Green Maps for a more sustainable future!

We are popping into your inbox one more time in 2023 to say thank you for making our year one of great momentum. In this difficult time, our work brings new awareness and a more hopeful outlook on 2024 and all that is to come. Thank you for being part of the Green Map movement.

Local Mapmakers often tell us how transformative it is to share their Green Maps and how this authentic image of home impacts their communities. This feeling generates momentum and activates even more heartfelt, informed participation, which is critical to the future we all share.

Think of Green Map when you want to spark change locally! Yes, you can get involved, and use these tools and practices to explore the breadth and diversity of local progress as well as issues. We freely offer this opportunity to everyone. Let us help you or a local group get started, or simply see if there’s already a Green Map underway in the places where you live or visit.

As the new year comes closer, we thank you for all you have done for Green Map System. We'll be back soon with an update on our mapping platform and exciting projects for 2024! 

Wishing all a healthy and positive year to come - everything good is possible, when we all work together.

Links:

• Nearly completed Local Food Icons!

In this year of the multi crisis, recognizing where progress is being made is critical to our sense of wellbeing.

This is why mapping becomes more important each day. Assets can be called out that foster new ways to take part in the greening of your own community. Liabilities can become challenges that rally attention that addresses issues and empowers redress. Seeing the breadth of projects underway locally can be transformative for all.

This is also why your donations to Green Map are so important - your support to our global work and our own local NYC work is fundamental to our movement’s ever growing reach and impacts! Thank you for your generosity!

It’s been exciting to see so many new projects taking shape this year. Here are some we discovered on social media and Google Alerts, like this great story from rural Brazil.

Young people in Jahu created their first Green Map twenty years ago, and this became the masterplan for the town. One of those youth now works with the Secretary of the Environment of Jaú, and today, thanks to Mr. Fabricio and team, a new Green Map is underway with similar ambitions is getting underway - read more at this blog post and follow SemeiaJahu to explore their hands-on approach to environmental education.

We often get alerts from Cape Town South Africa quite often, as the Green Map team has a lively website with continual posts about sustainability and the unique environment there. This one is delightful to imagine visiting, a bird reserve with hippos! Let’s go picnic there! 

Fresh from Cienfuegoes Cuba, in BNN Breaking, a Canadian publication: Green Map Project Hermanas Giral is the “means of consultation, information, and action, thereby helping the community navigate their path towards a sustainable future”. Follow this project and network on Facebook, too.

A bit of a throwback video was just posted in Tokyo, featuring the story of the award-winning Cycling Green Map project. As shown in Japanese, the process of determining where bike lanes belong was painstaking and fruitful, with genuine progress (find more details at GreenMap.org/impacts).

For those of you following the development of the Local Food icons, this project is now at a final culminating stage! It’s been fascinating to bring the draft set to public events and conferences and lots of important new concepts are now part of the set of 66 symbols related to production, enterprise, education, specialty topics and of course, the eating of Local Food. We had a terrific discussion with Mapmakers last week to make sure we truly covered all the bases.

Our thanks to all the donors to our microproject, which raised our spirits as well as provided funding for this new symbol set. Some of the money raised will go towards basic guides for using our new mapping platform in rural, low income and frontline communities. We think it’s so meaningful to be charting local food, we’ll be trying it ourselves, with a 2024 NYC Local Food for Climate Action Green Map. We'll be sharing the map as well as the methodology - you can follow the story here in the coming months.

Our best wishes for a peaceful holiday season and start to 2024! Thanks again for all your support in 2023!