Bill Sharp © October 29, 2018[1]
What is the most pressing problem we face today? I believe it is the need to rebuild
communities to have the resiliency to withstand the inevitable challenges of
this century. We want communities that
are safe, secure and stable.
Transition Centre (TC) Resilient Communities is a model for
achieving the capacity to adapt to inevitable challenges be they economic, environmental
or social. Resilient Communities is not
about recovering from weather or other events but about developing the capacity
of local communities to achieve greater self-sufficiency and
self-determination.
There are communities in the US that are thriving and many
that are not. Even the strongest
communities constantly strive to keep ahead of the game. In a sense TC Resilient Communities is an
insurance policy but in intent it is a model for building communities that are
sounder, more robust and innovative.
The Mission of Transition Centre: Promote and develop an integral design
for strong, local, human-scaled, self-sufficient and sustainable economies and
communities that have the resilience to overcome the inevitable challenges
arising from economic uncertainty, climate instability and resource depletion.
The Vision of Transition Centre: Adaptable and innovative communities with the capacity to meet the challenges of the day building on local resources, innovation and regenerative economic development.
The Vision of Transition Centre: Adaptable and innovative communities with the capacity to meet the challenges of the day building on local resources, innovation and regenerative economic development.
Transition Center Tag
Line: Prosperity and Quality of
Life.
Organizing Your Community
Transition Centre was modeled on Transition Towns. Transition Towns was founded by Rob Hopkins
in the UK in 2006 and the US national office opened late in 2008. In 2008 Hopkins published The Transition Handbook. It was based on experiences establishing the
first Transition Towns at his hometown in Totnes and other communities in the
UK that adopted the model. The Handbook provided a rationale and a
blueprint for developing more self-sufficient communities. The Transition Towns movement went viral with
1,200 initiatives formally established in 50 countries, including 164 in the
US.
Grassroots Organization
There are a number of noteworthy features to the Transition
Towns program. The first and foremost
was that it is grassroots. It starts
with a small initiating group of people who take on the job of defining the
issues the community needs to resolve and mobilizing people and resources to
address them. The Handbook includes ideas and tools for organizing a community
association and provides a step-by-step program, twelve steps in fact, as a
guide for creating a comprehensive plan for its future.
Grassroots means citizen-driven. Such programs require no application, no
approval – just a small group of people with an idea. As Margaret Mead famously said, a small group
of people can change the world (but this takes hard work). Mead’s group forms around a person with an
idea, a vision, perhaps a solution to a pressing problem, around who gather an
initial group of supporters. The Mead
Minimum, as I have called it, is five people.
Secondly, it is innovative, not tied down by existing ideas
and practices, rules, regulations and red tape.
It does not exclude the involvement of local political authorities,
institutions, business or nonprofits but they join as participants and partners.
Such associations represent an
additional, citizen-driven, dimension of community self-determination. It can provide the sense of common purpose
for all parties essential for purposeful and transformative change.
Localization
At what level do we act:
global, national, state? Do we
try to change the world or seek a more workable scale of action? A basic philosophy of Transition Towns is
localization. One’s community, or neighborhood,
is something that can be better understood.
A community has a sense of place, of people; it evokes emotions. Each community is unique in character. Each needs its own vision, strategy and
organization.
Comprehensive Community Plan
The Handbook also
provides a step-by-step program, twelve steps in fact, as a guide for creating
a comprehensive plan for its future, an Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP). Totnes published its own exemplary EDAP, Transition in Action, in 2010. In that book, Totnes established a series of
goals for 2030 in each of a number of topic areas such as food, energy, water,
health and wellbeing, etc. Each topic
contains a sequence of objectives for reaching its goal. Transition Centre developed its own
innovative plan (see below).
School of Living
The School of Living, founded by Ralph Borsodi during the
Great Depression of the 1930s, is based on three core principles:
- Personal independence through homesteading.
- Lifelong learning that provides a holistic understanding of life and the ability to clarify and effectively solve the problems of living.
- Collaborative community that provides greater security.
Personal independence and homesteading
Ralph Borsodi, a successful New York City consulting
economist, seeking an alternative to the economic uncertainty of the city,
moved his family to a small farm in Rockland County, New York, in 1920. In 1929 he publish This Ugly Civilization in which he wrote a critique of industrial
society and made a business case for his model homestead. In 1933, at the depth of the Great
Depression, he published a handbook on homesteading, Flight From the City.
