Friends,
Thanks to you, this past year has been a huge success for Sustainable Fairfax and our community. And now we really need your continued support to help ensure that our work can be sustained into 2009 so we can continue building our community's resilience and capacity to be sustainable. If you think this is important work happening in your community; please consider supporting us with a tax deductible generous donation , by becoming a member or by volunteering . If every person on this list became a member today or donated $50 we would be able to focus all our efforts on community action.

What would you be supporting? We connect community, ecology and economy with a solution-based strategy to abate climate change/peak oil, reduce waste, conserve and sequester water, promote sustainable food systems, and create local self-reliance and community resilience. We have one part-time paid staff and almost 50 brilliant local volunteers who work together to create a sustainable future for the Town of Fairfax and a model for other communities to follow in our footsteps.

Our 16 Community Education Events included a Community Craft Bazaar, Rainwater Harvesting & Blue Building evening with Brock Dolman, Holiday Cooking with Meredith McCarty, Green Halloween, Post Carbon: The Local Impact of Climate Change and Peak Oil, A Wild Harvest Walk, Climate Change in the Garden with Penny Livingston-Stark, Local Birdsong Talk with Naturalist Jon Young, Fungi Forage with Luke Snyder, Rethinking Plastics-Rethinking Our Lives with Green Sangha, Marin Clean Energy Panel, Green Real Estate Panel, Make Your Mom a Wormbin, Where Will Our Trash Go?, Building Community, Economy and Ecology – Naturally with Jeff Adams, Art into Action with Zach Pine. We reached a diverse audience of over 650 people through these events.

The Projects team focused energy on Green Wednesdays by tapping our local genius to staff an educational table for 20 beautiful evenings at the Fairfax Farmer’s Market engaging over a thousand people of all ages. The primary focus being on lifestyle changes that reduce waste, increase walking and biking, and support localization and re-skilling in our community. With help from Fairfax Town Council Member Larry Bragman and Green Sangha the first Plastic Bag Ban Measure C got on the ballot and WON, supported by an overwhelming 79% of Fairfax voters. We also sold hundreds of our $1 produce bag encouraging the elimination of plastic and paper from our idea of shopping with great support from Good Earth Natural Foods.

We had some great successes this year in the area of Policy. Marin Clean Energy an early project of Sustainable Fairfax was successfully shopped around the county and a JPA will be forming soon. Of course, Fairfax was the first town to sign on with their support. Our policy chair worked with town council members and Marin Sanitary Service to encourage composting at an industrial scale, make recycling easier and more effective, and reward households that reduce their curbside waste. We also collaborated with the Green Coalition to prevent expansion of the Redwood Landfill while insisting on resource and recovery. We have just begun a Rain Garden Project to train citizens about the value of water and the importance of wise-management of this precious resource to support bountiful gardens, flood mitigation and creek health. Policy committee members worked closely with Stop the Spray to prevent a toxic LBAM abatement program in urban areas. We continued our support and collaboration with Marin Organic by encouraging support of local farmer’s and being active in local Seed Saving and promotion of household growing and sharing of food. And we undertook Voter Education that included a look at the measures through the Lens of Sustainability, polling and online discussion groups.

We celebrated our Sustainability Center One Year Anniversary! Over 80 people attended with speeches from the Mayor MaryAnn Maggiori, Town Council Member Larry Bragman, and Mark Squire local business leader. We now have permaculture demonstration (roof-water harvesting, composting, natural building, Integrated Pest management, Nature Art and more) , educational displays, a lending library, as well as numerous local resources and a retail section that supports a beautiful variety of local artists and craftspeople.

This year we produced 35 e-newsletters and action alerts that focused on Sustainable lifestyle tips, information about local events, and sustainable news that was sent to a list of concerned citizens that doubled this year to reach to 970. Our ability to send just got easier with help expert web help from Earthsite. Our Communications team also sent out press releases and flyers for each of our events and kept our website up to date and looking great.

In order to find brilliant people who are willing to give their time we have developed a unique Volunteer Corp Training Program that this year brought 20 new volunteers into our organization through a two-day training that connected them as community leaders and trained them in the basics of sustainability with the help of Andres Edwards author of Sustainability Revolution and Warren Karlenzig author of “How Green is Your City?” These trained volunteers now staff our Center year-round, have joined our working committees, and are integrated into our Board of directors. Our Volunteer Training chair is fine-tuning a new “Master Sustainers” to train new generations of sustainability-focused community leaders to take further action towards creating our sustainable town.

We succeed through the financial support from members like YOU, dedicated volunteers and with the help of some of our Major Sponsors; Marin County Board of Supervisors, Mental Insight Foundation, Borchard Foundation, Good Earth Natural Foods, Tom Crowell and family, Fairfax Lumber and Hardware, the EcoFest committee, DeLano’s Market, Sorella Café. Our Development team gave back to the local businesses by co-sponsoring a Green Chamber Mixer that brought in Dana Armanino from the Bay Area Green Business Certificate program to talk about ways businesses can get funding to go green.

Collaboration with non-profits, businesses, and grassroots groups allow us to reach diverse crowds, grow our community’s network and local resilience- Partners include:
Sustainable Marin, EcoFest, Down to Earth Pediatrics, Salmon Protection and Watershed Network (SPAWN), Marin Sanitary Service, EcoMom Alliance, Good Earth Natural Foods, Sustainable Garden Network, Fairfax Town Council and Staff, County of Marin Board of Supervisors, Green Sangha, Iron Springs Brewery, Marin Farmers Market Association, Earthsite, Bay Area Green Business Association, Marin County Bicycle Coalition, Fairfax Chamber of Commerce, Green Fusion Design Center, Fairfax Scoop, Fairfax Volunteers, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, California Rainwater Conservation Systems, Chelsea Green Publishing, Circle Center, Green Coalition to Stop the Redwood Landfill expansion, Andres Edwards and Edutracks, Warren Karlenzig and SustainLane, BrainBlaze Advertising, Marin Municipal Water District, Marin County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program, UCCE Marin Master Gardeners, Regenerative Design Institute, Local Flora, Fairfax Lumber and Hardware, Village of the Future, Marin Organic, Sorrella Cafe, Next Generation, Post Carbon Marin, EcoBrokers, Elephant Pharmacy, Stop the Spray, Marin Clean Energy, Sustainable San Rafael, West Marin MOB, Good Festival, Permaculture Marin, Transition Town Initiative.

THANK YOU!