Ojai Valley Green Coalition
August 19, 2023
Ojai Brainstorm Meeting Notes

Summary of Meeting Discussion

This meeting followed up on the Ojai Brainstorm that took place on June 24th, 2023. At that event we explored the question “How can we strengthen the health (social, ecological, environmental, economic and spiritual) of our community?” Suggestions fell into a variety of categories, but we found that “Sharing and Caring” was a cross-cutting theme.

At this meeting (August 19th), we asked a follow-up question: How can we share resources and skills in our community to enhance our capacity to thrive? Essentially, how do we move from “me-focused” to “we-focused”? How do we move from separation to connection and relationship in our community?

After working in three groups of 5-6 people, we shared our small group highlights. Interestingly, each group talked about the need for some type of HUB to bring our community together. The following notes summarize topics addressed by participants.

Virtual (online) HUB:

  • How do people know what is going on???
  • We need a site where all kinds of community services are listed
  • We need an online HUB to strengthen community communication
  • A calendar of one time events and periodical or regular activities would be useful

  • We should collaborate with existing disseminators to make the site comprehensive

Actual HUB (Community Center):

  • We need a place to come to – a community center – to gather and share
  • It should be a central place, local building/s
  • We can address isolation and loneliness through real contact
  • The Hub can be for gathering, coming together, sharing services and goods, social services, and networking when you need help
  • Consider using empty school property for workforce housing and/or community center
  • Consider using Little House on City property as a Hub
  • The Fire safe Council is advocating for a Resilience center

Desireable shared activities for community and families:

  • Family entertainment
  • Something to bring families together
  • Bowling, public pool, mini-golf, movie theatre – entertainment!
  • Social communication – welcome wagon
  • Physical activity: public pool, safe bike routes, access to good food
  • Work in demonstration garden by City Hall together

Possible services and resources to share:

  • Skill share, tool share, products share, care share (Shareable.org)
  • Essential services for unmet needs and also feel good services
  • Barter – a way to give back, bank skill share hours
  • Baby sitters
  • Elder sitters
  • Clothing trade
  • Toy swap
  • House cleaning trade
  • Power washing (e.g. solar panel washing)
  • Work parties (clean-up, redo, new)
  • Garden installation parties
  • Buy nothing/share everything programs (see Buy Nothing book)
  • Library of things (the Ojai Library is starting one of these)
  • Free stuff
  • Ride shares

Food sharing ideas:

  • Community kitchen (like World central kitchen) at Little House?
  • Food – gleaning, Food Forward, Food for Thought, Food Share, Help of Ojai
  • Car/driver – Trader Joe runs
  • No more food waste or hunger!
  • Buying club, bulk buying, co-op

Health related sharing ideas:

  • Contemplative care
  • Hospice workers – know where the elders and lonely people are
  • Take people to doctor appointments

Using a HUB to focus on Climate Change awareness:

  • What to do – what actions?
  • Look at Nathaniel’s suggestions seen in the Addendum below!
  • City of Ojai General Plan – need climate overlay
  • 8-acre City Hall Campus as Ojai Ecology Center or Hub

NEEDED ACTIONS: NEXT STEPS:

  • Marketing the HUB: Target – who are the people and what do they need?
  • Legislative action
  • Identify existing systems and tighten them up
  • Create new systems where needed
  • Identify gaps that need to be filled
  • Be creative – some services may be online and some in person
  • Identify possible locations. Consider a network of locations – a system
  • Funding will be needed, but may be a challenge – Ojai is not considered an “under-resourced community” although rent burden is actually huge. We need to explore various ways to fund different ideas

Wrap-up:

Persistence is key! We need champions to lead, take responsibility, keep at it, and lobby for needs to be met!

PLEASE tell us about partner organizations, groups, individuals and other resources that are pertinent to any of the above ideas. We need to work together!

PLEASE let us know if you are already involved in addressing any of these ideas, or would like to be involved. We would like to move from ideas to action, but this can only happen if you step up and help make it happen!

Email us: shareandcare@ojaivalleygreencoalition.org

Addendum

From: Nathaniel Courtens

  • Start a “paint rooftops white” program – to help counter these new-normal temperatures. It’s only going to get hotter, every year.
  • Consider a ban on black (or dark gray) pavement toppings, in the Ojai valley
  • Maybe go as far as pushing for a white car tax credit, when people purchase a white car (as opposed to a darker color – which creates more heat)
  • Build roundabouts (stop-and-go intersections waste gas, creat more air pollution, and make it take longer to get from points A to B)
  • Consider brainstorming about building an energy storage train
    (https://aresnorthamerica.com ) to store the extra energy we could produce during the daytime. This could open a buy-in project for the community…
  • And IF we need to attract more tourists/hikers: … maybe expand our hiking trails, and have an outlook with a grab-and-go food and drinks cabin on top. Something like this, in Switzerland, but a lot smaller https://laidbackhikers.com/hiking-up-grosser-mythen-hairpins-and-big-views/  A place to sit down and enjoy the view. Something that would promote and attract outdoorsy people. And it could have a simple small single-chair chairlift (https://skifederation.org/the-few-remaining-single-chairs-why-theyre-rad/) to it that would go to the top where one can see the Channel Islands. (I grew up in Switzerland.)