Re-localization Movement Pioneer to Speak in Westport

Green Village Initiative ("GVI") is pleased to announce that Susan Witt, a key figure in the re-localization movement, will speak next month at the Westport Public Library on "Citizen Initiatives to Shape Green Local Economies: A Response to the Deepening Financial and Ecological Crises.

The special lecture, co-sponsored by the Westport Public Library, will be held on Thursday, November 4 at 7:00 p.m. in the McManus Room.  It will be open to the public and free of charge.  For more information, visit www.westportgvi.org.

The presentation will focus on a growing trend in towns across the country where citizens are creating innovative ways to strengthen local businesses in response to what is happening with the economy and our environment.  This economic and sociological shift is not government-driven but is evolving organically out of concern for issues such as the health of our food, global warming and the job market.  The projects start small, their success empowers and inspires the next crop of initiatives, and soon a movement grows for building a stronger local economy.

Ms. Witt was the Executive Director of the E. F. Schumacher Society for thirty years, and now serves as Education Director for the New Economics Institute, the successor of the Society. She will speak on examples of these citizen-driven, new economic programs developed in her own region of the Berkshires and their correlation to the work of GVI in Westport and neighboring communities.  Among many other notable achievements, Ms. Witt created the Community Land Trust in the Southern Berkshires (1980), helped found the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm at Indian Lind Farm (1985), and, more recently, launched the intensely followed BerkShares local currency program.

Her essays on local economies appear in a number of books and publications, most recently in a collection honoring Jane Jacobs: What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs edited by Stephen Goldsmith and Lynne Elizabeth (New Village Press, 2010).