extremegreenvillage.com

The Coop will ask everyone to work 5-8 hours a week until the Extreme Green Cooperative Housing Project is built. Then the number of hours will drop down to 3-5 hours a week.

(Don’t be afraid of these hours. Once you’ve become established, working on the project, things will happen in life. Coop Members will understand if you fall below the line of required hours and it’ll be so easy to catch up. If you spent the weekend, working 4 hours on Friday night and 10 hours Saturday and Sunday, that would be 24 hours.)

For most people it’s going to be fun and exercise. New challenges. New experiences. New entertainment and the start of a new life.)

THE BENEFITS OF JOINING THIS COOPERATIVE.

Not counting the obvious benefits that your mortgage will be lower than a comparable rent.

A Green alternative to personnal shopping.

This Coop plans to have a buying service that will do all the shopping for you and have it available for you to pick up at Town Center. And at reduced bulk buying rates! Most households go shopping twice a week for regularly consumed items.

Green Note: Imagine the gas savings! A limited number of large truck trips per week versus over a thousand individual car trips a week!

Imagine the time each Coop Member will save SHOPPING! 3-7 hours a week.

A time saving alternative to preparing your own meals.

Or do you like cooking, but its too time consuming to do everyday? Would you like to avoid cleaning up afterwards?

Would you rather do other things with your time than cook if you could guarantee that everyone in your family would get good quality food, but it would still be close to the same cost or cheaper than it would be to cook the same dish for yourself?

Imagine the time each Coop Member will save COOKING! 5-12 hours a week.

This Coop plans to have a Meals Coop.

Within the Meals Coop, you have the option to pick up hot individual or family style, healthy meals at Town Center.

In addition, the Coop will give you the option of taking all the clean dishes needed to serve it!  If you drop off dirty dishes from previous meals, you have no cooking and no washing dishes either!!

You can also eat at the Town Center’s restaurant style eating areas, the coffe shop areas, the eating areas in the inside playground or picnic anywhere in the common areas all over the Coop complex. Or anywhere else.

You can also take hot food home or even frozen entrees all ready to pop in the oven whenever you want.

Green Note: This dish cleaning Coop system will save at the very least, from 1/3 of water usage all the way up to 100% of water usage.

An alternative to washing your own clothes.

This Coop plans to have a large-scale clothes washing service as an option for all Coop Members.

In addition, for less than half the price of a coin laundry, the Coop will wash, dry, fold, steam iron and hang your clothes.

Green Note: This clothes washing Coop system will save at the very least, from 2/3 of water usage all the way up to 100% of water usage.

Imagine the time each Coop Member will save WASHING CLOTHES! 1-5 hours a week.

An alternative to maintaining your home’s property?

This Coop plans to have a lawn and garden service focused on raising edible crops, edible flowers and containerized herbs and fruit trees. And selling them!

It’s your choice to maintain your own property or the Coop will maintain your front yard, your backyard and/or your rooftop yard all in a Coop food raising, money generating fashion.

Green Note: This produce growing and selling system will generate money for the complex and save all the gas to bring consumer produce to the project.

An alternative to cleaning your own home?

Especially an overall spring-cleaning or an after party cleaning or a relatives coming over for the holidays cleaning.

This Coop plans to have a cleaning service. It will basically maintain all the common Coop property but it will also provide the additional service in exchange for trading Work shift contribution for cleaning services.

Do you want to intelligently spend your money? Want the best bargains?

As an additional benefit to each Coop member, we will take every opportunity to get the best deals for our Coop members. Insurance, auto repair, whatever volume buying can save you we will look into it.

An alternative to staying at home from work for a home repair problem?

Or an important delivery? Or your child is sick or acts up at school? Or your child misses their bus? Or your car breaks down? 

These semi-emergency situations can add up and affect your work performance, your work security and even work promotion potential. Fear of these problems restricts some people’s actual job choices.

This Coop plans to have a service to handle these situations. In addition, this service will have regular and overnight baby-sitting. Checking in on the sick and disabled. Picking up and dropping children off at their various activities. All in exchange for trading Work shift contribution.

Imagine the time each Coop Member will save! Imagine the peace of mind.

Do you want to live in a safe and secure environment?

In this Coop, you will work with all your neighbors at one time or another. You will know everyone on your street on sight.

