‘Living Locally’ a driver for more sustainable jobs

Third in a special series on local food leading up to Sunday’s Purple Onion Festival

Organizing our households to live more locally is the most important driver of local sustainable jobs and prosperity in our community. That may seem like a bold statement to many of us now so committed to the internet, and the seemingly unending progress of technology and globalization.

The volunteers of Transition Town Peterborough are self-named Local Loonie Transitioners (LLT's ) When we introduced the Kawartha Loon Local Currency, with the slogan I'm a Loonie ..I buy Local we were able to calculate that we are really only talking about taking back (re-localizing) about half of the local consumer economy from global corporations. We knew that we were not talking about manufacturing cars or computers in Peterborough. We knew that it was near hopeless to think about bringing in two or three mediumsized companies that would together save the community's bacon, and create the kind of great middle class sustainable jobs that have largely disappeared.

What we LLT's came up with was really very simple, but not without many hours of debate. It was the whole idea of Life Essential - things that we couldn't live without if our complex global economy began to falter, as it surely is now some five years later.

The Life Essentials we chose are printed on every Kawartha Loon banknote. Have a look to see in print: FOOD WATER ENERGY CULTURE WELLNESS. LLT's gave consideration to the inclusion of Clean

Air, Housing and Transportation as life essentials that can be supported by economic localization. We came down on the side of all three being defined by the type of Energy that drives them on a local basis. So Energy became our defining Life Essential for clean air, housing and transportation. per cent

The five Life Essentials we chose, in aggregate, represent about half of our local consumer economy that we are trying to re-localize with the help of the Kawartha Loon Local Currency. As an example, we would like to re-localize, from Big Oil the gasoline energy we use to drive our cars. To do this we would need to switch from gasoline to locally-generated renewable electricity, and then per centpay for it in Kawartha Loons. If you think that this is farfetched for the 21st century, please come to the per centElectric City EV Meet as part of the Purple Onion Festival coming up this Sunday at Millennium Park in Downtown Peterborough ...we are recharging our transportation future!

All Transition Town Peterborough initiatives are focused on the economic localization of one or more of the five Life Essentials, from the Purple Onion Festival celebrating local food and culture at harvest time to the Dandelion Day Festival in the spring celebrating healthy lifestyles. All of the vendors at both festivals trade in Kawartha Loons and both festivals are active demonstrations of what a Local Living Economy might look and feel like.

You might want to think of the Kawartha Loon as a loyalty program for locally owned businesses and farming enterprises within a 75 km radius of Downtown Peterborough. This loyalty program offers you the consumer a 10 per cent discount and an opportunity to get to know your local business owners and the farmers who grow the local food you buy. This helps to build community.

As long as the currency stays in circulation, no vendor accepting it at par actually takes the discount. This is called the Economic Multiplier Effect. Local currencies accepted by locally-owned businesses and farming enterprises are so much better at increasing it to help build their own community than the Big Box retailers or online retailers where too much of our shopping is done these days. We LLT's have a little skit that demonstrates this ..its a real hoot at times with the right characters coming from the audience. You might see the skit at the Purple Onion Festival at the Kawartha Loon Localization Centre or the Sun Stage.

We LLT's know that an electronic Kawartha Loon is needed to complement the print version in the next few years. Within the Transition movement we are fortunate to have a model in the UK’s electronic Bristol Pound; so the e-KL is in the works in feasibility phase.

If you have ideas on gaining more community support for the Kawartha Loon contact the Kawartha Loon Exchange at kawartha.loon.exchange@gmail.com

You can buy your Kawartha Loons at the Peterborough Community Savings on Brock St just off George St in Downtown Peterborough or at the Purple Onion Festival on Sunday.

We will see you there.