Learning and the Problems of Living
In This Ugly
Civilization Borsodi first proposed his lifelong learning program, a
liberal educational program to develop what he quality the “Quality Mind.” In 1934 he founded the School of Living near
his homestead at Suffern, NY, to help homesteaders achieve the
self-determination and self-confidence to pursue the homesteading
lifestyle. In 1948, his Education and Living elaborated his
educational model and introduced the universal problems of living
framework. He continued to develop and
refine this model over the next 30 years.
Collaborative Community
While Borsodi’s guiding principle was personal
independence and self-reliance, he understood the need for community based on
voluntary collaboration. The School was
intended to be at the center of these communities. In Education
and Living, he describe how such communities could be organized. He also elaborated the values system he called
“Normal Living.” Normal living is not
living at the average or mean but rather at the optimal level of human
achievement. Normal living is the
objective of life in a School-centered homesteading community.
Joining two ways
Transition Centre was formed during meetings at a School of
Living homestead (Ahimsa Village). Introduced
to Borsodi’s system, I found it compelling.
It became apparent that these two programs shared the same basic
values. From the beginning, Transition
Centre was founded on the core principles of both schools of thought.
Borsodi’s model preceded Transition Towns (TT) by 70
years. It anticipated much of what we
think of as sustainability. TT
considerably updated the model to present conditions. It is more community oriented. Both have a strong emphasis on local
economies, organic food and appropriate technology. Borsodi was an innovative pioneer of ideas
such as community land trust, local currency and appropriate technology. His model had a much stronger emphasis on
personal development and integral learning (which I have updated, simplified
and made more down-to-earth). TT
emphasized comprehensive community planning and development.
Over the past decade, the Transition Centre model has been
steadily developed into the current updated Resilient Communities program. Transition Centre is an independent,
registered, non-profit organization (www.transitioncentre.org).
What is Sustainability?
What are we trying to achieve? Many find the term “sustainability” hard to
define. It is. The sustainability movement, it could be
argued, started with the idea of moderating consumption to leave enough for
future generations as proposed by the UN Brundtland Commission in 1987.
The classical diagram that illustrates sustainability is a
set of three overlapping circles representing:
Environment, Society and Economy.
Sustainability is defined as where the three circles overlap and are in
harmony. We will come back to this.
Sustainability is but the latest phase in the conservation
and environmental movement that goes back to at at least Henry David
Thoreau. It had early champions such as
John Muir, President Theodore Roosevelt and a host of other conservationist. The Sierra Club was founded in 1892. Patrick Geddes (Scotland) established the
regional/town planning movement related to things like garden cities. During the Great Depression funding was
poured into the Civilian Conservation Corp, up to 300,000 at a time employed
mostly in public parks and related work.
As a response to the Great Recession of 2008, a great deal of money was
put into sustainability projects by the US Government, many related to energy
savings for public buildings.
Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970. That year, the US Environmental Protection
Agency was formed. The Oil/Energy Crisis
in the 1970s raised a red flag and the U. S. Department of Energy was formed in
1977. The Noble winning Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change was founded in 1988.
The global Earth Summit (Rio) was held in 1992. More recently, the Paris Climate Agreement
was signed in 2016.
There are a number of incentives for working for a more
sustainable future. For not a few it is
a moral mandate to “Save the Earth,” which includes the environment, species
and people. There are those who have
adopted a sustainable lifestyle, some intensely committed to the ideals of
simple, low-impact living. This is
particularly attractive where there is a local culture of sustainability that
provides a sense of community for participants.
There are those who participate in protest and advocacy and attempt to
influence public opinion and elected officials.
Money is an important factor in pursuing sustainability. Projects get completed because of a grant or
from donations. Tax incentives are a
good motivation. Cost savings is a
powerful incentive, particularly energy.
It can also be just good business.
Major corporations must comply with environmental regulations and many
add compliance to their branding. Most
people will buy “green” products. More
and more major corporations are finding that sustainable practices save cost
and boost the value of their products.
Are we achieving a sustainable future?
After three decades we should ask if a sustainable future,
as defined by the Brundtland Commission, is achievable? The UN is, paradoxically, pursuing “sustainable
development” and it is a growth model.
