ReCitizen Helps Entrepreneurs, Students and Retirees Enhance Communities, Farms, and Nature

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- ReCitizen, L3C (http://recitizen.org) today introduced Professional memberships at $95/year. These enable students, retirees, and working professionals to earn income revitalizing distressed communities and restoring damaged natural resources worldwide.

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There are two categories of Professional recitizens: Full-Time and Part-Time.

• "Formal Experts" are architects, planners, real estate developers, restoration ecologists, etc. They join ReCitizen to get a leg-up on the competition by getting involved in citizen-led renewal projects early; long before they go out for bid.
• "Informal Experts" are people who obtain "real world" experience on local renewal projects, and then earn income as consultants or speakers sharing their knowledge and story worldwide.

"Let's say someone in Detroit successfully turns a garbage-strewn vacant lot into a thriving community garden or farmers' market," explains ReCitizen CEO Storm Cunningham. "They now have a marketable skill, and can teach others how to design, plan, fund, and gain public support for such projects."

"There's over a million vacant lots in cities around the planet," Cunningham continued, "and most of those cities need more urban agriculture. The same dynamic applies to reusing abandoned buildings, revitalizing a women's shelter, or turning abandoned infrastructure into public amenities (such as New York City's famed High Line Park, which was a citizen-led project)."

These self-taught part-timers can earn $20-$100/hour as "renewal consultants", using free Skype, email, and PayPal accounts. They can also obtain speaking engagements, getting paid to tell their stories and offer insights in sometimes-exotic places.  For those who have no expertise in renewing places, ReCitizen offers free memberships enabling them to gain this expertise while renewing their own neighborhoods.

ReCitizen provides free tools that empower people worldwide to renew their communities and natural resources. These activities connect them to training, internships, and careers in the fast-growing, $2 trillion/year "restoration economy".  With these tools, anyone can use their smartphone (or digital camera + computer) to "crowdmap" local renewable assets: natural, built, or socioeconomic.

But ReCitizen doesn't stop at crowdmapping. It offers an integrated system of crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, team-building, institutional partnering (for large projects), and project management. These leading edge CrowdRenewal™ tools (U.S. patent pending) enable members to suggest, discuss, design, fund, launch, and manage projects and enterprises throughout the lifecycle.

Cunningham is a leading public speaker and consultant on urban and rural regeneration (see http://StormCunningham.com). He's the author of two books, with a third, Recivilizing, on the way in 2014. His first book was The Restoration Economy, the groundbreaking 2002 work (from Berrett-Koehler publishers) that was first to document the eight sectors of restorative development that today comprise industries measured at over $2 trillion dollars annually.

His second book, ReWealth (from McGraw-Hill Professional) has been called "The bible of community revitalization and natural resource restoration."  Cunningham himself has been called "The world's thought leader on community revitalization and natural resource restoration" by George Ochs, Managing Director at JP Morgan.

For more information, contact Storm Cunningham: Email (202-684-6815).

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SOURCE ReCitizen