The fact is that a Coop organized in this fashion with people working together and knowing their neighbors, naturally will be a very safe neighborhood.

Also the way the Coop will be designed, all the backyards have high private walls around them. All the rooftop yards will have high private walls around them. Each home will have a Coop run security system. With hidden panic buttons inside and a couple of key chain buttons also. This will be the safest neighborhood in Austin.

Are you tired of working for a boss that doesn’t appreciate your hard productive work?

In a Coop, you are one of over four hundred bosses. It is true that you can be voted out of the Coop if you aren’t trying or if you make other Coop members feel unsafe, but unlike working for someone, your whole career doesn’t depend on one Boss. And the Coop documents your contribution. Think of learning to work in a new way where every productive and supportive effort you make is noted and appreciated.

Are you tired of paying bills, doing taxes and finances without a real plan?

The Coop plans to have a once a month Coop meeting, to go over Coop finances and investment and plans for the future. In addition the Coop gives members an option to utilize Coop investment expertise. Getting rich slowly. Once a month we will help you plan your life. (If you don’t plan your life, your life will do it for you.)

Moving made easy.

Coop Members will help you to move. You could take all your private things and put them in a few boxes, and everything else could be packed up and moved by Coop Members. You could move from one unit on the Project to another in an afternoon. You could be packed up and loaded in a truck in an afternoon. If you are moving close, you can use Coop trucks and you can be completely moved in, unpacked and squared away.

It won’t cost you anything to sell your home. The Coop buys it back; with a small handling fee. Of course you make whatever proportion of the equity you built since you moved there.

Big Picture:

Imagine there are Small Extreme Green Villages all over the world. Once you’ve established yourself as a Coop Member in one, you would be a valuable Coop Member in any other small Extreme Green Village. What it would mean would be that you could jump ahead of some of the people who are waiting to join that specific Village. You could move into one of the rental units and if worse came to worse, maybe a current Coop Member might let you share their home until you can fit in! And if the demand is that high in the area you want to go to, there will be another small Extreme Green Village forming!

Do you find yourself stuck in a rut?

You may or may not be happy in your job. The average American changes jobs a little over every three years and the Average American has a number of different careers in their life. How do you decide on the new careers? The answer is through the experiences you gain in life.

You have an opportunity to work in every aspect of the Cooperative. To become a volunteer Coop manager, a volunteer Coop water purification expert, a volunteer Coop hydroponics expert, all the construction skills, caterer, horticulturist and it can go on and on. If you want it to.

With the multitudinous Green Coop job experiences, you can make better choices for your future career changes.

The Coop helps build your resume!

All responsible Coop jobs will provide tests and certification!!!

Imagine, the Coop gives out something like Boy Scout or Girl Scout badges for your resume! Hydroponics Expert. Hydroponics Manager. Water Purification Expert. Water Purification Manager. Compressed Earth Block Soil Expert. Compressed Earth Block Machine Technician. Human Resource Expert. Human Resource Manager.

Would you like to lose weight and get in shape? Hate being fat and out of shape?

Take each work shift and work hard. Pick the most physical work you can do and choose to work with others with the same goals. Watch the fat drop off and the muscles build!

Want to be more interesting?

Interesting people are those that have a lot of interests and can contribute to every conversation and can ask intelligent questions. Talking to an interesting person enlivens the mind.

Boring people say the same things over and over again, have a noted lack of curiosity about the world around them, and would rather narrow their view of life by only interacting with a small select group of like thinkers that never challenge them.

Working on the different projects in the Coop forces you to get to rely on people of different ages, races, education levels, physical abilities and interests. You can learn to appreciate that everyone can contribute if they want to and are supported to do so.

Not only will you be more interesting, but also, you might learn about your conscious or unconscious bigotry about age and other human differences. 

Want to stand for something bigger than yourself?

The name of this project is the Extreme Green Village. It will strongly benefit the people who become members of the Coop but it will also be a model for other complexes all over the world.

Want to WORK for something bigger than yourself?

Standing for something, a lot of people think it means just voting for something. A moment’s effort and they think they did something.

Working for something is a whole other thing. The whole idea in the Cooperative manner is to work in a way that is productive and fun for you and everyone else at the same time.

How do you tell your group is working in a productive and Cooperative way?

