Training for Transition

Building Resilient Communities for a Post-Carbon World

Febuary 17-19, 2012

Santa Rosa, California, A

Local Agriculture * Local Economies  Neighborhood Revival

Social Justice * Green Jobs * Collaborative Visioning

Background & Purpose

As we face the challenges of peak oil, climate change, and economic contraction, the Transition movement (Transition initiatives) is a positive approach that focuses on local solutions and building community resilience. Training for Transition is the popular, in-depth experiential workshop created by the global Transition Network. The course describes how to set up, run, and maintain a successful Transition initiative. It is packed with imaginative and inspiring ways to engage your community, and delves into both the theory and practice of Transition that has worked so well in hundreds of communities around the world. It meets the training criteria recommended for local initiating groups to become an internationally recognized Transition initiative.

Why Transition?

We are living in an age of unprecedented change, with a number of crises converging. Climate change, global economic instability, overpopulation, erosion of community, declining biodiversity, and resource wars, have all stemmed from the availability of cheap, non-renewable fossil fuels. Global oil, gas and coal production is predicted to irreversibly decline in the next 10 to 20 years, and severe climate changes are already taking effect around the world. The coming shocks are likely to be catastrophic.

Course Curriculum

The course describes how to catalyze, build and facilitate a successful Transition initiative. It is packed with imaginative and inspiring ways to engage your community, and delves into both the theory and practice of Transition that has worked so well in hundreds of communities around the world. 

This training will be a mix of presentation and visual media, participatory discussions, small group work, and practical planning that you can take home and use. Participants are invited to share their experience and learn from others in the course.

Through This Course ParticipantsWill:

• Discuss the context for Transition Initiatives -- the current global situation that includes climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, and economic contraction;
• Understand and be able to use the Transition model – including the ingredients of Transition, the seven principles, and the larger Transition process that engages many community members in addressing the critical issues affecting our communities to build local resilience;
• Learn how to inspire positive action, facilitate collaboration, set up a successful initiating group, reach diverse sectors of your community, and unleash an exciting and inspired expansion of transformational work in your community;
• Facilitate a visioning process;
• Know how to organize effective Transition meetings and gatherings;
• Learn tools for supporting both the outer work of transforming your community’s dependence on oil, coal and other fossil fuels, and the inner and interpersonal work that is essential to resilience and collaboration;
• Understand the purpose and components of an Energy Descent Action Plan;
• Be able to give an effective and inspiring description of the Transition movement;
• Network with other people interested in Transition in your area;
• Develop initial action steps for yourself and your locality; and
• Connect to others in this rapidly growing, positive, global movement!