From: Subject: Buffalo Niagara Sustainability Council meeting reminder Date: Monday, June 16, 2003 10:43 AM apologies for cross postings, and please circulate... Wednesday, June 18 7pm West Side Mennonite Church 184 Barton St. Buffalo Free Parking  Barton is one way, approach from West Ferry.  184 is between Auburn and Breckenridge.  I am not sure what kind of a crowd we will get for this, but I know that several of you have indicated an interested in keeping informed if you cannot make the meeting. Please let me know, especially if you are not on the learning sustainability list serve so that I can continue to contact you. The general agenda for this meeting is as follows 1.Review of Activities and Accomplishments since October 2001  Conference 2. Sustainable Indicators Project 3.Earth Charter Community Summit, October 11-Second Learning Sustainability Conference Spring 2004 4. Strategies to expand Community Capacity The primary subject that I would like to discuss is the second learning sustainability conference. there are a number of themes and issues in the air, including context, resources, and schedule. After speaking with a variety of individuals and groups, The Earth Charter concept, is potentially a theme that we can run with. Earth Charter USA has indicated that they would like to participate in a second conference with us. I have been speaking with the National Director of the group and there may be resources there. In addition Earth Charter USA is partnering with groups in order to conduct community summits focused on the earth charter. This year a series of summits will take place on October 11. We could easily become a community partner and conduct a small summit here at that time. Here are a series of links that will help you understand more about these activities: http://www.earthcharter.org/ http://www.earthcharterusa.org/index.html http://www.earthchartersummits.org/ Personally, I think that hosting a community summit would be a good thing to do. and I think that we should move beyond that summit, to our conference, which could be held next spring, possibly in conjunction with the United Nations Regional "Nations in Bloom Conference", Sources tell me that this conference is being organized to be held somewhere in the Niagara Region of Ontario next spring. "Nations in Bloom" is a United Nations endorsed competition focusing essentially on sustainable development. Both Niagara On The Lake and Stratford Ontario are previous winners of Nations in Bloom awards, and so those are the possible locations of the UN regional event. Buffalo Niagara should be encouraged to participate in this international event, and I think that our sustainability conference could be a vehicle to address that. For more info: http://www.nationsinbloom.com/index.html Things are starting to get busy so please try and attend our meeting on this Wednesday. Your participation and leadership is urgently needed if we are to pull this off. If you cannot attend and want to stay or get involved please contact me directly at lscampaign@aol.com if you haven't already. Jay Burney