Contact: Margie Bushman
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network.
(805) 962-2571, email: margie@sbpermaculture.org

SANTA BARBARA PERMACULTURE NETWORK
Presents:

An Evening with Common Vision:
Dinner, Drumming, Story Telling and Video Show

Celebrating the Transformation of Concrete Jungles into Urban Fruit Tree Forest by Tree Planting at Schools in California

Wednesday , March 14, 6:30 pm, donation $10
Goleta Valley Community Center

      3rd Annual California Common Vision FRUIT TREE TOUR 2007 February 20-April 25 Celebrating the transformation of concrete jungles into urban orchards. www.commonvision.org. Thirty volunteer earth educators from northern California, travel to schools from Los Angeles to San Francisco in the largest known vegetable oil-powered caravan: six vehicles, including three busses. The all volunteer crew travels as a nomadic community visiting schools to plant 1000 fruit trees with urban youth. The three month tour is divided into day-long programs at each school featuring cultural story-telling, West African agricultural drumming, earth-conscious hip-hop, and hands-on involvement in the stewardship of the students school yard.

    Common Vision infuses public schools and spaces with inspiration, infrastructure, and experience to support solution-focused environmental education for urban youth. Common Vision facilitates hands-on projects with students and community leaders that serve to retrofit public schools and spaces into models of sustainability.
    
     Students of all ages are awed and inspired by three vegetable oil-powered school busses, hand-painted in landscape murals depicting indigenous communities, rolling into the schoolyard and breaking the monotony of their regular school routine. Symbolic storytelling, strong West African Dun-Dun-Bah agricultural rhythms, and the planting of fruit trees explodes into a celebration of life and interconnectedness focusing on respect for the earth.
                                                                         
                                                                          
   In the spirit of native oral tradition, FRUIT TREE TOUR storytellers bring to life tales from the past of living in harmony with the earth and the process of how society forgot our connection with the earth. Dancers draped in African mud-cloth fabric and drummers ornately dressed set the stage for the storytelling to unfold. A bold cast of characters and musicians brightly portray these events with minimal words from a narrator and an elaborate display of culture and color.

    In a tree planting celebrations students will drum earth rhythms, while working in intimate groups with FRUIT TREE TOUR facilitators to dig holes, prepare the roots, and plant the trees. Facilitators will engage students in dialogues around key ecological and cultural concepts such as nutrient cycles, interconnectedness, diversity, and respect. Students, teachers, principals, and FRUIT TREE TOUR volunteers gather for a closing circle. The circle takes a moment to give thanks for the day's experience.

    FRUIT TREE TOUR cultivates the students appreciation for the earth that can serve as a foundation for environmental responsibility, a key element of the next generation. The participation in creating and maintaining a school yard orchard provides a space to engage a stewardship ethic as something personal and local, not a distant abstraction. Students are able to provide their school and extended community with beauty, health, and abundance.

    Last year Common Vision came Goleta Family School  and planted  Fruit Trees and interacted with music and story for the student body.

    Founded in 1999, Common Vision is a solution-focused nonprofit organization, a project of International Humanities Center. Common Vision's mission is to cultivate ecological awareness and respect for the Earth while generating social and environmental changes towards sustainable lifestyles. We integrate concepts of ecology with the traditions, music, and art of cultures that live or have lived in harmony with the Earth.
  
    The evening celebration to welcome Common Vision will take place at the Goleta Valley Community Center 5679 Hollister Ave Wednesday March 14 6:30-9:30 dinner followed by story telling ,drumming and slide show , Donation of $10 for adults Children free (no reservations needed) to help raise funds for the 2007 FRUIT TREE TOUR . The Santa Barbara Permaculture Network. For more information, please call (805) 962-2571 margie@sbpermaculture.org , visit www. commonvision .org, or www.sbpermaculture.org.
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