Five E’s Unlimited can assist a community to develop sound strategies for achieving sustainable development, which we characterize as the ability of humans to harmoniously coexist in a manner that maintains wildlife, wildlands, decent environments, social equality, and economic well-being today and for future generations. Five E's most often chooses to work with communities that show a deep concern for environmental responsibility as it relates to the social and economic capacity concerns of people.

We assist clients to integrate environmental, economic, and social equity concerns into project design and problem solving that focuses upon community-based natural resource management, comprehensive planning, promotion of environmental protection and conservation in watershed and coastal zone strategic plan development, community awareness and capacity building that is integral, and sustainable eco-tourism planning. We put into layman's terms science needed by communities, organizations, and governments to achieve economic prosperity and improve social well-being, compatible with natural environmental systems. Our national and international leadership in community capacity-building facilitation and strategic planning toward achieving sound economic development and natural resource conservation goals has assisted governments, corporations, academic institutions, communities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for more than 10 years.

We are fully capable of providing support for local and regional community driven initiatives through information and visualizations created using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). We have found that GIS platforms can become a “chess board” to anchor discussion and debate. Mapping is an important technique for collecting "heart and soul" features of a community. We use maps and other electronic visualizations to illustrate landscape conditions and environmental patterns that facilitate debate and consensus development in support of strategic planning. With maps specific to local conditions people can work collaboratively to improve and continuously update their understanding of what their community and surrounding environment really look like, as well as what potential assets they possess that will be important in visualizing their future.

For more detail about our Strategic Planning work, review our project in Dauphin Island, on the Gulf Coast of Alabama (USA) in 2007. This case history will give you a good example of what we do, how we do it, and the results we can assist you in achieving. The project demonstrated how the services of Five E’s can enhance the coming together of all interested stakeholders to broaden their collective wisdom in a way that will enable the community to articulate and evaluate the best strategies for ensuring economic viability and social integrity through means that are environmentally responsible. As in Dauphin Island, these strategies can then be “tested” using what-if and futuring scenarios, assessing alternative choices in land use, transportation, water quality, waste management, economic strategies (i.e., eco-tourism versus small-scale industrial development), where the community is able to develop consensus on a course of action most appropriate and sustainable, as perceived by the majority of stakeholders.

If you are interested in discussing a strategic planning process that your group might want to engage in, contact us at (e-mail) rwflint@eeeee.net or (telephone) 206-749-9755.