Saturday, February 23, 2013

Plans for The Harvest Collective in 2013

If we choose to embody COMPASSIONATE EARTH WORK, we are the consciousness that will solve our society's present economic, social, and environmental crisis. We must choose to cultivate life - people, communities, social movements, animals, plants, fungus - in their most abundant and healthy form of self expression, rather than give our entire being to a modern civilization that is causing irreparable damage to our biosphere and the consciousness of humanity. 

Davey Speaking at PUA's Stepping Forward Day - 11/11/2012


The mission of The Harvest Collective is to create a network for individuals, communities, and businesses to actively share resources to provide families with cost savings, healthy local food, and community supported spaces for art and healing. We are now looking for volunteers, donors, and input on our vision to help us build our programs, website, and network. Below is a list of our most immediate initiatives. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to support our work to empower our mission by donating through the Pick Up America website. If interested in any of these ideas, please get in touch with me as soon as possible - davidrogner@gmail.com. 





Upcoming Projects and Initiatives 
  • Visioning Dream City Sanctuary - We have assembled and are presently recruiting people to serve on our Vision and Wisdom Council for the creation of The Dream City Sanctuary. DCS will be an alternative agricultural and community development project just outside of Damascus, MD in western Montgomery County. In essence, we would like to create a artist farm and regional resource for permaculture, the healing arts, and sustainability education for the greater DC/MD area. We are presently drafting our business plan and the major activities occurring at Dream City Sanctuary will be organic farming, a major compost facility, a trading post of sustainable goods, the building of small scale sustainable housing, a small festival grounds, permaculture research, and most notably a healing arts education center where we can host yoga/meditation retreats and help people connect to their higher purpose. This effort is the long time dream of many of our visionaries and if you too share in the dream of living in a wholly self-sustaining community that is making a big impact on our world, please get in touch with me as soon as possible. The primary intention is to nurture co-collaboration and incorporate anyone who shares a passion for sustainability and wellness.
  • Capitol Heights, MD Peace on Earthbench - We have plans to build the Mid-Atlantic's first bottle brick bench this spring in Capitol Heights, MD. The project is a collaborative effort between The Harvest Collective, Clean Water Action, The Alice Ferguson Foundation, the City of Capitol Heights, and The Peace on Earthbench Movement (POEM) to transform littered waste into a meaningful community space. We will be building the bench throughout April and May with the help of students from area schools and dedicating the space as a permanent reflection for peace in the Prince George's Community. We will be collecting bottle bricks, teaching cob construction, building a roof structure, and painting tiles that represent peace and/or sustainability. In a county that has seen the thoughtless murder of 6 teen students in the last 6 months, we must bring a strong calling for peace.  
  • Join Compassionate Earth Walk - Visit the website. I recently learned about a pilgrimage occurring this summer to bring blessings to the earth, to raise consciousness for Compassionate Earth Work, and to exhibit a way of living beyond pipelines, hydraulic fracturing for natural gas, and mountain top removal. As one who has just finished an epic journey to rekindle a healthy relationship with nature, I can attest that a pilgrimage is one of the most spiritually transformative actions one can take in their lifetime. We will be walking along roads closest to the Keystone XL pipeline's northern route from Hardisky, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska from June - September 2013. We plan to do service projects along the way and build a platform of support for the consciousness of compassionate earth work. The walk is being organized by Shodo Spring, a practicing buddhist monk, and here is a short description of the walk in her words “The ancient practice of pilgrimage responds to profound present and future environmental change.  We walk to bless the earth. We walk to bless those we meet.  We walk as a prayer for all earth’s children.  We walk to ally ourselves with the peoples who never forgot they belong to the natural world.” Our Pick Up America bus and multiple pick up artists - including myself and Mark Chavez- have already committed to the walk. 

