Some of you may know by now that I am a "sustainability ambassador" for the Cochrane Sustainability Plan. What that means is that I have committed to implementing the plan and to teaching others about the plan and asking them to make a similar commitment. This plan is a community plan, developed and being implemented by volunteer citizens like you and me. It is about making sure Cochrane will remain a vibrant and prosperous community in all the years to come because of our culture of responsibility and our willingness to collaborate and cooperate to make the Cochrane community the best it can be. This has nothing to do with Town Council, other than Council is a partner and has spearheaded the development of the plan. The Council does not own this plan-you do!
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of meeting with two local businesses to walk them through the plan and request that they become "sustainability champions". Both businesses are already on the 13 pathways to sustainability and are involved in all aspects of implementation-they are already champions. What I discovered in both cases was that they just are not aware of the plan or what it means to them. It was an honour to be able to tell them more and engage these people into what is possible-how they can be identified champions of the process and move Cochrane forward as a sustainable community. I was able to show them how they are already leaders -they are already engaged and that this is about citizenship and having fun-celebrating our successes and learning from our trials. There is no financial commitment required-nothing required except a commitment to the plan!
One of my commitments as an ambassador is to ensure that everyone becomes more aware of how involved they are in citizenship activities and sustaining this community. The Activettes, the people who organize the Footstock, our arts community, the Spray Lakes Rec Centre people, the Humane Society, the organizers of the parade, the Lions, the Rotary, people who naturescape or donate to charities or attend community events, our wonderful volunteers etc. etc.-we have so many people involved at the ground level in community building that it is hard to know where to start.
This is not about environmental citizenship-it is about citizenship in every respect. It is about how we live, work and play in this community, and how we use and share resources, whether those are human resources, economic resources, cultural resources, environmental resources, etc.
The plan itself can be found online at:
http://cochranesustainability.ca/
Please read the plan and if you want to learn more, email me or call me and I will be there with the plan and time to walk you through it-to listen and teach and assure you that your contributions have not gone unnoticed.
Everyone who reads this blog is actively engaged in Pathway 1. Everyone who takes time to read the plan is actively engaged as a Sustainability Citizen-without doing one more thing!
I encourage you to be involved-every day. Start each day knowing you can do better-because, you can!
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