TTM Takes On 2018!

Our 2018 Annual Planning session (Sat, Jan 27, 2018) was packed with energy, ideas, and enthusiasm – 30 folks highly-motivated to do good things for ourselves and our planet!

We started with a few exercises to get us in the right frame of mind –  a mingle to get to know who’s in the room, some inspirational readings, and an exercise to get us clear about the values we hold most dear and which inform the work we do. Sari Steuber, TTM’s president, ran through a slide-show of our achievements for 2017 to make sure we set the bar even higher this year! (To get the full scope of our day’s work, see the minutes. If you want to view the slide-show, be sure to view it in slide-show mode to get the full effect).

Then the real fun begins. We try to keep things organized but the ideas start flying, pinging off one another, and ratcheting up the energy in the room. It’s a blast! After the room starts to simmer down, things get real. Everyone must choose what they want to work on and stick their name on it – literally! Armed with a small number of stickies, everyone puts their name on the big board, next to the projects they want to work on. Here’s the list we ended up with:

• Monthly Potlucks—We missed having potlucks, so we decided to have them each month that we’re not having another major event. They’ll be just informal evenings, bringing the community together to eat, meet, and talk about a topic that’s dear to us. We hope you can join us!
• Local Business Investing Circle—We’ll pool our money and use it to support local entrepreneurs who want to create businesses that provide useful, people-friendly and planet-friendly new products or services and support the local economy at the same time.
• Local Food Expo—A day to celebrate and educate ourselves about all our abundant local food resources!
• Delaware County Sustainability Tour—This will showcase all the green infrastructure in our County’s homes, businesses, and municipalities.
• Build Something Workshops & Repair Cafes—People teaching and learning how to make and fix the things that we need.
• FreeStore mentoring—helping other FreeStores in the area get started and flourish (Erie and Harrisburg are two we’re already working with).
• Tool Lending—We already have an online library started, we just need to get the word out and get it “stocked”.
• Welcome to Media packets for new Media Borough residents—We noticed no one is providing info about the Borough’s amazing resources, businesses, and organizations, so we thought we ought to help the Borough provide them! And in doing so, we can let them know about TTM and the great work we’re doing.
• Day of Mindfulness—a meditation retreat.
• Tree Mapping Survey — asking residents to measure and report on the trees on their property as a way of getting a baseline on the biomass in the Borough.

Of course, this is on top of the on-going projects and events we’re committed to doing, including:

• Composting—working with Media Borough to start a Borough-wide curbside kitchen scraps pickup which will be composted at Linvilla Farms.
• Open Streets—another collaboration with the Borough to stage a bicycle-friendly, pedestrian-friendly, car-free festival where certain streets will be closed down for a few hours and various activities will be available along the route.
• Perennial events—we’ll continue to put on our favorite events: the Free Market, Green Sunday Local Crafts Fair, Gratitude Event, and Winter Solstice
• Managing the FreeStore and the TimeBank—our trademark alternative economy projects.
• Fostering our Working Groups—Food, Energy, Resiliency Response, Inner Transition, and Heart & Soul.
• And of course, doing all the usual administrative work associated with our organization—fundraising, membership, event planning and promotion, and so on.

Sounds like we’ll be busy! If anything listed here sounds exciting to you, or is something you’d like to try your hand at and make a contribution toward, let us know! We’d love to have you join us!