Did the work get done? One way to determine that is to have the Manager and their assistant(s) for each work project and for each work period, keep track of when people arrive and leave and measure how much work was done. At the end of the work period, did the goals for the work period fall short? Were they met or were they exceeded?

What worked? What worked first? Being positive. Ask everyone. Did people learn new ways of working that saved time or made the work easier? Did anyone do an especially good job?

What didn’t work? Being positive. Ask everyone. What do we need to do in the future? Can we do something different to avoid the problems we had?

Plan the next work period and make sure everyone leaves knowing how he or she did and recognize their contribution. This may be the most important part of the whole work period. Planning the next work period and everyone helping the Manager and their assistant update the work journal. Cooperative work has to accomplish the work but at the same time it must be satisfying for everyone involved. 

Working cooperatively. Sharing an ‘Ah ha insight with the rest of the group!’ Remember when you were a kid and you learned something? And you went ‘Ah ha?’ Now I see how it goes!

The goal is to get every member of the Coop to get that ‘Ah ha’ moment every time they learn how to work together. To share the ‘Ah ha’ moments and to ask questions so that they can do as good a job as possible.

That’s the way work in a Cooperative way is supposed to go.

Working cooperatively. Everyone has the opportunity to take a turn being a manager’s assistant and a manager as soon as they become an expert in what they need to know.

Work doesn’t have to be the way it always has been for the most of us. Work can be positive and invigorating and the work can be it’s own reward.

We want to work so that it’s best for everyone. It’s not about being the absolutely most efficient way to work if it’s at the expense of Coop members.

It’s about knowing that every productive act you make, as little as being a little early each day instead of being on time and always arriving at the last minute or even a few minutes late, giving the impression to everyone else that you would rather be anyplace but there.

It’s about picking up that piece of trash that no one else notices.

It’s about working neater and more organized every day and not leaving your workspace for someone else to clean up.

It’s about being positive and supportive. It’s about holding people accountable. But being positive about it.

It’s about some of the people working an extra fifteen to twenty or even ninety minutes extra because it was a better stopping point for the work. And not condemning those that have to leave on time.

It’s about being proud of being counted on in a Coop emergency. Working all night because it had to be done.

To say it in a little different way. Even though showing up is half the job, knowing it’s what you do when you are there is the rest of the job.

Asking for help. Talking about work at work. Trying to get better. Sharing what you know or are learning.

You are not an employee. Don’t act like one. Take responsibility.

You are a part owner in this project act like one. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you are an employee just because someone else is in charge. Plan on learning so that you can be in charge. Get excited about learning because you are going to be in charge.

Plan each work-shift. Everyone should know what they want to accomplish each day.

End each shift with a positive, what worked, what didn’t work session. What did we do well? How do we do better? What you did well. Updating the log and answering the end of work questions and filling the shift forms. 

What kind of people do we want?

You don’t have to be perfect.

You have to understand what an opportunity you are being offered. This is a great deal for everyone.

You have to care about our Environment and understand how working and living in this Extreme Green Cooperative Housing Project will contribute to it.

You have to remember you are an owner in a Coop and not an employee.

You have to keep trying to do a good job for yourself and for the people you work with.

You have to have good social skills like a good teacher. Or be aware enough of your own behavior and develop those skills.

You have to have friends that support you and want to help you do what you are doing. Or be aware that you have no real friends and that you are willing to develop those skills to become a more well rounded person and to get help on the project.

You have to have a steady job.

You have to have the ability to save money.

You have to be able to enjoy working smart and working hard.

You have to take responsibility like an owner.

Remember what is being offered. Besides being a powerful force for the Environment.

Home ownership at lower than the price of rent for the same unit.

You will save 20-60% of disposable income.

Living in a safe neighborhood with neighbors that can be your friends.

Where your children can grow up with a more rich life experience than they can get any other place.

Remember, most parents want their children to be successful and well rounded. When the child contributes their 3 to 5 hours a week to the Coop, they will get an opportunity, at an early age, to learn social skills and responsibility. They will get a more informed idea of their direction in life because of the work experience. What kind of work would they like to do? By learning many things, they will become more competent in many areas.

Remember, most people want to be mentally and physically active their entire life. As we age being mentally and physically active is a requirement for a healthy life. Coop participation will productively provide for this.

Won’t you help to make this Extreme Green Village a reality?