permaculture

[Wesley Roe and Marjorie Lakin Erickson <lakinroe@silcom.com>]

Contact: Margie Bushman
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network.
(805) 962-2571, email: margie@sbpermaculture.org


SANTA BARBARA PERMACULTURE NETWORK
Presents:

An Evening with Common Vision:
Dinner, Drumming, Story Telling and Video Show

Celebrating the Transformation of Concrete Jungles into Urban Fruit 
Tree Forest by Tree Planting at Schools in California

Wednesday , March 14, 6:30 pm, donation $10
Goleta Valley Community Center

      4rd Annual California Common Vision FRUIT TREE TOUR 2007 
February 20-April 25 Celebrating the transformation of concrete 
jungles into urban orchards. www.commonvision.org. Thirty volunteer 
earth educators from northern California, travel to schools from Los 
Angeles to San Francisco in the largest known vegetable oil-powered 
caravan: six vehicles, including three busses. The all volunteer crew 
travels as a nomadic community visiting schools to plant 1000 fruit 
trees with urban youth. The three month tour is divided into day-long 
programs at each school featuring cultural story-telling, West 
African agricultural drumming, earth-conscious hip-hop, and hands-on 
involvement in the stewardship of the students school yard.

    Common Vision infuses public schools and spaces with 
inspiration, infrastructure, and experience to support 
solution-focused environmental education for urban youth. Common 
Vision facilitates hands-on projects with students and community 
leaders that serve to retrofit public schools and spaces into models 
of sustainability.

     Students of all ages are awed and inspired by three vegetable 
oil-powered school busses, hand-painted in landscape murals depicting 
indigenous communities, rolling into the schoolyard and breaking the 
monotony of their regular school routine. Symbolic storytelling, 
strong West African Dun-Dun-Bah agricultural rhythms, and the 
planting of fruit trees explodes into a celebration of life and 
interconnectedness focusing on respect for the earth.


   In the spirit of native oral tradition, FRUIT TREE TOUR 
storytellers bring to life tales from the past of living in harmony 
with the earth and the process of how society forgot our connection 
with the earth. Dancers draped in African mud-cloth fabric and 
drummers ornately dressed set the stage for the storytelling to 
unfold. A bold cast of characters and musicians brightly portray 
these events with minimal words from a narrator and an elaborate 
display of culture and color.

    In a tree planting celebrations students will drum earth 
rhythms, while working in intimate groups with FRUIT TREE TOUR 
facilitators to dig holes, prepare the roots, and plant the trees. 
Facilitators will engage students in dialogues around key ecological 
and cultural concepts such as nutrient cycles, interconnectedness, 
diversity, and respect. Students, teachers, principals, and FRUIT 
TREE TOUR volunteers gather for a closing circle. The circle takes a 
moment to give thanks for the day's experience.

    FRUIT TREE TOUR cultivates the students appreciation for the 
earth that can serve as a foundation for environmental 
responsibility, a key element of the next generation. The 
participation in creating and maintaining a school yard orchard 
provides a space to engage a stewardship ethic as something personal 
and local, not a distant abstraction. Students are able to provide 
their school and extended community with beauty, health, and abundance.

    Last year Common Vision came Goleta Family School  and 
planted  Fruit Trees and interacted with music and story for the student body.

    Founded in 1999, Common Vision is a solution-focused nonprofit 
organization, a project of International Humanities Center. Common 
Vision's mission is to cultivate ecological awareness and respect for 
the Earth while generating social and environmental changes towards 
sustainable lifestyles. We integrate concepts of ecology with the 
traditions, music, and art of cultures that live or have lived in 
harmony with the Earth.

    The evening celebration to welcome Common Vision will take place 
at the Goleta Valley Community Center 5679 Hollister Ave Wednesday 
March 14 6:30-9:30 pot luck dinner followed by story telling 
,drumming and slide show , Donation of $10 for adults Children free 
(no reservations needed) to help raise funds for the 2007 FRUIT TREE 
TOUR . The Santa Barbara Permaculture Network. For more information, 
please call (805) 962-2571 margie@sbpermaculture.org , visit 
www.commonvision.org, or www.sbpermaculture.org.
                                                                                        -en