The �Eco April Alignment� was our large-scale cooperation focusing on �uniting community and honoring life.� The March 31st intergenerational and cross-cultural launch event at Seattle City Hall gave rise to the Eco April Proclamation and kicked off a history making month in Seattle.

For five days the Seeds of Compassion offered experiences with His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama (HHDL) and many luminaries in panels, concerts, public gatherings and workshops. The webcast archive of the events is available online with a wiki site to which you can contribute. The Seeds of Compassion is a five year project with the results of our �compassion movement� to be shared with HHDL in one year. Stay engaged and help these seeds grow!

The Episcopal church hosted a filled to capacity conference Healing Our Planet Earth (HOPE) - Singing a New Song with Bishop Steven Charleston who shared the Genesis Covenant � Many Traditions One Earth � People of All Faiths Sharing a Common Cause.

Bishop Charleston, who participated in the Seeds of Compassion, was also a featured speaker at the GreenFestival. There were over 20,000 people who attended the most successful first time GreenFestival ever. Interra and Puget Sound Community Change handed out over 2,500 Community Cards. It was amazing!

Many other remarkable events have taken place including the First Nations Spring Pow Wow @ UW, the Local Food Initiative Forum hosted by City Council President Richard Conlin, and the transformational UnMoney Convergence. You can learn about all the events at www.EcoApril.org

• Friday April 18th at the Youngstown Cultural Arts Center, Seattle Youth Speaks presented their Wildcard Slam.
• Saturday, April 19th was the Duwamish Live! Earth Day Festival.
• Sunday, April 20th and Monday April 21st was The Challenge of Climate Change: National Geographic Live at Benaroya Hall.
• Tuesday, April 22 was Earth Day with the Global to Local Celebration Earth Day Benefit at Benaroya Hall and the Eco Tuesday Networking Forum.
• Wednesday, April 23rd was the UW Earthweek Fair
• Friday, April 25th was The Great Turning Conversation with Joanna Macy and David Korten.
• Saturday, April 26 was Green My Ride at the Phinney Neighborhood Center and the Eco Action for Global Youth Service Day
• Tuesday, April 29 was Eat Local Now! in Ballard and a Reflection on the Eco April Alignment on Phinney Ridge.
• Wednesday, April 30 at Town Hall was the Economics for the 21st Century: Creating a Collective Vision for a Sustainable Future.

Wow! When individuals are aligned, their collective intelligence produces results beyond the intelligence of any single individual. We are privileged to be working together at this time. We are moving to a new world. Please don�t hesitate to reach out and contact us or add any other aligned events or organizations throughout the coming months!

Interra strives to raise public awareness and community involvement in the environmental, social and economic justice movement. Our Puget Sound Community Change Program helps further our mission to empower a community based movement of citizen consumers by providing tools for a direct alignment between daily economic activities and our deepest human values. We want to help citizen activists and Puget Sound residents gain a heightened awareness of the issues at hand and let them know how they can get involved in helping to find solutions to these current issues.

One such event that helps to further your understanding of these issues is the Sustainable Industries Journal’s 2nd Annual Forum on Economic Sustainability, which will take place on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center. Several Puget Sound business leaders will headline the not-to-miss event. Joining Brian Back, Founding Editor & Publisher of the Journal are speakers:

* John Mitchell, Former Western Regional Economist for US Bank
* Dale Sperling, President and CEO, Unico
* John Plaza, President, Imperium Renewables
* Amy Tucker, Founder, Xeko Games

The panel discussion will focus on the diverse set of economic activities united under the banner of “sustainability.” These include traditional industries like real estate, energy and technology, as well as companies new to the Pacific Northwest landscape. Brian Back will lead a public question and answer session with the panelists following the forum discussion. The forum is sponsored by ShoreBank Pacific, the first US commercial bank with a commitment to environmentally sustainable community development, and presented by Sustainable Industries.

For more information visit: www.sustainableindustries.com/forums

The Institute for Local Self-Reliance has recently published a website entitled “Big Box Tool Kit: Countering Mega-Retailers: Rebuilding Local Business.”� Included in this informative site is a plethora of articles outlining what everyday citizens can do to strengthen local policies in order to protect local businesses and to keep the big box blight at bay.

Many articles on the site outline the negative impact that big box stores have on existing jobs in the local community. Stores like Wal-Mart and Home Depot are not necessarily a form of economic development, as many local government officials would like us to believe. The arrival of a new big box store in a community generally leads to an average loss of 180 retail jobs. In addition to raising unemployment rates, Wal-Mart generally reduces the earnings for its retail workers by 1.3% for every new store that comes on line. This is a tough blow not only for workers who are at or near the poverty line, but also for taxpayers who in 2005 paid over $12 million in publicly funded health care for employees of Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Target.

To read more on the impact of big box stores on your community visit the Big Box Tool Kit at http://www.bigboxtoolkit.com/index.php.

Last Saturday, the Interra team attended the Sustainable Solstice Fair at the 19th annual Fremont Solstice Festival. Throughout the day, Jon, Tova, Alison, Nathan and Brittany worked at the Interra booth to distribute materials and information to interested festival-goers at Gas Works Park.

The Sustainable Commons, located in the epicenter of the fair, created an excellent space to share and explore plans for collaboration in forwarding important happenings in and around the Puget Sound region. Interra had the opportunity to reconnect with several partners and friends including Sustainable Ballard, BGI and BALLE throughout the day and during the commons events.

The solstice event not only allowed Interra to build public awareness of the upcoming October launch of the program, but also provided an opportunity to make lasting connections with various organizations around the region. The team will next be out spreading the word at the Shoreline Renewable Energy & Sustainable Living Fair on Saturday, July 21st. Go to www.shorelinesolar.org for more information.

