Sustainability Alumni Network (SAN) held a weekend retreat Oct. 18 to 20 in Bluffton to encourage and build community and open conversations. There were 14 people who attended the retreat from many areas including Bluffton, Pittsburgh and Harrisonburg, Va.
SAN, which is comprised of alumni from Mennonite colleges and universities, was established in 2017 by founders Cecilia Lapp Stoltzfus, who was a recent graduate of Goshen (Ind.) College, and Harrison Horst, who was a senior at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Va. They were driving together after a Mennonite Church USA convention in Orlando, Fla., and began to talk about sustainability within Mennonite communities and the involvement of young adults within the broader Mennonite church.
“We started conversations around building a network, building a database of names, making connections and relationships so that young adults didn’t just graduate, check out and maybe leave Mennonite spheres, or feel isolated,” said Lapp Stoltzfus, who is now a part of the SAN Steering Committee. “So the community building was really one of the initial goals, and it kind of grew from there.”
Over the past year, SAN has been talking with other community members and their efforts regarding sustainability and environmental justice and engagement. They took inspiration from Jeff Heie and the Give Solar initiative in Harrisonburg, Va., and David Lapp Jost’s involvement in the project Solarize Goshen (also known as Solarize Northern Indiana). Within the last two months, SAN started an LLC called SAN Investing Collective.
“(We were) trying to think about how we could contribute to those efforts, while recognizing that, as young adults, we don’t have a lot of like, extra money laying around to donate to those projects. They were kind of driven by charitable contributions,” said Lapp Stoltzfus. “And so we started mulling over this idea of community impact investing. The purpose of the LLC is to be a centralized body that can facilitate revolving loans to nonprofits that want to do renewable energy investments.”
SAN hopes to show people an alternative way to invest their money, a way that can also impact their community.
SAN retreats are centered around having face-to-face interaction and communication between its members, friends, family or community members who join the retreat meetings. The weekend is structured around having a conversation about how the group works and its mission.
Ryan Johnson-Evers, a Bluffton alumnus, is the steering committee chair, a role that handles logistics such as scheduling monthly meetings and communicating with the various groups within SAN. Johnson-Evers joined the group shortly after it was born and is the one who planned the weekend retreat.
“Our first retreat was about a year ago, and it was the first time that the steering committee, or most frequently involved members, had ever met in person,” said Johnson-Evers. “And so that was the original purpose, to meet in real life and connect with each other, learn about each other and to feel like we had a real connection.”
The weekend not only focused on learning more about each other, but also getting to know the host community. SAN visited many places within Bluffton including The Food Store, the Et Cetera Shop, Greenhorn restaurant and the Lion and Lamb Peace Arts Center. The weekend also included a nature walk in Motter Park with Emeritus Professor of Biology Robert Antibus, watching Bluffton University Men’s Soccer game against Hanover College, and getting to tour Wendy and Andy Chappell-Dick’s small house where they ate a area meal.
“We have our strongest connections to schools that the people who started SAN are from, so Goshen College, Eastern Mennonite University, Bluffton University, and then Fresno Pacific, Bethel College, Hesston College, Canadian Mennonite University,” said Johnson-Evers. “We are open to anybody.”
Anyone interested in getting involved with the Sustainability Alumni Network (a group that involves current students as well), can find more information on their Facebook page.
