We will be hosting weekly study groups supporting the Transition Town Movement.  This initiative began 5 years ago in England by a man named Rob Hopkins.  Here is a link to the website for more information (http://transition.loc.dedi2835.your-server.de/).

Our study groups will be focusing on ‘The Transition Handbook’.  The gatherings will be held in numerous communities throughout San Diego County (currently Encinitas, South Park, Carlsbad and Vista).  Each group chooses a specific day of the week, time and location for the 7 week study group.  For details and locations see the Community Calendar(www.TreeKaya.org).

Seeds of TransitionDate: Weekly ( same day of the week for 7 weeks – for upcoming groups see Calendar @ www.TreeKaya.org)Time: (see Calendar ) Location: TBD (see Calendar )

Each week we will read 1-2 chapters of the book individually and then come together as a group to discuss the chapters for that week.  This weekly gathering is open to anyone in the community.  You do not necessarily have to be reading the book or in the study group to attend the gathering.  You can learn and share a lot just by being part of the discussion.   You may want to login to the initiative on the Transition website to be more involved in the Transition!  The website, framework and system they have set up is quite in-depth and interactive.

Link to Transition Initiative: (http://www.transitionnetwork.org/initiatives/san-diego-county-treekaya-seeds-transition) 

The 1st gathering will be an introduction to the group.  We can all get to know each other a bit, get familiar with the Transition Initiative and watch the introduction movie (about 45 minutes).  We will distribute a few of the community copies of the Handbook to those who do not have their own copy.  We will begin discussing the 1st chapter the following week.

Link the movie if anyone wants to watch it! (http://www.transitionnetwork.org/support/publications/transition-movie)

We recommend you order your books soon if you want to have your own copy for the study group.  It is an excellent resource to add to your personal library.

Link to Amazon:  (http://www.amazon.com/Transition-Handbook-Dependency-Resilience-Guides/dp/1900322188)We look forward to Transitioning with you!!! Learning … sharing  … and exploring together as a community!

~NamasteThe ‘Seeds of Transition’ Team

More about the booksAs people around the world experiment with the Transition Model and apply it to all sorts of different types of communities, we’re seeing the knowledge base expand significantly. And as Transition Initiatives get further into the work of transforming their communities, the specialist groups are learning more about relocalised responses in the fields of energy, local government, food, housing, business, economics and beyond.In order to distill the learnings from all these projects and experiments, we’re producing a number of books in partnership with Green Books:

The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience – by Rob Hopkins The Transition Timeline: for a local, resilient future – by Shaun Chamberlin Local Food: how to make it happen in your community – by Tamzin Pinkerton and Rob Hopkins Local Money: how to make it happen in your community – by Peter North Local Sustainable Homes: how to make them happen in your community – Chris Bird Communities, Councils and a Low Carbon Future: working together to make things happen – by Alexis Rowell

The first of these was the Transition Handbook, by Rob Hopkins.  Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, describes it well:“The Transition concept is one of the big ideas of our time. Peak oil and climate change can so often leave one feeling depressed and disempowered. What I love about the Transition approach is that it is inspirational, harnessing hope instead of guilt, and optimism instead of fear. The Transition Handbook will come to be seen as one of the seminal books which emerged at the end of the Oil Age and which offered a gentle helping hand in the transition to a more local, more human and ultimately more nourishing future.”

What exactly is a Transition Town?A Transition Initiative (which could be a town, village, university or island etc) is a community-led response to the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and increasingly, economic contraction. There are thousands of initiatives around the world starting their journey to answer this crucial question:“for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly rebuild resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil and economic contraction) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects ofClimate Change)?“

Here’s how it all appears to be evolving…

It all starts off when a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil, Climate Change, and increasingly, economic stagnation? They recognise several crucial points:

to a certain degree, we all experience a life disconnected from our living environment, disconnected from our communities and disconnected from our landbase that our energy-profligate ways of living have depleted our resource base to critical levels that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there’s no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope that we have to act now, rather than wait for the government or “someone else” if we collectively plan and act early enough there’s every likelihood that we can create a way of living that’s significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.

They begin by forming an initiating group and then adopt the Transition Model with the intention of engaging a significant proportion of the people in their community to kick off a Transition Initiative that is asking the BIG question :“for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?“