Community Investing
The world of community investing has changed significantly since 1992. Back then, community was a very local place, a neighborhood where one lived, shopped and sometimes worked. If you lived in a low-income community with people of color, your community had high unemployment, poor schools, few quality stores, and housing that needed an infusion of rehab dollars. What you did not have was access to loans and investment dollars needed to make things better.
But in 1992, a new effort began to emerge that addressed these disparities by channeling investment dollars into low-income communities. A nonprofit organization called Woodstock Institute had uncovered a series of new financing institutions that were using philanthropic dollars to invest in low-income communities and populations. Woodstock Institute named this fledgling group Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). It concluded from its research that these small institutions were having an impact far bigger than their asset size. They were making loans to creditworthy people, businesses, and nonprofits and getting paid back despite the perception that these loans were too risky for traditional banks. What was most interesting is that these young CDFIs were finding loan demand to be so strong that their biggest need was more capital.
Today, community investing is moving into the mainstream of socially responsible investing. The CDFI industry has exploded with new organizations across the country in cities and rural areas. There are now about thirty community development banks, hundreds of community development credit unions, and thousands of community loan funds.
So let’s think of the time that will be ten years in the future. Where will community investing be at that point?
Community Development Financial Institutions will still find that their borrowers pay them back at a rate envied by traditional banks. This long track record of successful loan collection will be documented and acknowledged so that socially responsible investors will know how to evaluate the low risk of making an investment in a CDFI.
CDFIs will be successful at providing banking services at market rate prices to the unbanked. Thousands of people now locked out of the mainstream economy by fear of banks and lack of access to appropriate banking products, will be able to manage their money and save for home ownership and education that provides better life choices.
Socially responsible investors will have made a solid commitment to community investing. They will put their checking accounts at a community development bank because they support community investing and also because they like the service; they will have CDs in community development credit unions and they will support community loan funds.
But the most significant changes will be in the communities that have had the advantage of community investment. These communities will be nice places to live and raise families. Quality affordable housing will be available and commercial streets will bustle with the shopping activity of local residents. Job opportunities will be available to the local residents and capital will be available to start and expand a business. Residents of low-income communities will have equal access to the opportunities to build a better life that we all take for granted. — Jean Pogge, Senior Vice-President, ShoreBank. Excerpted with permission from the tenth anniversary edition of GreenMoney Journal
Urban and Regional Planning
Urban planners look to the future to see complex connections of people among themselves and with nature. Their sense of connection lies at the heart of their profession. It informs all of their plans. Planners seek to lift peoples’ perspective above the immediate and the local, to show how our activities change our environment and our shared future. They will find exciting opportunities in the emerging age of information because the information age — the age of networks — raises our awareness of connections.
During the old industrial age, planners struggled with limited success against the harmful tendencies of urban life. Cities spread over their landscapes relentlessly, bringing millions into machine-made environments; their demand for things had planet-wide impacts. Far away natural areas were wiped out by the demands of cities.
In the next century, the human race will become increasingly urbanized, and life in metropolitan areas will soon dominate the planet. Urban and regional planners will face incredible challenges in the new century, yet find fantastic new opportunities for change. The young twenty-first century promises to produce planners with greater sympathy and understanding: planners who will strive to connect urban systems to natural ones and save the earth’s human and biological diversity. — Alan Mamoser, Associate Planner, Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission
Media
Major employment and career opportunities for the immediate and long-term future exist in media. A large gap exists in the coverage of a more sustainable way of life as well as a world of justice, economic equity and freedom that works for everyone. The transformation of media is eminently possible as progressive thinking people bring those values to existing media jobs and create new media outlets, using the plethora of new technologies and emerging media tools that enable anyone with a computer to become a producer, programmer, or publisher from their own home.
The same explosion that occurred in print technology a few decades ago with the advent of offset printing, copying machines, and photo typesetting equipment, followed by computer graphics, has occurred in electronic media technology, making it possible to reach smaller audiences economically and effectively. The possibilities are limitless. — Michael Toms, Co-founder, New Dimensions World Broadcasting Network
Clean Energy
There’s an expectation that clean energy is going to employ hundreds of thousands of people. I think it can happen, but it’s not going to happen overnight because it’s starting with a really small base. Nationally in solar electric and photovoltaic fields, about two thousand people are employed in solar electricity and another two thousand are employed for support of it.
The wind industry is larger. The entire nationwide clean energy field contains about ten to fifteen thousand occupied positions. The most openings currently for clean energy are in California, Wisconsin, Texas, and the Northeast. Clean power is growing by 30 to 40 percent, which is high, but it is starting from a really small base. The challenge with a small base is that if you want to work for clean energy or solar electricity you have to be willing to be flexible and relocate. Chicago, for instance, has a relatively small base, so we’re likely to move people around. The growth rate will increase if more governmental support becomes available or a crisis ensues. But the challenge is this: when will growth happen? It’s hard to say. — Mark Berger, Spire Solar Chicago
Organic Food
Over the next twenty years organic food production, processing, and sales offer a tremendous opportunity for entrepreneurs and job seekers. The industry has been growing at a 20 percent annual rate for the past decade, and experts see rapid growth continuing.