The website for Green October 2007 is now live!

The site aims to be:

a regional collaboration among groups producing sustainability related community events in the Puget Sound and elsewhere in October, 2007.

Know about anything going on in October that has to do with sustainability, arts, music, etc? Send them to nrosquist@interraproject.org.

A few days ago, futurist and Interra-ally Howard Rheingold mentioned Interra at the SmartMobs blog, where he and others are discussing “the Next Social Revolution.” His post was entitled “Boston Community Change: Sharing economy milestone.”

Chain stores and other large corporate enterprises often compete with local businesses and draw money out of communities. Interra is a project that creates local spending cards that offer discounts to buyers, loyalty programs to merchants, and enables buyers to allocate part of their transactions to local community projects. ::in context

We do have some milestones to report, with regard to Interra and this blog. To start:

Milestone #1: Interra Receives Special Appreciation Award from Boston Mayor Thomas Menino:

Boston, Massachusetts, May 31, 2007: Mayor Thomas M. Menino presented Interra with the Mayor’s Special Appreciation Award. The award was given at the Boston Main Streets 11^th Annual Anniversary Awards Ceremony. This award honors Interra (www.interraproject.org) for its partnership with Boston Main Streets in the launch of the Boston Community Change Card. The Community Change program directs dollars back to local Boston merchants, schools and non-profits, helping to positively contribute to the overall quality of living in Boston neighborhoods.

Milestone #2: Interra is now using Wordpress, a great open-source technology for blogging and content management, for its website and blog.

In another recent post on SmartMobs, Paul Lamb points out how innovative sites like Freecycle are “are leading to increased sharing in the real world.” This is exactly what Interra is working on in Boston, the Puget Sound, and elsewhere. He writes:

Many more examples to draw from, but the really interesting thing is how green consciousness is bringing individuals together to innovate in the conservation and sharing space. Similary, new collaboration technologies are making such sharing feasible in a way we have not experienced before. ::in context

We look forward to more great thinking and writing such as this from SmartMobs. We’ll keep the milestones coming.

Paul Hawken, founder of Interra’s fiscal sponsor, the Natural Capital Institute, has a new book coming out on May 10th called Blessed Unrest. According to the site, it is “a description of humanity’s collective genius, and the unstoppable movement to reimagine our relationship to the environment and one another.” From what we at Interra have already seen , this is a must-read for anyone concerned about social and environmental justice.

Blessed Unrest follows the much anticipated Earth Day beta-launch of WiserEarth, a site that represents the direct result of Paul’s work on the book. According to Interra’s Executive Director Jon Ramer, WiserEarth is “a breakthrough way for each of us to find all of us.”

NCI and Interra have been working together on one of WiserEarth’s sister projects, WiserCommons, which will offer all the organizations Paul talks about in Blessed Unrest a way to share information.

This weekend in San Francisco, Interra is sponsoring the Digital Be-in 15: Biomimicry, “a launching pad for sustainability initiatives that matter – on Earth Day Weekend in San Francisco.”

In Seattle, Interra will participate in a panel on Alternative Economies at Communiversity:

Come join us in Seattle or San Francisco for an incredible weekend of music, culture, and empowered exchange!

Last Thursday, Interra’s Seattle-based team of change agents (Brittany Jacobs, Jon Ramer, Tova Ramer and I) met up with the San Francisco team (Michael Gosney, Brad deGraf, and Greg Steltenpohl) at “Building a WISER Commons: Portland,” hosted Ecotrust at the Jean Vollum Capital Center. Jon, along with Howard Silverman of Ecotrust, and Paul Hawken and Betsy Power of Natural Capital Institute, gave presentations on WISER (World Index of Social and Environmental Responsibility). Kit Seeborg’s Worldchanging post describes what the intention of the event was. Based on the feedback we’re getting, the event was a success by all measures.

Interra co-sponsored the event with Portfolio 21, Progressive Investments, Ecotrust, and Natural Capital Institute. Thanks to everyone who showed up, helped out and made the day so remarkable!

Mark Grimes, founder of Ned, took copious notes at the event. He writes:

Yesterday in Portland there was an all day Portland Wiser Commons conference in the amazing Ecotrust building downtown. The morning was talks from Jon Ramer, Paul Hawken and Greg Steltenpohl primarily regarding the Wiser business models with a dash of Interra here and other things. I had some great chats individually with Jon, Paul and Greg (I met Greg a couple years ago briefly at the Social Enterprise Association meeting in Milwaukee). The afternoon was open space, and a very dynamic session at that. What they are working on and ready to launch is very, very, very cool and will appeal to many people within o/net I suspect. I spent enough time with Jon and Greg to explain Ned and they both got it instantly, and also saw the prospect for collaborative working with the Wiser platform.

Jim Benson of Gray Hill Solutions and Cooperation Commons was at the event and blogged about it:

The goal here is not to create yet another body shop, but to pick specifically already funded projects to work on and, in the end, create an open-source platform that NGOs can easily deploy. This platform will (likely) allow NGOs to quickly publish information on their own sites and distribute that information globally.

Ecotrust’s Howard Silverman, blogging at On the Commons, quotes NCI’s Paul Hawken, at the event:

What’s interesting about this movement is that it’s completely atomized. It didn’t start in the center; it started from the outside; it started from, literally, the ground up. And this movement is about ideas, it’s not about ideology. Ideas open up possibility; ideas liberate. And ideas are always subject to change. They’re ongoing; they’re evolving. They’re up there for people to look at, and examine, and criticize.