Thrive on SOLAR income, LOCAL foods, and in a RESTORATIVE economy
Completely powered by the wind and sun, Inn Serendipity operates in the restoration ECOmony, improving the health of the soil while serving as a model for sustainable enterprise, green building and energy efficiency in the context of a family enterprise that thrives on abundance. About 70 percent of all guests are attracted to Inn Serendipity because of their local emphasis of organic foods (mostly grown on site), green design, strategies reflected in the innkeepers books, ECOpreneuring, Rural Renaissance, and Edible Earth, and celebrating the sense of place with the diversity of guests (including children).
Sobre Você
Dados de Contato
Título
co-owner
Nome
John
Sobrenome
Ivanko
Your job title
co-owner
Nome da sua organização
Inn Serendipity
Organization type
family business
Orçamento anual/moeda
$60,000
Mailing address
7843 County P
Telephone number
608-329-7056
Postal/Zip Code
53522
Country
Estados Unidos
Endereço de email
Endereço de email alternativo
Alternative email address
Sua ideia
Este será o endereço utilizado para posicionar sua inscrição no mapa.
Street Address
7843 County P
City
W7843 County P Browntown WI 53522
Estado/Província
Browntown
Postal/Zip Code
Wisconsin
Country
Estados Unidos
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists .
Organization size
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Tourism-related business
Year innovation began
1997
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Indicate sector in which you principally work
Culinary or agritourism.
Dê um nome ao seu projeto
Thrive on SOLAR income, LOCAL foods, and in a RESTORATIVE economy
Descreva Sua Ideia
Completely powered by the wind and sun, Inn Serendipity operates in the restoration ECOmony, improving the health of the soil while serving as a model for sustainable enterprise, green building and energy efficiency in the context of a family enterprise that thrives on abundance. About 70 percent of all guests are attracted to Inn Serendipity because of their local emphasis of organic foods (mostly grown on site), green design, strategies reflected in the innkeepers books, ECOpreneuring, Rural Renaissance, and Edible Earth, and celebrating the sense of place with the diversity of guests (including children).
INOVAÇÃO
What is the goal of your innovation? Please describe in one sentence the kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
Harness the power of business to restore our community and ecological systems, create a healthy, local food system and power the enterprise without any fossil fuels.
Please write an overview of your project. Include how your approach supports or embodies geotourism or destination stewardship. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the map located on the competition homepage.
Completely powered by the wind and sun, Inn Serendipity operates in the restoration ECOmony, improving the health of the soil while serving as a model for sustainable enterprise, green building and energy efficiency in the context of a family enterprise that thrives on abundance. About 70 percent of all guests are attracted to Inn Serendipity because of their local emphasis of organic foods (mostly grown on site), green design, strategies reflected in the innkeepers books, ECOpreneuring, Rural Renaissance, and Edible Earth, and celebrating the sense of place with the diversity of guests (including children).
Explain in detail why your approach is innovative
* Goals are based on the laws of nature, not the laws of "supply and demand" of the marketplace
* Business is used as the tool for investing in renewable energy, sustainable transportation, soil revitalization, etc.
* Due to the various strategies adopted, the business is "carbon negative", off-setting more carbon dioxide emissions than it generates annually. For more detail how, see:
http://www.innserendipity.com/inn/carbonsequest.html
• Relationships with "conserving customers" who work with us and help us accomplish our goals
Impacto
Crianças & Jovens
Describe the degree of success you have had to date. How do you measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the impact on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How has it transformed or contributed to the power of place or demonstrated the sustainability of tourism? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
Local Food:
- By growing about 70 percent of Inn Serendipity's ingredients in the farm's organic gardens
Local Energy
- To date, Inn Serendipity has generated about 47,000 kWhs of renewable energy with a 10kW wind turbine and .7 kW photovoltaic system. In the last several years, we've over produced as much as 4,000 kWhs of renewable energy for our community.
Local Heritage
- From local browery tours, biking the countryside or sampling Swiss cuisine at the Turner Hall Ratskeller, our guests are encouraged to celebrate the essence of what makes our community unique.
Crianças & Jovens
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your work, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
From Open Houses or potlucks and our involvement with the National Tour of Solar Homes to our recent involvement in laying the groundwork for possible establishment of a community kitchen incubator (for local food products created by area residents), Inn Serendipity regularly seeks collaborative relationships with other people and organizations. We regularly field questions related to renewable energy, energy efficiency, organic foods and other topics, much of which can also be found on our website.
Crianças & Jovens
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
Guests are offered a rare opportunity to taste the local freshness of our food products, providing an authentic flavor of Gruyere, hand-harvested spinach, or mild leeks. That they enjoy the community without adversely affecting the place (through our Trees for Travel and other carbon sequestering initiatives), all the better.
Describe how your work helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues.
