The Broadwell Hill Party with a Purpose:
Civic Mitigation and Resilience Building

The 10/10/10 Broad Well Learning Center event will include:

- An invitation to get involved: planning, contributions, day-of-event assistance and participation.

- An emphasis on fun, diversity and community strengthening exercises.

- A Community Council will be held in the Lodge of Glowing Embers on the topic of climate change, green house gas reduction, preparedness and resilience.

A talking object will be used with conversational agreements to accomodate the sharing of a wide variety of views on the topic.

Everyone is welcome as each one of us has a valuable perspective to share and everyone's voice needs to be heard! The goal is to learn to listen to others with very divergent views and to seek common ground within a circle of democratic dialogue, not to indulge in debate or argumentative posturing. People who fail to abide by the conversational agreements will be asked to separate themselves from the circle for a time.

- Kathy Jacobson will introduce the risk management and worse case scenario approach to preparedness, mitigation, response and resilience planning with a fun, positive and goal-oriented strategy.

She will share her perspective on the role of soil/woodland habitat in carbon sequestration, the Broadwell Hill Farm mitigation efforts and about the steps we can take toward an overall reduction of greenhouse gas emissions; including the need to incorporate more tools for at-distance meeting processes.

She will also introduce the Community Health and Civic Resilience Alliance initiative, including a brief introduction to the Athens County Emergency Management plan and the Multi-jursidictional Hazard Mitigation Planning process. (other expert gu est speakers, including public officials, will be invited to speak.)

Individuals will be encouraged to visit the Athens County Regional Planning Commission web site at http://www.seorf.ohiou.edu/~xx181/ and get involved in s uch planning processes. (A survey is available until September 1 and all Athens County Residents are strongly encouraged to complete it while taking into consideration the following:

The Athens County Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan does not currently address climate change factors and actually states: "Barring a major change in weather patterns, extreme weather events will likely occur in a similar fashion as the historic reco rd indicates. There is a lively debate in scientific and policy-making communities about the causes and impacts of global warming. Because the variables are so many and the science about global warming still in its infancy, this Plan will not attempt to predict future weather patterns different from those of the past."

It is this writer's belief that this type of approach is irresponsible from a public health, emergency management and risk management perspective; it does not matter whether there is a lively debate or not, it is indeed a "possible" risk that our public officials should be mature enough to face and address.

The plan should include a statement like "the frequency and severity of natural hazard weather events "may" increase due to the variables associated with climate change matters.". In addition, recommendations for mitigation strategies to reduce g reenhouse gas emissions should also be included in the plan with educational outreach to increase civic awareness and involvement in the planning process and to advocate for increased preparedness, mitigation and local resilience building efforts.

- Break-out sessions will take place during the 10/10/10 working party for people interested in participating in the various Basic Need and Support Service Teams within the inter-independent collaborative architecture.

- Potluck snacks and breaks with time for woodland and renewable energy explorations will be provided. The emphasis during this gathering includes FUN, increased connectivity, social networking and basic steps that can be taken as we learn to we ave our respective efforts together more effectively.

- A potluck meal will also be shared.

- Free will donations will be humbly accepted to help sustain the community service efforts in our area and beyond

In Advance of 10/10/10 The Broadwell Hill Sustainable Woodland Farm and Learning Center hosted the Green Energy Ohio 2010 Solar Tours from 1-4 pm on Saturday, October 2 and Sunday, October 3. More information related to this event can be accessed at http://www.greenenergyohio.org/ost/siteDetail.cfm?site_id=382