Michael B. Croci

Green Framingham United

In February 2017 I was at a Transition Framingham meeting where we were brainstorming ideas of new events that we could sponsor. I suggested that it would be great to have an event that brought together a number of the environmentally focused groups in Framingham. The group loved the idea and by the end of the meeting we had dubbed this idea "Green Framingham United" (GFU). The event sought to bring together like-minded people that are playing a part in making Framingham more sustainable and resilient. The main goal was to get these people together to share ideas, build connections and just have a good time.

Over the next 3 months I lead a Transition framingham sub team to create the event at a local arts collective. We invited over 30 groups from in and around Framingham to host a table at the event and give a 2 minute overview of their project. We ended up having 14 organizations come as well as over 100 attendees including 5 candidates for Mayor. The event was a smashing success and with all the political buzz at the event it put environmental issues front and center.

I am in the process of leading Transition Framingham and several co-sponsors to create GFU 2.0 in March 2018. During this event we will use a facilitation methodology called Open Space Technology to have a large group brainstorm bigger ways that we can all work together to make Framingham more sustainable and resilient. We will choose the most popular ideas, hold breakout sessions for those ideas and create working groups for them with the goal of making Framingham a greener place to live, work and play.

GFU 3.0 will be the culmination of a 9 month partnership with Sudbury Valley Trustees to create 2-3 minute promotional videos for approximately 12 GFU organizations. Those videos will be given to each organizations to use to help get their message out in the public. We will combine all the videos into a 30 minute GFU documentary and host a screening to show the videos to the public. The video be followed by a discussion and celebratory reception.

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