Last year, residents of Sonoma County, California planted over 600 gardens in a single weekend. This year, Transition US and 350.org are helping their idea go national, with the 350 Home and Garden Challenge on May 14th and 15th. Though plenty of gardens are planned, participants will also be transforming homes and landscapes of all kinds—by also insulating homes, installing greywater systems, or planting native, drought-resistant plants—and hosting classes, potlucks, and neighbourhood swaps to build community. What a great initiative… perhaps we should spread it beyond the US next year? Here’s a lovely short film about it…
Members of Transition Edinburgh University do something interesting in some woods somewhere to celebrate 10:10:10...
Here is the very final additional ingredient for ‘The Transition Companion’. It is still in draft form, so I’d really appreciate your thoughts, comments, or interesting case studies of things your initiative is up to… Thanks. My thanks to Isabel Carlisle for her input with this ingredient…
How can education, at all levels, best contribute to the Transition process, building resilient individuals, resilient communities and resilient institutions?
“Sustainability is about the terms and conditions of human survival, and yet we still educate at all levels as if no such crisis existed”.
David Orr.
The future that young people and those in further education are currently being educated for is not the future that is, in reality, approaching. The failure of government, and of much of the education system , to put resilience and sustainability central to their planning and teaching means that a whole generation is being prepared for business as usual while deep down most young people, and their teachers, know that the reality will be very different. This is a woeful neglect of duty.
I thought I would take the opportunity this morning to rave enthusiastically about Transition training. A few years ago Naresh Giangrande and Sophy Banks designed Transition Training as a two-day total immersion in the first stages of this evolving process. Since the first course in Totnes in October 2007, 106 training courses worldwide have been organised by Transition Training, with local organisers, and presented by members of a dedicated team of 16 UK trainers to over 2,500 participants. Courses have been run throughout the UK, as well as in Eire, Sweden, Brazil, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Flanders. Dozens more are being organised and run by local organizing hubs in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, parts of South America, and Asia, led by a team of multilingual trainers. Here is a recently made short film about it, the first of three I want to share with you:
How might our response to peak oil and climate change look more like a party than a protest march? This site explores the emerging transition model in its many manifestations
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