Sustainable development seeks to provide these increasing
numbers with adequate food, shelter and basic services. Even to meet a minimum of subsistence will
soon exhaust the Earth’s resources. In
natural ecosystems, such growth inevitable results in collapse. This problem points to the need for achieving
greater local community resiliency. We
will come back to this.
Transition Centre
Transition Centre was formed in 2009, but the
catalyst that sparked its formation came earlier with Hurricane Katrina in
August 2005. Katrina wrecked oil
platforms and pipelines in the Gulf of Mexico and shut down refiners along the
coast. The cost of gasoline and other
petroleum products rose dramatically.
Political unrest in the following years drove prices even higher and
with the Great Recession of 2008 the price of oil reached a record level,
indeed, off this chart at $140 US per barrel of oil. This was our red flag.
Research suggested then, as it does increasingly today, that
the ideal setting for developing a more sustainable community is the community
– be it town or neighborhood. We began
to develop our first local plan in April 2008 that came out as Central
Pennsylvania Local Economy in December 2008.
At that point we begin to explore the Transition Towns model as found in
The Transition Handbook, published in
2008.
Making a Choice
Transition Towns was but one option for sustainable
community development. Our initiating
team, in public meetings, explored a number of potential models before choosing
the Transition approach. Many models required
money and upfront organization. They are
top-down models and less flexible and innovative. Consensus was that the Transition grassroots
approach was most promising.
Transition Centre was founded by Bill Sharp and Bob Flatley in
early 2009 and incorporated as a Pennsylvania nonprofit (not a 501 c 3). Transition Centre was formed as an unofficial
Transition Hub with the mission of promoting the model in the region. Two local Transition Towns were formally
established. Transition Centre presented
the model and supported groups and initiatives in Pennsylvania. We partnered with Pennsylvania Interfaith
Power and Light (Bill Sharp a founding board member of PAIPL). We also had a board-level partnership with
the Mid-Atlantic Transition Hub working with groups and initiatives in
neighboring states (Bill Sharp a founding board member of MATH). Our model included Borsodi’s key principles
and we worked over the years to develop and elaborate his system.
Quality of Life
Transition Centre defines sustainability in terms of
community quality of life. When it was formed, TC made two key decisions. The first was to focus on the economy. In the diagram above, we established that the
weak link in the sustainability formula was that between economy and environment. Environmental issues are an effect of economic
development. We asked if our sustainable
future could actually be secured through economic redevelopment (REconomy)? We need new models for an economy based on
natural principles. We defined a community
as an ecosystem (below).
The Transition Towns model addressed the issue
of oil depletion and the rising cost of energy.
Our research disclosed a much broader problem of natural resource
depletion. We found a survey of major
corporations that listed resources they consider “at risk.” These are not necessarily environmental
issues for them but rather a matter of supply chain – the resources they need
to continue to put products on store shelves at a reasonable price. Water is at the top of the list, followed by
energy, other mineral resources and agricultural products (land plus water plus
energy). What multi-national
corporations consider risk may tell us something about their potential impact
on our local communities. We need backup
plans for our communities.
End Game: Creating a Community Action Plan
The second decision was to follow The Transition Handbook twelve-part process to develop a comprehensive
community action plan. We followed the
program adapting it to local conditions.
We formed a core group, held public meetings and events and widening our
engagement with the community. We found
that while there were a lot of sustainability groups and organizations, they
didn’t really know each other. We
focused on connecting them. We published
a newsletter and developed a website and a blog site.
Developing our comprehensive plan involved some 200 people
over the course of two years. We are a
major university town: there were many
probing questions about what such a plan should do and how it would be
organized. A lot of research was done along
this line and the results incorporated in the Centre Sustainability Master
Plan, a link to which can be found on the Transition Centre home page. That plan is scheduled for a five-year update
in 2019.
We are one of only a small handful of Transition affiliates
to complete this plan. For many,
comprehensive planning is about as attractive as a root canal. We are all, however, natural planners. We start planning things the minute we awaken
in the morning. Formal plans are not
popular or easy for grassroots groups, but they are done. The lack of the effort imperils the future of
any form of organization. Let’s ask why
do we need a plan, what good does it do for us?
Here are some of the advantages:
• Collect
and Organize Facts
• We’ve
got a lot of facts: What’s the Problem? How can we solve it?
