Currently, the Transition Venice Initiative:
~Operates under the 501(c)3 non-profit status of The Open Studio in Englewood, FL
~Maintains a strong connection to Transition Sarasota for support, guidance and materials related to Transition Movement.
~Maintains a web presence via Facebook social media and Meetup with events, current relevant information and links to other organizations
~Has an emai
l list of over 250 participants and distributes regular updates
~Does outreach in the larger community to educate and support our mission and collaborate with other organizations and businesses
~Sponsors workshops, community dialogues and information sharing on a variety of Transition themes. CONTRIBUTIONS to Transition Venice are deeply appreciated and currently would support the following…
~Outreach, informational brochures and event fliers, eventual website
~Educational training for Transition Initiative leadership, etc.
~Purchasing (Lending) Library Materials for the participants/partners of Transition Venice {DVDs, books, films}
~Materials and equipment to support projects such as re-skilling, gardening, Transition Movement education, etc. (Any community can become a Transition Initiative if a group of people in the community unites to share their skills, assets, knowledge, resources and ideas to create ways locally for solutions to becoming more sustainable and live in abundance in this time of peak oil, climate change, economic uncertainty.) Links to Visit:
www.transitionvenice.com
www.transitionus.org
www.transitionculture.org
http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/a-resilient-community/in-u.s.-transition-towns-the-big-challenge-is-bringing-people-together
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The Transition Model...
-Set up a steering committee made up of people with the same goals and values
-Raise awareness in the community of the problems and the solutions, so that the members will understand the importance of moving towards local resilience
-Lay the foundation by connecting with existing groups and people who want to help out or who are trying to achieve similar goals
-Hold a “great unleashing,” in which you provide the opportunity for people to do something. In this step, the motivation with which the movement will be pushed forward is “unleashed.”
-Form working groups who will devote their energy to a particular subject. Each group works towards making their town more resilient and they map out how to go about this.
-Bring people together to talk and make connections in “open space workshops,” which are loose meetings meant to generate conversation.
-Make real things start to happen from the ideas generated, such as planting trees or installing solar panels.
-Facilitate a re-skilling workshop, in which people become empowered by learning how to do things from each other in workshops.
-Connect with the local government in order to prevent an “us versus them” mentality from emerging, as well as to see if they will help with planning and/or funding.
-Perform oral histories with local elders to learn practices and anecdotes that would otherwise be lost.
-This is more of a guiding principle for the whole process – let the conversation flow and see what emerges rather than having formal structured meetings.
-Create an Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP) which is a process of its own.
-Establish basic information such as food miles, energy consumption, arable land, number of cars, etc
-Get the local community plan: government plan with timetables, other info and data
-Establish the overall vision of resilience
-Detailed visioning in working groups. Backcast in detail, what exactly needs to happen?
-Use creative media to get the word out
-Bring together overall plan by weaving working groups together
-Create a first draft of EDAP
-Finalize EDAP
-Celebrate!
