving off-the-grid, renewable energy, self-sufficient living, community and local economy building, ecological design, permaculture, and other matters germane to sustainable life-styles.
Getting Green off the Grid
A reference for sustainable and off the grid living.
Off the Grid (from Utne Magazine)
Dozens of magazines have sprung up from the self-reliance movement. From their pages one may learn how to collect rainwater, install solar electric systems, plant an orchard, or -- more important -- reject despair, embrace self-reliance, and live in a way that considers a sane future for generations to come.