EW is pleased to welcome Community Organizer, Kachina Katrina Zavalney as an EW Research Fellow!
In addition to her innovations in non-profit collaboration and human capacity building, Empowerment Works has distinguished Kachina as “Research Fellow” for her work in creating a “Community Organizers Toolkit” for inspired people who want to do something about the problems in this world, and don’t know where to start, this kit outlines specific practices and resources for local solutions.
Started as a masters degree project, this comprehensive community organizers tool kit covers the basics of group formation and organizational tools with resources in every subject for further exploration. To address the key issues related to this field, Katrina conducted interviews with community organizers, researched techniques, and evaluated existing programs focused on community development.
As an official EW Research Fellow, Kachina will further develop her Community Organizers Toolkit, synthesizing tools for community organizing, and is empowered to raise funds for it as a non-profit program. Download the Community Organizers Toolkit.
Kachina has much to bring to EW, including the further linking of her many networks and projects (she threads together her networks very well in her bio) that are of relevance to EW.
Kachina Katrina has an amazing background as a organizer, community builder, event planner, educator and consultant for organizational development:
- Currently supporting James Kalin, a green developer (who is currently promoting a low cost ecologically designed mobile home through his company Virtually Green) in his effort to transform a mobile home park into an ecovillage in Napa Valley. They are using a high yield agricultural technique called spin farming and will be transferring these practices to the East Bay in CA to bring healthier food to the people that need it.
- Learned and practiced community building sharpening organizing skills with the City Repair project in Portland, OR since 1999, becoming their national outreach coordinator.
- Helped Bay Localize bring in tools and models that area groups and municipal governments can implement in their own locales to bring the production of food, energy, and essential goods and services closer to home.
- Lined up speakers for Earth Dance International in the Bay area
- Assisted Michael Gosney producing the Digital Be-IN, a celebratory event that begins with a two-hour, multidisciplinary exploration of Biomimicry as it relates to information and social networks, economics, education, green tech, urban development, bioregionalism, and the worldwide “movement without a name” combining social justice and sustainability at this critical juncture in human evolution, then heads into music into the night with activation zones through out the venue.
Her main gig is coordinating events for the Urban Alliance for Sustainability (UAS) in San Francisco, CA, assisting UAS to integrate and inspire the sustainability movement in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. She is currently mapping the ecology of the sustainable movement in the Bay Area, and with this information is creating alliances so that people can be empowered to effectively work together more on issues they care about.
EW looks forward to serving as platform for Kachina to put her theoretical and practical experience to work in global programs and in non-profit collaboration through the PIE network.
See Kachina Katrina’s Linked In Page
The BLM administers 2.6 million acres (close to 5,000 square miles) of forested land in western Oregon. Much of this BLM land consists of low-elevation forests, in contrast to the mountainous acreage found in the surrounding National Forests. BLM forests in western Oregon contain many key watersheds for salmon recovery and recreational havens. They are also home to nearly 1 million acres of the remaining ancient, old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest.