• Create
a vision
• Define
a mission
• Achieve
consensus
• Establish
standards and guidelines
• Organize
Stakeholders
• Inform
the public about what you are doing
• Set
goals and objectives
• Decide
how to achieve them
• Manage
and monitor the process
The real question is commitment. Changing the destiny of your community is a
complex, demanding job. There must be a
compelling vision. This is especially so
for a grassroots initiative. But the
process is no different than forming a business or nonprofit organization.
At the time we were working on our plan a great deal of
research was coming out about sustainability planning – what works and what
doesn’t. Some of our findings included:
• Only
one in six are “comprehensive”
• Most
are municipal based
• Few
have staffing or line-item budgets
• Half
are climate action/greenhouse gas reduction
• Many
are single issues – often one time efforts
• Many
are “policy” statements – shoulds and oughts.
• They
require public funding
• They
are compromises
• They
are pursed within a set of established rules
The most evident conclusion of research is that there is a
considerable disconnect between vision, plan and effective action. The vision must be real and achievable. The reason most organizations and projects
fail is for the lack of a good plan. The
widest gap is between the plan and effective action.
A plan is more than a lot of facts, goals and objectives,
and organizational details. Plans must
be understood to be contingent:
everything changes as you put them into affect. They include strategies, guiding principles, and
clearly stated values. Plan is a
verb. Planning is, indeed, something
inherent in the nature of being human.
But like any art, we need to practice it, develop our capacity, and
nurture our confidence.
Shrinking Cities
We also explored two groups of communities. The first is a list of some three-dozen
recognized as leaders in sustainability.
What is it that makes them so recognized? It became clear that the difference was the
emergence of a sustainability culture.
That is something that takes time.
Most of these communities started in the 1970s. Many had a major issue that mobilized the
community to action. Bit by bit things
were done to change the tone of the community.
In time, people no longer had a sense of starting the effort but of
joining it. These communities have a
solid business and government foundation that supports a green lifestyle. Most have one or more local organization that
champion the vision and provide resources to achieve the goals and objectives
of the plan.
At the other end of the spectrum are communities that are
variously labeled as forgotten, distress, shrinking, or as one national publication
suggested, miserable cities. They also
represent a cultural type and it is not a pretty picture. A close collaborator and community leader in
Pennsylvania’s fastest shrinking city found a 2007 Harvard study that listed a
large number of “forgotten,” economically decaying, post-industrial communities,
most in Pennsylvania and New York. These
rustbelt communities are the consequences of global economic change. With the Great Recession, more cities joined
the list of distressed communities. Most
mid-sized communities and many larger cities are on these lists. They are examples of the dynamics of uncontrollable
change – change that continues to affect all of us.
My sensitivity to this issue is largely due to my hometown having
the distinction of being the fastest shrinking city in the US. When I graduated from high school it was a
vibrant community with a solid agricultural and manufacturing base. After completing military service and
university, the “Land of Opportunity” had become a fading dream. Like most of us who went to college, I
“abandoned ship.” As I became involved
in community and economic development this image has haunted me. One of the attractions of Transition Town is
that it proposes remediation of social and economic distress.
Our group explored working with distressed communities. They are promising but admittedly difficult
prospects. Most continue to pursue
standard models such as trying to attract new businesses and industries. They need outside resources. The great majority of them continue to
decline. The updated Transition Centre
Resilient Communities is an alternative model that builds on the resources –
people and natural resources – found in those communities. This can be started through grassroots
organization.
Centre Sustainability Master Plan
The Transition Centre comprehensive community plan was
completed in September 2014. It took a
unique form based on the extensive research that went into it and the
partnership of strong community organizations, including Penn State. We constructed it not as a final plan but as
a template. It has three components:
- Assessment: We started with estimates of what was actually being consumed by the community. This is necessary to understand what could be produced locally. We assessed local potential to produce raw materials, goods and services – an off-the-grid economy. The vision is an increasing level independence and self-determination.
- Basic Needs: We developed a list, from research, of the basic needs of a self-sufficient community. We identified 22 and used them for the body of the plan.
- Implementation: The most difficult step is moving from idea to reality. We approached this through out Vision 10 – 10.
Vision 10 – 10
One innovation of the plan was Vision 10 – 10, or how to
achieve a goal of ten percent in any category in ten years. This breaks the problem into manageable
chunks. It implies developing the
capacity, the infrastructure, the resources and organization needed to meet
each need locally. Once done the
foundation is in place to go beyond ten percent. Some of the initial objectives can be
achieved in less than ten years.
