MEMBER PROFILE

Cisela Edstrom Wildes

I was born and raised in Sweden, but have several old connections with Ithaca. It was exciting to open an account with Alternatives when my late Swedish husband, Dag, and I moved to help start Ecovillage in Ithaca back in 1993, as it was exactly the kind of bank we wanted to support and be part of. We returned to Sweden in 1997, but I kept my account with Alternatives. I have found it easy to have this account even though I lived in Sweden and now live in the Northwest - and it's my intention to continue to stay with Alternatives in the future when I plan to move out of the country again.

The good works of Alternatives is being showcased nationwide as part of "Indivisible." One of 12 organizations selected to depict grassroots democracy in America, Alternatives? stories are told by our members and staff in narration and photographs.

Indivisible is a project of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University in partnership with the Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, and funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Indivisible: Stories of American Community debuted in October as a museum exhibition in Chicago, and as a major trade book, Local Heroes Changing America. The Terra Museum was the first of eight museums around the country displaying nearly two hundred original photographs and an audio guide with excerpts from recorded interviews. Though the museum tour is not scheduled to hit Ithaca, the postcard version opened in Center Ithaca in December. Designed to take the words and images of Indivisible to a broader audience, the postcard installations (brought to Ithaca and set up with a lot of help from Ithaca Downtown Partnership and Center Ithaca) feature racks of free postcards and an interactive computer stations that allows visitors to record their own stories of community.

"Indivisible portrays the struggle to build our democracy at the ground level-connecting our everyday lives with our civic lives-and documents how, with hard work, it can be done," said Rebecca W. Rimel, president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

The project also includes an educators-guide, the booklet Documenting Community Action, a guide to producing a documentary and local archives. I highly recommend you check out the web site, www.indivisible.org where you can hear the stories of Alternatives and the other local initiatives to better their communities. From the website, you can purchase the book (feel free to look at it at the Credit Union), send e-postcards, and find out if the museum or postcard exhibit is crossing your path.