One of the largest areas for growth will come in local food production. In the Chicago area, the lion’s share of organic food is shipped in from California and beyond. If organic is to become a truly sustainable food system, then the number of miles food travels need to be cut substantially. This can be done by growing food in the region and selling it to retailers, restaurants, and companies that want to process it into packaged convenience foods that are healthy.
"Local is where it’s at," says Reed Glidden, president of natural food broker Choice Marketing. "Corporate America has gobbled up many of the best national natural food companies. But they can’t really compete in the local food markets. It’s a great opportunity for good business people." — Jim Slama, Sustain, Local Organic Initiative
Nutrition
Nutrition is such a vital part of health that the conventional forces that shape our society can no longer ignore it. It’s becoming clear that the only way to regain good health or attain optimal health is by using the power of nutrition as a first line of defense.
In light of this, I foresee "nutrient therapy" or so-called "nutritional medicine" through food or dietary supplements coming into its own as a less invasive alternative treatment to prescription drugs and surgery. As a result, new opportunities will abound in the healthcare arena. Those professionals who become expert in using nutrition, herbs, and supplements will be in demand as consultants to healthcare practitioners seeking to integrate this wellness approach into their practices.
Health insurance companies will cover "nutritional medicine" approaches including the cost of vitamins and minerals as well as the sophisticated testing to determine nutritional deficiencies that lead to disease. I believe that supplement companies will be expanding their workforces to meet the increased demand for their products. In turn, the need for expertise in these areas of health insurance, supplement products, and diagnostic testing will create new career opportunities.
Moreover, I anticipate that conventional grocery stores and restaurants will "grow" their whole and natural foods offerings to meet the desires of consumers for organic produce and "clean" food. This scenario creates promising prospects for those looking to pursue work in organic farming or the natural products industry. It’s a wonderful time to get involved! — Rebecca Ephraim, R.D., C.C.N.
Healthcare
To reiterate my "Career Day" talks, if you have any desire to go into one of the healing arts, your best bet these days is to explore one of the umpteen fields of alternative medicine. A recently published survey among conventional physicians was very telling: only 10 percent were enjoying practicing medicine more than they did ten years ago, and only 1 percent (that’s right, one measly percent) felt their morale was better than a decade ago.
That said, with a career in alternative medicine, you can avoid everything that makes a doctor’s life unpleasant: dealing with insurance companies, government regulations, managed care, and insanely excessive malpractice premiums. I’d generally recommend a field with state licensure, like chiropractic, acupuncture, massage therapy or naturopathic medicine.
Once you’re trained, you may need to relocate (there are simply too many chiropractors in Chicago, and naturopathy isn’t licensed in Illinois). But... if you’re a caring individual (patients pick up on this immediately) you’re destined for success. You’ll never make as much as a plastic surgeon, but you’ll also avoid thirteen years of training and six-figure malpractice insurance. On the plus side, you’ll experience a very satisfying life. — David Edelberg, M.D.
Landscaping
I research and write about the connections between landscape plants and allergies. Perhaps the most significant thing I discovered was that landscapers have long used a multitude of male trees and shrubs because males produce no "litter," (i.e. fruit, seeds, seedpods). These modern landscapes are very tidy, sterile, and low maintenance but since males produce abundant pollen we now have record urban pollen counts and epidemic increases in urban asthma and allergy.
Female plant materials are pollen-free. They cause no pollen allergies. But while male cultivars (cultivated varieties, clones) for sale are all too common, female cultivars are much more difficult to find. There is a growing demand for female, pollen-free plants. These will fetch a premium price because of scarcity. Some cities are now enacting pollen control ordinances and this will just add to demand for more female trees, shrubs, groundcovers, and grasses. If I had the land and the time I would immediately start growing female nursery stock. The supply is very low, the demand is growing, and the potential for future sales of these air-quality-enhancing plants is huge. — Tom Ogren, author of Allergy-Free Gardening, July 2000, Ten Speed Press and in January 2003, Safe Sex in the Garden, also from Ten Speed Press
New Materials
In the coming years the now fledgling industries of sustainable building materials and green architecture and interior design will offer more mainstream employment opportunities in America. As lumber and other materials continue to increase in price due to dwindling supplies, industries that produce alternative materials, such as recycled plastic lumber, will greatly expand their products and services. The growing awareness of the toxic effects of conventional materials on indoor air quality will also promote these changes.
The design professionals who understand these new and safer products will be in demand to clients who demand environmental change. The opportunities will also increase for people who create new products, new services, and new methods of manufacturing to increase energy efficiency, reduce waste, and promote recycling and re-use. — Barry Bursak, design consultant
Generalism
The culture is always dying and always being reborn, but we industrialized peoples have been in a dark age, intellectually, since the advent of the industrial age. Generally speaking, we have been entertainment-driven, consumption-oriented, and exceptionally narrow in experience and expertise. Things are beginning to change, now, and we are moving toward a renaissance. Still, there is a cultural lag. People are awakening to curiosity and wonder, but the first thing they are learning is how much they don’t know.
For that reason, the generalist who displays interest and experience in a number of areas will be increasingly helpful and in demand. The technical writer, thinker, and tinkerer will always have a place in our complex world. But the broadminded and well-educated individual — one who knows how to learn, grow, and change — will be the most valuable writer, thinker, and project manager. — Sheri Reda, freelance writer and editor