Meeting Notes 5-16-09

First of all, thank you for everyone who came to the meeting. It was good and we were able to get some good things established. If you have any questions or comments regarding the minutes of the meeting or just any questions in general, please let us know. Thank you.

MEETING MAY 16, 2009 TIME: 6:00 P.M. LOCATION: COFFEE DEPOT-RIVERSIDE

-Continue to work on gardening projects. Still in the beginning stages. Hoping to later establish a cooking class or networking with other food organizations.

-Using the gardening and food project as a starting point to help people in need and build rapport with community

-Need a way to put together meetings (organizing); use meeting wizard or other online meeting programs, etc.?

-Suggested that we should establish a meeting every month on a certain day. 2nd Saturday of every month at 6 p.m. at JR's? Make meeting twice a month: one Saturday and one Sunday? Need to discuss this as a group. Any suggestions or comments? Can start new discussion if need be.

-Paula's b-day (Denver FWT member). Need rocks to help create her garden. Please drop off rocks at Art and Sarah's place by Thursday afternoon. Tell Cynthia, Mark, and Kyle.
**CORRECTION: ONLY NEED ONE ROCK FROM EACH PERSON TO TAKE WITH ME

-Street teams: support for successful teams and building external relationships. Suggestions?

-IE street team t-shirts: Justin to shop around for best prices and quality shirts.
Unionbug.org - profits go to charity, etc.
Mrprint.com - inexpensive and promotional

-Advertisement for street team: fliers, publicizing street team to recruit more members. Continue talking to friends, family members, classmates, community, etc. to network and build

-Hemet: organic farms, locally grown farming associations. Check gardening discussion and website suggested to find a local farm to support.

-Newsletter: maybe we National FWT can start one. Have FWT ask local STs for an update each month on their activities, what's going on, exciting projects/results, etc. This may keep people accountable.

-Social forum: forum of social issues. For example, L.A. Social Forum every 2 years that hosts activists and academics

-Road Trip: Summer get-together with CA street teams. Jessica from Bay Area ST interested as well as Nikki from OC. Start planning for this with other CA people.
*Also Lesley, Bishop, and Zach (East Coast FWT members and organizers) will be here mid-June to visit. Maybe we can all hang out and show them around, have meeting, etc.

-Next meeting in June will be a wake-up session to go over code of conduct, strengths/weaknesses, etc.