Form letter for villages to be surveyed
Gund Institute for Ecological Economics
University of Vermont
590 Main Street
Burlington VT 05401
Hi.
As part of a problem-based course at the University
of Vermont, (http://www.uvm.edu/snr/nr285ev/), we are performing a
survey of intentional communities around the world. From this
survery, we hope to
learn the characteristics of current communities and
how well they have functioned to achieve their goals. We hope to
publish the results as a journal article and also use them to help us
design an ecovillage for the University of Vermont campus. We would
very much appreciate your help in administering the survey in your
community.
The attached survey is broken into two parts:
1. Data on the community as a whole. This part can be filled in
by one community member familiar with the community. It should take
about 30 minutes.
2. A survey of individual community members. This part asks
individual community member to rank various aspects of their life in
the community. We would like as many community members as
possible to fill out this part of the survey. It should take
about 15 minutes per person. Perhaps one member of the community
could pass copies out during a common meal or other community function
and send the completed surveys back to us. Alternately, you could
send us an email (or regular mail) list of community members and we
could send them this part of the survey directly. In either case,
the identity of individual community members will be kept strictly
confidential.
We hope that you will agree to help us with this important
survey. For our part we will share the results with you and the
other participating communities, acknowledge your help in any
publications that result from the survey, and link to your web site (if
desired) in any web-based products of the study.
Looking forward to your positive response. Please return as soon
as possible, preferably by October 20th.
Thanks again for all your help.
Your name(s) here
On behalf of:
Drs. Robert Costanza, John Todd, Deane Wang, Jon Erickson, Patricia
Erickson, Marjan van den Belt, Wendy-Sue Harper, Diane Gayer and the
other students in NR 285E/ASCI 297K/CDAE 295A/PSS 297B