April 2009

We're all connected

by Terry A. Rondberg, DC

When economic times get tough, as they are today, it's easy for many people to concentrate so hard on their own lives and businesses that they lose sight of the ongoing needs of the world. The flow going out stops as they focus all their energy on the flow coming in.

From my own observations, that is far less common among chiropractors. Perhaps it's because DCs are in a unique profession, one that traditionally has been more concerned with giving than getting. After all, young men and women who are primarily interested in making big bucks or having continual ego strokes don't usually head for chiropractic college. More often than not, those of us who chose to be doctors of chiropractic did so because of a true desire to help others live healthier lives, usually after being the beneficiary of chiropractic's power.

Knowing this, I think it makes perfect sense that the World Chiropractic Alliance should choose this time to affiliate itself with an organization whose vision encompasses the whole world and whose efforts range from educating Kenyan children to protecting the monarch butterfly in Mexico.

Ecolife Foundation is a 501c3 organization providing ecologically sustainable water, food & shelter to communities, through education and outreach and is run by an amazing man named Bill Toone. I've had the honor of meeting Toone and talking with him about Ecolife, which was founded in 2003.

For more than 30 years, he's worked as a conservation biologist, applying his expertise and dedication on projects around the world. Here in the US, he won widespread acclaim for his work for the San Diego Zoo's Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species, especially with the California Condor Recovery Program.

Soon, Bill began appearing on television shows such as The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, PBS presentations including The Victory Garden and The Real Jurassic Park, and numerous local and national news broadcasts and interviews.

Bill used his public appearances to raise awareness of many of the ecological challenges facing our world, including how human development impacts the Monarch butterfly and their wintering grounds in Mexico, the effects of the bushmeat trade in Cameroon, Central Africa, and research on butterfly ranching in Costa Rica, Madagascar, and Papua New Guinea.

Now, as founder and manager of the Ecolife Foundation, he's in a position to benefit both people and wildlife in the areas of greatest need.

The foundation's current projects include the construction and promotion of energy and resource-efficient straw bale building systems, design and construction of safer and more efficient wood burning stoves in Central America, and installation and promotion of rainwater collection and recovery systems in areas where water supply and safety are of particular concern.

A program that truly fascinates me is one involving sustainable agriculture. As the Foundation points out, there are tremendous benefits to producing locally grown food for cities, through farmland preservation, free-market solutions, and sustainable agriculture education.

Using New Jersey -- the most densely populated state in the nation -- as the "test kitchen" so to speak, Ecolife is experimenting and studying ways to introduce and promote the idea of sustainable agriculture to meet much of the local food demand. This includes saving farmland from commercial and residential developers, reeducating farmers in sustainable growing methods, opening local markets and showing the population why it's better to "eat local," and of course, sharing the results of their findings with the rest of the world.

This seems quite removed from such issues as protecting African elephants by providing proper education to Kenyan children, or learning about the effects of groundwater pollution by exploring the cycle of disposable consumer food packing. But to Toone, everything is connected and if you help one area of the world, you help the whole world. And, if you help the environment, you help the people who live in it.

"It is people who matter most," he says. "True conservation requires more than saving habitats and species -- it requires improving human lives. Conservation is a tool. Used not just to protect our remarkable natural world, but every bit as importantly, to protect our human way of life. Mine, yours, as well as millions of others. The challenge ahead of us," he emphasizes, "is to save a future for ourselves, and for our children."

That definitely sounds like a vision shared by chiropractors! I hope you'll agree that Ecolife Foundation is worthy of your support. To learn more, please visit http://ecolifefoundation.typepad.com .