The Sustainability Team is hosting Community Conversations throughout this year to explore what sustainability means to residents of East Haddam, and how we can improve to make our town thrive. Each Conversation builds on the one before. In the 1st conversation, good ideas were brought up, but many did not consider programs already in place, offered by different town organizations, or programs that have been tried and had not found purchase. We set out to remedy the lack of organizational knowledge by hosting residents and community organizations in our 2^nd conversation to create a large floor size VENN Diagram of the organizations in town and how they connect, and what services they offer. This was a very successful and fun meeting, with good exchanges and a fascinating diagram of the relationships and collaboration between organizations. The diagram still needs some work before it’s published but it engendered new connections and goodwill between organizations. Following a request by some participants to further conversations between nonprofits, who feel under the radar, we held our 3rd conversation as a volunteer fair for local non-profits to connect them with residents, and to continue contacts with each other. This conversation was less successful, partly because there were so many other events in town that afternoon. Talking with other residents and participants in the conversations we realized that one of the big issues in town is the lack of a central community calendar that lists everything that is going on, that can be used in planning and participating in events.

There are partial listings in the East Haddam News, on FB groups and on the town website. Eightmile River posts events about the outdoors and conservation on their community calendar. The libraries, Youth and Family Services and the Historical Society have their own calendars on their websites. The schools have their calendar for parents. All of these give partial information. In our busy world, where many are involved in raising families and with work, and some are befuddled by the overabundance of choices and technology, it would be so useful to create a place to land, one that we can agree on and trust. This has been tried, unsuccessfully, in the past. Our 4th conversation will be another brave attempt to gather residents, organizations, the municipality and businesses together to brainstorm and find possible solutions, to look at the financial and administrative costs and to see maybe this time we can use the town wisdom and create a town calendar for all.