This Earth day I am feeling a little less inspired than in years past. A tiredness that I know my friends and community members have been feeling as well. With all the ongoings in the world sometimes it feels too exhausting to keep fighting for a brighter and greener future. How can we keep the wind under our wings when it feels like maintaining an intentional lifestyle is an insurmountable task?
Katie McCamant, our CoHousing Solutions President, has dedicated her life to building sustainable communities that will reduce our carbon footprint and tackle some of Earth’s most pressing issues. I sat down with Katie to talk about how she stays motivated, and continues to walk the walk while talking the talk about living a greener lifestyle. She claims that the trick to sticking to your environmental goals is to surround yourself with people that will keep you motivated and accountable. For Katie, those people are the members of her cohousing community in Nevada City, California.
“The point of creating intentional communities is the idea that your community gives you the strength to go out and live a more meaningful life” she said. “When the group collectively decides to eat locally sourced, organic food, I am much more inclined to chip in the extra couple of dollars to support the cause than I would be if I was just shopping for myself”.
She says that the key to success is finding the community that will help share the burden, and will make the tasks that seem insurmountable, achievable.
She told me the story of how their community came together to tackle a one of their biggest environmental goals; cultivating an organic garden. All of the members of the community agreed that they wanted to raise their families in an environment where they had access to fresh, organic produce, and a chance to teach their children what it meant to grow their own food. But cultivating a garden was a large task. Land needed to be cleared and flattened, fences raised, irrigation installed, and not to mention all of the actual gardening and upkeep that would be required. It was a goal that no one family would have ever accomplished alone. With each other’s encouragement, support, and shared efforts, they banded together to create a large organic garden that the entire community now gets to enjoy.
Whether it be your family, your friends, or your cohousing neighborhood, finding your likeminded community is key to meeting your environmental goals. A community with shared common values can be your support system in the moments when inspiration escapes you, and can help you achieve the goals that you thought were impossible.
On this Earth day we encourage you to get in touch with your community, talk about some of your environmentally minded goals, and make the choice to strive together.
Happy Earth Day, from our community to yours!
The Nevada City Cohousing community in their organic garden on Earth Day 2018