Take a look at this !

For those of you who don’t know yet, there is a group on the Rez called Sustainable Homestead Designs that is working on sustainable housing and food sovereignty for the Reservation. They built the first cob home in Manderson and are working to begin growing food this year. You can see it here on the .

They are working hard now to establish a fruit orchard for the community and have entered a competition to win a fruit orchard . The project with the most votes in the competition will win the orchard. To help find more votes they have created a cute widget. The widget tells their story… take a look. Just click the “Cute Widget” link above to check it out.

Note, voting for those who access the internet on a cell phone is limited 1. to people with smart phones (like an iphone) and 2. will only allow voting for the top 4 on the leaders board as the browser on a smart phone cannot scroll down to see the other contestants.

They need as many votes  as possible until May 31. Please follow their story and vote for their project if you like: http://naturalhomes.org/appeal.htm#orchard

On April 21, a couple of us were able to participate on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) call that highlighted the opportunity of Preferred Sustainability Status (PSS).

What PSS essentially provides is a way to get extra points in the scoring for grant applications.  It currently applies only to HUD grants, but the goal is to have it apply across many federal agencies.  Across the U.S., only 87 communities currently have this status, and 29 additional communities will have the opportunity to gain PSS.

It is expected that the status will come from the regional HUD administrator.  More details and an FAQ to come, but what we’ve heard thus far is promising — sharing best practices, techniques for plan implementation, peer-to-peer networking, etc.  We see this as an opportunity for building capacity on a variety of fronts.  It is our hope that this status for the Tribe will help ensure there are resources available for all the initiatives and projects that emerge out of next week’s Visioning Process and the planning that follows.

It will certainly take continued effort and determination to see the Vision and Plan through on a variety of levels.  We think this opportunity can help us move forward in a good way.