Our demonstration of the concept is Ten Percent Local
Food. We conducted an assessment of quantifies
of agriculture products consumed in this country. We assessed the agricultural capacity of the
region. We estimate we could grow 95% of
our needs. The potential economic impact
of ten percent local food is $80,000,000 in revenue per year and this money
would stay in the local economy. There
is significant movement in this direction now in our region. If we achieve it, we will be on the leading
edge of the idea resilient communities.
There was also a project related to local renewable energy –
community solar projects. Recently a 2.5
megawatt array was installed by a local utility, another of similar size
planned by the university, solar ordinances being adopted by municipalities,
and a growing list of community and private projects. Now that solar and wind is competitive with
fossil fuels, we expect accelerating progress.
We are also working within our watershed to develop a
comprehensive plan for management of all water resources – an integrated plan
to maintain both quality and quantity for the foreseeable future. This plan is intended to provide a
comprehensive vision of the development of our community to the year 2050.
There is significant progress in many of the 22 identified
areas.
Five Questions
To bring focus to the plan we asked a series of tough questions:
1. Do
we want to develop a resilient community?
2. Do
we want to be an exemplary model?
3. Is
a local action plan an option or a mandate?
4. Who
will form the Team?
5. How
will we organize the effort?
• Plan
• Implementation
• Finance
Community as Ecosystem
Transition Centre adopted the idea that a community is an
ecosystem just as a lake or forest is an ecosystem. It is a complex, interdependent, essentially
spontaneous organization that involves an exchange of matter, energy and information. We developed a model[1]
for understanding our community ecosystem.
I should point out that Transition Towns drew on the principles of permaculture,
which is a holistic approach to agriculture with implications for society. It is a design strategy. We considerably extended this idea.
As we begin our program, we observed that local entities
were largely unaware of each other. Some
were siloed of course, others simply uninformed of each other. Working in collaboration with a close partner
organization, we developed and then extended an inventory of significant local
organizations, projects, businesses, and groups in our community. The list is over 600 and can be found linked
to our website. A design has been
proposed for an interactive online application to help make connections.
Sustainable Culture
What do you do when you have finished a comprehensive
sustainability plan? What is the 13th
step? As mentioned, from our study of
leading sustainable communities, we saw the emergence of a culture of
sustainability. Given the nature of our
community we believe that such a culture is developing, indeed
accelerating. A funded organization
could accelerate the process but given time it will emerge spontaneously. Which begs the question of how much time we
have? We will return to this below. We are also reassessing our master plan.
Myths and Untested Assumptions
As we did our research, it became apparent that there were a
number of ideals and beliefs about sustainability that need further
examination. We identified these as
potential barriers to achieving a sustainable future. We came up with the idea of the myth of
sustainability.
A myth can be a good thing.
It can also contain untested assumptions. The ideal of restraining consumption for the
benefit of future generations has not stood the test of time. The ideal of controlling climate change is
not getting positive reviews. In our
research we saw a lot of approaches to sustainability and gave thought to both
what works and what seems not to. What
works requires discipline effort.
Research suggests that the number of people
living a green lifestyle in the US is on the order of one in eight – a thin
green wedge. About twice as many are
climate deniers. About half the
population is in between. It is a
difficult political problem. We need an
alternative.
The sustainability movement has been said to be the largest
in the history of the world. There are
millions of people participating with hundreds of thousands of organizations
and groups doing an incredible array of work from advocacy and protest to
education and recreation to eco-entrepreneurship to large public and private
capital projects. It remains a giant,
unassembled, jigsaw puzzle.
There are a variety of approaches to “saving the Earth.” They include:
• Casual
Participant such as educational and recreational opportunities
• Community
Projects, including such as community gardens
• Outdoor
sports
• Protest
and Advocacy
• Lifestyle
Engagement
• Transition/Sustainable
Towns
• Resilient
Community
We need to make effective choices.
Many believe that we should reform the government. I think this begs the question of the
function of government. Yes there is burdensome
red tape and political corruption. But
we need to understand that at root, environmental legislation is not about the
environment per se. Government is rather
about human health, safety and welfare. Governments
focus on what and how, not why.