  • Green Grooves After School Program - We plan to start in April at the White Oak Recreation Center in Silver Spring, MD. Green Grooves program will work with disadvantaged teens to teach a mutual appreciation for creative expression through drumming and direct, meaningful contact with nature. We will be cultivating peace and stewardship in the younger generation by teaching students how to listen to each other while drumming and how to listen to nature while performing community stewardship projects. I am looking for an experienced drummer to work with to help me teach students different hand drumming techniques. We are also seeking donations of drums and other musical equipment to the program.  
  • Join or Start a "SnowFlake" within The Harvest Collective - Do you have a sustainability initiative you hope to empower? We are open to ideas and programs and projects to add within The Harvest Collective. We are offering the resource of helping you to organize your own community initiative and will serve as a fiscal sponsor for some of your local food or art projects in the Maryland region. 
  • Host Davey Rogner as Speaker for rekindling a meaningful connection with nature - I have a lot of passion, knowledge, and many inspiring stories to share about how and why to rekindle an active and healthy relationship with nature. I appreciate being paid to be a speaker, but am willing to offer my time if I feel the cause is worth my effort. 
   Initiatives WAre Supporting
  • Trash Free Maryland - There are two bills in the Maryland General Assembly that if passed would drastically reduce litter in our water conscious state. The Community Clean-Up and Greening Act (HB1086, SB576) would put a 5 cent fee on plastic bags in grocery stores throughout the state creating a consumer incentive to reuse their own bags and save businesses money by not having to buy bags in the first place. The statewide Container Recycling Incentive Program (HB1085, SB641) would create a 5 cent deposit fee on all beverage containers to drastically increase recycling rates, reduce litter, and grow our state's recycling industry. You can use this automated action alert to contact your legislators about the "Bag Bill" and please give them a call about the bills if you feel passionate about reducing litter in Maryland. 
  • Attend Mountain Justice Spring Break or Summer Camp - The ruthless activities of corporations that perform Mountain Top Removal and the expansion of Hydro Fracking remain as the biggest environmental justice issue in the Eastern United States. There is no better time to learn more about and physically join the burgeoning movement than now! Mountain Justice will be hosting two camps this season to empower citizens to take direct action against these ruthless corporations. Learn more at the Mountain Justice Website.

  • "NO TO KEYSTONE XL"  The pipeline will be used to ship Tar Sands Crude Oil - a form of oil that yields nearly one unit of energy output per input - to the gulf coast to be shipped to domestic and foreign markets. It will incentivize the premanent destruction of an area of forest nearly the size of Florida in Alberta Candaa. Our nation's top climate scientist, James Hansen, has called building the Keystone XL Pipeline to expedite tar sands extraction to be "game over for our climate". Overwhelming science agrees climate change is happening faster than we anticipated, is being amplified by burning fossil fuels, and poses the most potent threat to our communities in the 21st century. It will be a lot of fun and will be something our children look at as a critical action in US history. JOIN US!
  • Attend The Stone Soup Rally at the FDA in College Park, MD on Monday April 8th - More details here. Amidst a dizzying array of environmental health issues, the issue of non-labeled and government promoted Genetically Modified foods poses a seriously dumbfounding threat to public health. The Institute for Responsible Technology has called for an immediate moratorium on GMO's in our food supply until more long term studies are completed. Studies that have been performed on animals who have ingested GMO's have shown serious health effects including infertility, immune problems, and permanent changes to internal organs. As a result entire nation's, including France, Ireland, Japan, Peru, Kenya, and Russia, have banned genetically modified crops from being cultivated. Yet our nation's Food Safety Czar, Micheal Taylor, - an Obama Appointee - is the former chief lobbyist and defense attorney for Monsanto, the corporate profiteer of promoting genetically modified locally and domestically. If you haven't heard of the evil that is Monsanto yet, please watch the film Food Inc. We will be gathering on April 8th from 8 am to 6 pm to have the nation's first ever "Eat-In" at Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, 5100 Paint Branch Parkway College Park, MD 20740. The purpose being to encourage our government to create a safer, more transparent food chain by seriously addressing the issue of unregulated genetically modified foods.

  • Middle River Preservation Project - I am now interning with the Gunpowder River Conservancy to learn about rain garden and edible landscape construction, as well as installing rain barrels. We will be hosting workshops on Saturdays throughout the spring and summer in southwestern Baltimore County on how to build highly effective best management practices for homeowners to prevent harmful runoff to our streams, rivers, and ultimately the bay. Let me know if you'd like to attend a workshop. GVC's website.

No comments:

Post a Comment