Hello Earth Deeds Supporters!

I’m just back from 3 weeks at Findhorn (Scotland) and Schweibenalp (Switzerland) attending the ICSA and GEN-Europe conferences, a Joanna Macy workshop, and Board Meetings of GEN, ICSA, and Gaia Education. Whew! It was exhilarating, inspiring, and also really valuable for Earth Deeds. Here’s some updates:

First Paying Pilot: I was very excited to work with around 50 members of NextGEN , the youth program of GEN to measure the carbon footprint of their travel to Schweibenalp (19.35mT) and to raise over $700 for two NextGEN projects: a Nature Youth Camp in Thailand and a Regional Schools and Collleges Permaculture (ReSCOPE) Programme in Zimbabwe. How cool is that?!

New Partners/Pilots: There’s lots of interest among organizations to work with Earth Deeds! Examples include:

• Findhorn: Ecovillage Experience Week, Permaculture Week, and Transition to Resilience Program
• Gaia Education: Ecovillage Design Courses at Dancing Rabbit (happening now!) and Findhorn
• CELL: Fall Semester in Iceland
• GEN: We’re hoping to collaborate on creating a database of Projects to support.
• Joanna Macy: Possibly two events this summer/fall
• Others: including Project Peace and Pacific Lutheran University! And more in the wings!

Joanna Macy Endorsement: I felt truly blessed to receive Joanna’s enthusiastic endorsement of Earth Deeds. She really wants to see it succeed and offered the following statement we can use with our materials:

“To all Earth beings wanting to be a part of the Great Turning, Earth Deeds offers invaluable tools to help us measure our ecological impacts and transform them into positive action in our world. I plan to use it.”

Minimal Viable Product: We are continuing to develop our Beta site to make it more functional and easier to use. Some recent new features include tools for Teams to crowdfund beyond their members and the ability for Team Administrators to view all team emissions and contributions at once. Up next are to get our Facebook login working properly and to redesign our homepage. Please let us know if you’d like access to our Beta site.

CTO Mentor: Although we were not selected as semi-finalists in the Clean Tech Open competition, we were still matched with a Mentor, which was a large reason we entered in the first place. We’re excited to be working with Suzanne Oakley from New England CFO Strategies in Boston!

Funding: Last, but far from least, I’m pleased to announce we received another grant that will keep us going for the next few months. I’m also planning a trip to Boulder, CO in September where there has been growing interest among some angel investors. Fingers crossed!

Take care everyone and thanks again for your support! Feel free to contact us with any thoughts, questions, or suggestions!

In community,
– Daniel