Hello everyone! My name is Max Thesing and I am a rising senior at Kenyon College majoring in Economics. I am looking forward to the rest of the summer with both Simply Living and the Columbus Foundation. For the next 10 weeks, I will be working with local non-profit, Simply Living. The mission of Simply Living is simple yet effective: to connect people with learning opportunities that promote sustainability, environmental justice, and local economy.  As an economics major, I am incredibly interested in learning more about how our local economy coincides with sustainable living. I am a firm believer that the way in which our current economy is structured is no longer sustainable.  

During the height of COVID, it became prevalent that our local businesses would suffer while massive corporations, such as Amazon, would thrive.  Although our global economy survived, our local economies incurred heavy losses. The project I have been assigned to at Simply Living is an effort to support our local economy by shedding light on small businesses in the area. The project is to create a Sustainable Business Directory which will be a website that will act as a guide for people to find small businesses in the area that provide the goods or service they desire. Thanks to the employees of Simply Living, the website is well on its way with about 150 small businesses in the database already. 

Besides the Sustainable Business Directory, I attended a meeting with Simply Living founder, Chuck Lynd, about their annual garden tour, which is an in-depth look at various community gardens in Columbus. This annual event circles back to the mission of Simply Living: to connect people with learning opportunities. I also had the pleasure of learning from Chuck Lynd regarding the role our local economy plays in preserving the environment.   

In conclusion, there is a lot to be done in terms of sustainability in business. However, Simply Living understands that it is difficult to tackle such a task all at once. The approach should be learning one step at a time to ultimately provoke constructive change.