Governments typically have a very poor understanding of
environmental problems related to population and development. Science (research related to issues) and
politics seem to be distinct domains. Most
governmental entities are pro-growth – they need the taxes and fees to maintain
public services. Regulations are imposed
for people, not the environment. Such
regulation tends to be “one-size fits all.” And, calling the regulatory system
extremely complex is an understatement. Again,
we need an alternative approach.
Local governments are restrained from innovation by lack of
money and staffing. The cost of basic
governmental services is steadily rising and revenues declining. The tax burden is shifting to local
communities. TC Resilient Communities is
designed to pay for itself.
I think it is little known that local governments are served
by a variety of authorities, boards and commissions. These are staffed by volunteers, generally unpaid,
who are appointed by local governments.
There is thus already an infrastructure of citizens dedicated to and
knowledgeable about the affairs of the community. This is an important bridge between
grassroots organizations and local governments.
The Paris Climate Agreement set a goal to avoid a level of
temperature change that could set off runaway climate change. Little real planning has been
accomplished. Recent reports from
scientists suggest we are beyond the tipping point. Admittedly there are incredible political and
economic challenges to such a plan. It
requires a level of understand that is beyond human ken, trillions of dollars (USD
equivalent), and massive organization rarely found except during war. Our alternative is to localize the effort by
redesigning our economies at that level.
The core problem is continued population growth. Like the climate change graph, population represents
a “hockey-stick” curve. It is geometric
and it is a runaway trend. Since 1987
two and one-half billion people have been added to the Earth’s population. At the current rate, estimates are
approaching 10 billion people by 2050.
Many are in developing countries.
Rising global population and developing countries are increasingly
stressing the Earth’s resources, particularly land and water. This should give us pause for thought. The problem has been known for decades
without resolution. We need a framework
for dealing with the effects of this trend.
Again, that is putting our local house into order.
Resilient Communities
Following completion of our comprehensive
plan, Transition Centre continued to develop its model, explore assumptions,
and address problems that arose. Our
focus shifted from sustainabiity to resiliency. Resiliency represents a quantum leap up from
sustainability. Sustainability is about
management and conservation. Resiliency
is about creating the capacity to adapt to serious change as it occurs. It is in a sense a community self-insurance
policy but it is more. It is about
achieving greater self-determination.
That requires foresight and hard work.
It requires a “pioneering” spirit.
Why should we think about making such an effort? To start, because we are in a high-risk
economic, environmental and political global situation. We’ve already seen what can happen with
post-industrial communities as a result of globalization of economics. In part it is because hurricanes, tornados,
heavy winter storms, hundred year floods, fires and droughts have become frequent
stories. The business cycle, from boom
to bust, is virtually a law of nature and a recession is due.
People question the idea of sustainability in no small part
because they see it so difficult to achieve.
But if we don’t achieve the stability it implies, then what? It’s not
something we call in outside experts to achieve. It needs to be something that can be achieved
at the community, level. It needs to be
driven by the people living in these communities. It will take a lot of resilient communities
around the world to turn the tide.
Cove Institute
In the Fall of 2017 Transition Centre introduced “The Road
to a Sustainable Future.” We were accessing
the progress of the vision of our comprehensive plan. We were also seeing that a number of old
allies were struggling to stay afloat and that many new initiatives are
struggling to get off the ground. In
essence, we did a reboot. We asked two tough
questions:
1.
Do we know what actually must be done to achieve
a sustainable future?
2.
Do we have the capacity to achieve it?
We might have asked a third:
If not, then what?
In addition to community, economy and environment,
Transition Centre is keenly interested in leadership. In the Fall of 2018 we resumed the Cove
Institute program that had been on the back burner since we started Transition Centre. The project was informally organized in 2002,
named for a place at a beautiful cove on the Pacific coast where several
meetings had been held leading to this project.
It addressed the question of human transformative capacity, leadership
and community development. Five great
mentors, representing some 200 years of personal experience, nurtured this
project.
The mission of the Cove Institute (CI), and a page can be
found on the Transition Centre website, addresses personal capacity expressed
as follows:
·
How do you prepare individuals, organizations
and communities to achieve self-determination?
·
How do you achieve adaptive resilience in the
face of massive change?
·
How do you undertake purposeful transformative
change?
Self-Reliance: Achieving Personal Resiliency and
Independence (William Sharp, Amazon Kindle book) includes a number of key
ideas developed over the years to address these questions. While the books incudes exercises and a
chapter on personal development, it is not a self-help book. It’s about increasing personal capacity to lead. The book includes key principles and
practices leading to effective action.
