Wendy Sarkissian, Nancy Hofer - Kitchen Table Sustainability: Practical Recipes for Community Engagement with Sustainability

Real positive change in the quest for a sustainable world begins at the local level, on the ground. Yet the prospect of participating in building sustainable communities can be daunting for community groups and the person on the street, as well as for professionals not used to dealing with public participation. This book bridges this gap and takes sustainability and community development out of the ivory towers of universities, government departments and planners to the kitchen tables of the world.

Written by one of the world's leading experts on community engagement and planning, this practical guide distills decades of wisdom from community planning engagement and sustainability practice from around the world into a user-friendly and engaging book that is both inspirational and packed with hands-on tools. The core of the book is a bottom-up approach to participatory community engagement and development, referred to as EATING, which consists of 6 components: Education, Action, Trust, Inclusion, Nurturing and Governance. This approach develops community's ability to participate and gives readers the knowledge, vocabulary, tools and confidence to engage in bringing sustainability to the forefront of community planning and development.

The EATING approach consists of:
Education: state-of-the art environmental education processes that underpin a community-based, participatory approach to growing local knowledge about sustainability and how this relates to building communities.

Action: acceptance of action-based and activist approaches that lead to tangible results and allow local people to take immediate action on matters that concern them and to contribute to actions on a wider scale and with longer time frames.

Trust: community engagement approaches that tackle issues of trust in sophisticated ways, finding ways for communities, proponents, developers and governments to form trusting relationships with each other across difference, including nurturing collaborative working relationships and using the model of a trust to engender sharing, networked communities that build alliances and common understandings.

Inclusion: “listening across difference”: the critical role of Inclusion to ensure that everyone sitting at the table can speak and be heard with respect for diversity and difference and the realization of everyone's knowledge as valid and valuable.

Nurturing: exploring the potential of human-centered and creative ways to engage with and build community understanding of sustainability, while allowing strong emotions to be expressed in positive ways in safe forums. Nurturing also means nurturing the desire to learn and building self-confidence and self-esteem.

Governance: exploring new approaches to governance and decision-making, ensuring that specific forums are available for the voices of the community to be heard and that governance structures are in place to support ongoing community engagement and influence.

Cases studies and examples in the book are drawn from across the world and at every scale—from local housing projects and community parks to large-scale residential and commercial developments in sensitive habitats to mining developments to river basin and water management plans.

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