Cultivating Sustainable Communities

Cultivating Sustainable Communities (CSC) is a non profit organization based in Los Angeles that is workig on different strategies to help build or modify communities that can continue to exist in the indefinite future. Their office is located at the Los Angeles Eco-Village.

CSC is working in collaboration with the Los Angeles Eco-Village and CRSP (the Cooperative Resources & Services Project) on the creation of the Beverly Vermont Community Land Trust

http://www.cscommunities.org/ (website under construction)

Here is summary of their mission, history and programs written by CSC:

Our mission:

To foster sustainable development that empowers individuals and institutions to manage resources in the short term so that natural assets remain available and reproducible in the long term.

Our history:

We started in 1999 as the joint masters’ project of students in UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning. In order to continue our work, after graduating in 2000, we incorporated as Mundo Iximché on April 27, 2001. We became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2002, IRS i.d. #95-4856131. As our emphasis shifted from our rural program to our urban ones, we decided that we needed a new name that better reflects our overall mission: Cultivating Sustainable Communities. California certified our new name in November 2005, and we currently await IRS certification.

Our programs:

• Mesoamerica Solar
  Our rural program working with Maya people in the rainforests of northern Guatemala, helping villages create sustainable economies based on traditional crops from rainforest trees. It also helps communities achieve sustainability and independence though technologies like solar electricity generators and sustainable economic bases like ecotourism.
  We currently help create markets in the U.S. for beverages and flours made from iximché, a high-protein rainforest-tree seed that the Maya have cultivated for millennia, and that inspired our original name.
• Ecological Community Land Trusts
  Our urban program incubates Community Land Trusts, which create and conserve affordable housing, helping people with low and moderate incomes gain a stake in their communities as homeowners. We want to crate community land trusts that not only keep housing affordable, but also integrate urban living with nature. Ecological Community Land Trusts produce pedestrian-centered communities with clean air and water, safe parks, healthy food from community gardens and farmers markets, good jobs close to people’s homes, and social networks that help residents work together toward common goals.
  We are currently creating the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust, near downtown Los Angeles. Its core is the Los Angeles Eco-Village, comprising fifty apartments in two buildings. The trust will own the land, and the Eco-Village residents, currently renters, will buy and manage the buildings as a co-op. From this residential core, the trust will expand to include other residences and businesses that take advantage of a dense transportation corridor to create jobs and shops that people can easily reach by bus, subway, bike and foot.
• Help Yourself!
  Part of creating sustainable communities is helping people empower themselves to solve their problems and share knowledge and resources with others. Los Angeles County has ten million people in 4,000 square miles, making it hard for people to find out about the wealth of resources available or to learn about other neighborhoods facing similar challenges and finding effective solutions. Help Yourself! is a database of social change and social services resources for Los Angeles County and beyond, designed to link people to government and nonprofit resources, and to other grassroots groups. We plan to make Help Yourself! available online, as a searchable CD and in print.