It should be noted there is a leadership style
for each stage of the evolution of human society from ancient to agricultural
to industrial to digital. We have made
limited progress in developing that leadership model appropriate for this dynamic
century. What are the qualities, the
knowledge and skills, that state of mind, of a person capable of dealing with
the incredible complexity of modern life and the inevitable challenges to come?
In this short book we explore the nature of being human. We are nature – a product of billions of years
of evolution. What did Nature achieve
with us? We have, in fact, awesome
potential if we can learn to realize it.
The book explores general systems (holistic) perception. It is about understand the big picture. It has three sets of tools related to
achieving clarity and certainty, for accurately defining problems and for
organizing effective resolution. Self-Reliance also includes the first phase
of a series called the Well-Formed PersonalityTM. It is about working for a more integral sense
of self. This is the foundation of
community. The objective is summarized
as:
Transition Centre Vision and Mission
Transition Centre is apolitical and non-sectarian. It doesn’t care what you believe as long as
dialog is respectful. It takes no part
in divisive debate. All communities have
common needs.
Our website has pages for three strategies:
• Localization: Building a more human-scaled community
• REconomy
(Regenerative, Restorative, Resilient) + Economy
• Leadership
(which also includes a page for the CI project)
The Mission and Vision of Transition Centre were stated at the
beginning of this article. Our tagline
is “Prosperity and Quality of Life.” Here
is and outline of our services:
The Objectives of Transition Centre:
- Transition Centre promotes
the best practice model of an effective grassroots program for rebuilding
local community economic sustainability and a growing level of
self-reliance.
- Integral ecosystem architecture
of the self-sufficient community and local economy.
- A comprehensive learning
institute to prepare youth and adults for the challenges of a society
in a state of increasing disequilibrium.
- Innovative leadership
capable of guiding the transformation of communities, from villages to
urban neighborhoods, to achieve sustainability.
- Provides materials and resources to assist communities to achieve
sustainability.
What
we do:
·
Transition Centre provides consultation, coaching, planning
and workshops about building your community’s sustainable future. We
offer:
- Transitional Awareness: Building awareness of why your community
needs to create a resilient, sustainable economy to secure its future.
- Sustainability Master Design: A workable and doable framework
for organizing all sectors of your community to secure a high quality
future.
- Community Ecosystem Mapping: Identifying, connecting and
mobilizing the resources of your community into a self-defining,
self-sustaining network of collaborative action.
- Sustainable Economy: Leadership, enterprise and economic redevelopment to reinvigorate your local economy, that adapts to the rapid and erratic changes of the global economic system and that will secure a stable and viable future for your community.
Transition Centre is a service organization. We have the capacity to assess the needs and capabilities
of communities and neighborhoods. Our
objective is to inspire and support local initiative. We serve as a catalyst. Go to www.transitioncentre.org.
Kaizen
As a final note, there are a lot of ideas from Eastern thought
that enlighten our understanding of the Earth, the biosphere, and the nature of
human nature. Kaizen is a Japanese terms
that means taking small steps. The
journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Vision 10 – 10 was inspired by this
concept. Taking the first, small step,
and you take the next and the next and the next.
We need, however, to understand the context of our
action. As noted, many sustainability
efforts are single issues. A community
may have a lot of groups and organizations with a mission. All are important. But how are they connected? What end to they collectively achieve? What we must understand is that each of these
is a part of a complex ecosystem. They
are all interdependent. Unless and until
we understand how each action fits into the broader framework, until we
understand the nature of that broader framework, both locally and globally, we
are not working in a deliberate and purposeful manner to solve the problems we
think are important.
Our frame of action is the local community. That works because a community is essentially
a bounded system, albeit a part of other, larger, systems. Moving our perspective to this next level is
a “small” step. Putting that first step
on the Moon was an unparalleled achievement of human vision, will and
determination to express who and what we are as a species. Taking our community to that level of
achievement, to make it resilient – safe, secure and stable – is just going to
take a lot work.
Bill Sharp
Founder/Director Transition Centre/Cove Institute
[1]
This document is based on a presentation made in Titusville, Pennsylvania on
October 8th, 2018. I was
invited to speak about Transition Towns as founder and director of Transition
Centre located at State College, Pennsylvania (www.transitoncentre.org).
