Sustainable Communities All Over Puget Sound

http://www.scallopsning.com

How do you come together and share a resource?

SCALLOPS is a grassroots network made up of over sixty groups representing towns and neighborhoods throughout Puget Sound, from Ballard to Tacoma to Port Townsend to Whidbey Island. SCALLOPS is an all-volunteer organization with close to 10,000 members, and we do our work passionately, successfully, and with very minimal funding. We are enthusiastic about promoting sustainable lifestyles and creating healthier, happier, and more livable communities for generations to come. SCALLOPS groups meet locally as place-based groups in their own towns and neighborhoods and come together as one big network several times per year. The resources that all SCALLOPS members share include: laughter, skills in urban homesteading, best practices for home gardening and energy conservation, passion, creative energy, our homes for meeting space, tips about bike repair, ideas to reduce our carbon footprint, moral support, chickens, eggs, and goat milk, cups of locally-grown honey, among many others. By sharing resources, SCALLOPS groups have undertaken a wide variety of projects to improve our communities, such as installing bike racks, planting trees, growing vegetable starts for donation to food banks and school groups, hosting neighborhood bike rides, encouraging political action around climate change and other issues, implementing a county-wide Undriving campaign, and organizing Sustainability and Earth Festivals.

How would your group use the award money?

Since our beginnings several years ago, SCALLOPS has achieved a lot with very little money. In a short time, we have seen tremendous growth in our groups and our members. If we had a little money, we could have even bigger impacts on our communities. We will use the Operation:Cooperation grant in the following ways:
* Provide a matching fund opportunity of $250-$500 to some of the sixty-plus SCALLOPS groups to encourage projects that promote our values of climate protection, resource conservation, community resiliency and human happiness,
* Host several regional gatherings for SCALLOPS members to share best practices and ideas about topics of importance like sustainable transportation, home energy use, food gardening and more,
* Update our website and train several volunteers in its maintenance,
* Complete our application for 501-c3 funding, and
* Provide a short term stipend to a coordinator to oversee all of the above.