This morning in Lander several of us who had attended the “On Sacred Ground” conference sat down together. We want to take steps toward stewardship in our community. We want to translate inspiration from the conference into concrete progress and action.

Diane Corsick, Darci Jones, Maia Rose, April Pendleton, Joy Owen, Karl Sutton, and I (Aaron Bannon) sat down and began to hammer out a name, a mission, potential projects, and a cause.

The name: Fremont County On Sacred Ground Community (FCOSGC – perhaps still a working title).

The mission: To provide a vision of stewarsdhip for the future that inspires care of the natural world by example, educates about social and environmental justice, and activates civic engagement. (This is also a work in progress).

The projects: Field trips, newsletters, and workshops, which are vehicles to inspire and educate people about our identified action.

The cause: All agreed that, with two to three new school buildings on the way, working with the school district to adopt LEED certification and other sustainable practices (discussing school to farm projects, etc.) for these schools is a good project to begin our collaborative work. LEED certification uses a practiced system to consider green building techniques before, during, and after construction. The main sticking point is money, as a LEED certified school in Greybull, WY Business Council offered a demonstration grant to implement the systems required to meet LEED standards.
Everyone at the meeting walked away with a personal project to add momentum to this cause. Some are developing fact sheets, others are writing LTEs, still others are reaching out to school board members.

In our next meeting, we plan to start generating a work plan. The seeds have been sown.