From the Historic Cheesemaking Center to joining us at a local potluck event at a neighbors farm, complete with musical entertainment and local food and drink, we view our relationship with our guests as friends -- not as transactions or "heads-on-beds." By experiencing our place, hiking to our "Rohde woods" near the farm, or talking with Bruno the cheesemaker at the Roth Kase Cheese Factory, they come to understand why the Swiss first settled the area. Our approach to using renewable energy, growing organically and in various other ways reinforces the need to be aware of ecological and social issues that face us all.
Temas relacionados à inscrição
SUSTENTABILIDADE
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
Our business is completely financed through revenues to the business. When we have years with greater revenues, we reinvest in renewable energy systems or an all electric CitiCar used to commute to the bank. For more details on all financial aspects of our business, see our award-winning book, ECOpreneuring: Putting Purpose and the Planet before Profits.
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? Is there a potential demand for your innovation?
We envision a nation of ecopreneurs, perhaps many starting up a bed & breakfast in much the same way we have. We are not eager to franchise what we have, but rather provide the tools and know-how for individuals to create an Inn true to their values and interests, in much the same way we have with Inn Serendipity.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
Mainstream media remains, to a large extent, devoted to the BIG story. Big governmental, big corporations, big debt. We're weaving a story of the small time operator, where collectively, this group can have a far greater impact on the planet, if more people can understand their power as a group of business owners or founders of organizations. So it's a perception problem, to a large degree. That's why Changemakers is so vital, to balance the FOX news story that's both unfair and unbalanced.
What is your plan to expand or further develop your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
We continue our writing (E Magazine, Natural Home, Hobby Farms), blogging (http://greenoptions.com/author/johnivanko), authoring books (ECOpreneuring, Rural Renaissance, Edible Earth, Renewing the Countryside: WISCONSIN), and speaking nationally on these topics.
A História
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
In addition to co-authoring ECOpreneuring (ecopreneuring.biz), Rural Renaissance and Edible Earth, John Ivanko operates the award-winning Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast completely powered by renewable energy and featuring vegetarian cuisine prepared with ingredients from the Inn’s organic garden. John is a regular writer or photographer for numerous national publications including Natural Home, Mother Earth News, E Magazine, BackHome Magazine and Hobby Farms. He served as the lead writer/photographer for the book Renewing the Countryside: WISCONSIN and is a regular contributor to projects with the non-profit organization, Renewing the Countryside in addition to blogging for GreenOptions Media at . He has also co-authored six multicultural children's books, including the award-winning To Be a Kid, Be My Neighbor, Animal Friends, and To Be an Artist. John lives on an organic farm in southwestern Wisconsin with his wife, Lisa Kivirist, and son.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell the Changemakers and media communities what prompted you to start this initiative.
The present global free marketplace economic model is seriously flawed, from both social and ecological perspectives. How can a model where 5 percent of the planet's peoples who consume 25 percent of its resources and produce 40 percent of its waste and pollution been seen as the model we should continue to follow? We, as explained in ECOpreneuring, believe that a movement is underway to reinvent our communities, business institutions and lifestyle in ways that are fossil fuel free (living under only present solar income), local, and in livelihoods filled with purpose and meaning.
Describe some unique tourist experiences that your approach provides. Be specific; give illustrative examples.
Guests often enjoy a "tasters tour" of our organic gardens, help us adjust our photovoltaic system four times a year to maximize generation and enjoy a seasonal, local, fresh, organic breakfast (and other snacks) during their stay, most harvested on site. The cheeses are local or regional, as is other dairy products. (Inn Serendipity features vegetarian cuisine)
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
Continued networking amongst like-minded organizations that share an understanding that we cannot consume or shop our way out of climate change or peak oil any more than we can continue along the infinite growth path on a clearly finite planet.
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 | 209 semanas atrás Koustubh Sharma disse: Quite an impressive initiative that has the components of innovation, planning and eco-sense. Just a small query regarding the 4000 ... sobre esse Competition Entry. - leia mais > |
| 213 semanas atrás Max Cohen disse: I thought this entry was very interesting because it was concise and to the point. Both of the goals being that goals are based on the ... sobre esse Competition Entry. - leia mais > |
| 214 semanas atrás Pamela List disse: Inn Serendipity sounds like an amazing place to stay. I enjoyed reading their goals, which aim very high – which I believe is good, the ... sobre esse Competition Entry. - leia mais > |
| 214 semanas atrás Joseph Terpstra disse: I think Inn Serendipity is a location I would love to stay in, not only as a great residence, but also because of how much it could open ... sobre esse Competition Entry. - leia mais > |
| 214 semanas atrás Marion Parent disse: Inn Serendipity is a unique initiative that exemplifies green building and energy efficiency. Your approach of addressing the problem ... sobre esse Competition Entry. - leia mais > |
| 214 semanas atrás Katie Butz disse: It was great how you pointed out how wasteful humans are and that changes need to be made! I don’t think enough people know that! To ... sobre esse Competition Entry. - leia mais > |
| 214 semanas atrás Johnny Chan disse: The most interesting video to start with before the long complete entry hits readers’ minds. Also, the entry is concise and precise, ... sobre esse Competition Entry. - leia mais > |
| 219 semanas atrás John Ivanko enviou esta ideia. |