Sustainable living: ‘Re-Skilling’ for an uncertain tomorrow

Many of us know how to set up a home wireless network, assemble a children’s bicycle, scour the web for cheap air fares, and perform other tasks that define contemporary life for many Americans.
But how many of us understand how to curate and save seeds for vegetable gardening; collect rainwater for the dry summer (and sometimes winter) months; or identify local medicinal herbs?
The mastery of such “old world” skills can help people save money, rediscover the joy of doing things themselves and feel empowered in the face of uncertainty.
But these skills might also become necessary if current trends continue to put pressure on the availability of energy, water, food and everything else we have come to expect aplenty in our modern lives. And in times of crisis, the power of community engagement cannot be overstated.
Such was the vision of retired school teacher Bonnie Linden, who organized the Santa Cruz Reskilling Expo.
“Building community resilience is a reweaving of the social fabric where it has worn thin; it’s [about] creating a knowledge commons where skill is freely shared,” Linden said via email. “I wanted to imagine a better way for us to prepare for the myriad uncertainties our shared future holds.”
Linden, perhaps best described as a social entrepreneur, decided to start the Reskilling Expo after taking a CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) class and, later, began keeping bees in her yard. While the CERT class helped her realize the need for more resources to “prepare for the myriad uncertainties our shared future holds,” her experience with bee-keeping gave her hope that Santa Cruz County’s potential remained largely untapped.
“I noticed the considerable networking among skilled people in the Bee Guild,” Linden said. “I suspected there might be a great reservoir of useful skills just waiting to be shared in our community.”
Her suspicions turned out to be spot-on. Linden converted her vision into an ongoing series of educational events, taught in Santa Cruz by experts in a wide variety of skills geared toward sustainability and do-it-yourself resilience.
First offered under the umbrella of Transition Santa Cruz, Linden spun the Reskilling Expo into its own entity and began offering classes on such diverse topics as emergency preparedness, culinary skills and sheet-mulching. Past events also have included demonstrations of solar dehydrators, composting toilets and other, more sustainable ways of doing things.
Linden is planning three events for this year and hopes to expand to four in 2013.
The next Reskilling Expo event is scheduled for Sunday, February 5, at the Museum of Art and History in downtown Santa Cruz beginning at 10 a.m. The full schedule can be accessed here: reskillingexpo.org/schedule/index.html.
This event will focus on seeds and biodiversity and includes classes on bee-keeping, natural dyes, fruit tree grafting, food preservation, local medicinal herbs and much more. Linden also will publicly debut the new Santa Cruz Time Bank she recently launched, which can be found at the following URL: santacruz.timebanks.org.
I wrote about time banking last year but at the time we didn’t have a viable system for our community (BACE.org is great for those living on the Peninsula, but we needed our own platform). Thanks to Linden’s work, now we have an elegant and user-friendly time bank designed specifically for Santa Cruz County residents. I highly encourage everyone in the area to sign up – you may be surprised to learn just how much you have to offer your neighbors (and vice-versa).
Admission for the Feb. 5 event is on a sliding scale, from $5 to $25. Check out the website (reskillingexpo.org) for more information.
– Steve Tanner lives in Ben Lomond with his wife, two young children and dog. When not commuting to the South Bay, he can be found digging in the garden or hanging out with his family. He is a member of Transition SLV, www.transitionslv.org.