8 November 2006, Wednesday

Today Andy Parker came to speak with us about Oregon Tilth a non-profit organization that helps educate people on organic farming and green practices. It was interesting and I think he had a lot of good things to share. Along with some great books for the person who wants to learn how to have a green thumb. Oregon Tilth is a certifier of Organic foods. So they are very successful. They certify anyone from manufacturers, to farmers, to stores with an organic classification, as long as they are using methods that follow the organic principles. I thought it was interesting that even a place like People's could be certified Organic... if they were following all the principles necessary for a store...

After class I was able to take a few minutes to talk with him about the memberships that they have with their non-profit. He gave me a good contact from their organization that knows a lot of legal information about non-profits and 501(c)3's. She is either a lawyer already or in the process of studying to pass the bar... at any rate, I'm planning to contact her soon to find out more. Another interesting tidbit, is because they are successful as a certifier, they are bringing in a lot of money, which makes it more difficult to obtain grants and money for projects that they want to do under the non-profit... They are milling over ideas of what to do about all the money they bring in and have thought about possibly starting a foundation, that could help fund many projects out there in the organic and cooperative industries... but we'll see what happens. Potential source of assistance financially to build something useful here in the Portland area. Intriguing...

Harvest Festival Pictures

Wednesday, 4 October 2006

Today we had a chance to hear more about the overall cooperative movement from Andrew McLeod from the NW cooperative Development Center... Then we went to the Harvest Festival... I was there until about 5 PM... I had a chance to talk to several members and booth operators. I asked them several questions about how long they had been members and what they thought of it... Plus questions about growth and alternative benefits to just food... It was very positive and it gave me some insight into some potential ways that we might be able to help.

In addition I was able to make a few business contacts, as a business man and if things go right, we will probably be speaking with Andrew more at length on ways to solve a couple of problems that he was wondering how to solve, until we talked, that could potentially be very helpful to not only peoples but also other cooperatives... I'm pretty excited about doing something that benefits a lot of people.

Did more reading today as well... so I spent perhaps 3 and half hours outside of class, talking, researching, studying and reading... not including the 2 hours I spent late last night and early this morning finishing or at least working on Assignment One...

Things I've learned... I need to mark pages better, for reference to questions that we may need to answer and leave examples of for our assignments... I just realized that I did not email our Instructor (Pedro) yet... and I'm so tired from reading in all my classes that I'm unable to actually finish in more detail the other questions tonight... but I'll get more answers completed later as I read or just do better on the next assignment....