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Transition Town initiatives are part of a vibrant, international grassroots movement that brings people together to explore how we – as communities – can respond to the environmental, economic and social challenges arising from climate change, resource depletion and an economy based on continual growth.
We are not looking for anyone to blame or anyone to save us, but believe our communities have within themselves the innovation and ingenuity to create positive solutions to the converging crises of our time. We believe in igniting and supporting local responses at any level and from anyone – and aim to weave them together into a coordinated action plan for change towards a lower energy lifestyle.
By building local resilience, we will be able to collectively respond to whatever the future may bring in a calm, positive and creative way. And by remembering how to live within our local means, we can rediscover the spirit of community and a feeling of power, belonging and sharing in a world that is vibrant, just and truly sustainable.
The Greyton Transition Town process is overseen and led by a group of committed leaders from the community (The Board). Their role is to guide the process, and to ensure that others in the community, such as individuals, business leaders, municipal and political leaders, all have chance to support and contribute to the Transition building process.
People are then brought together in an extended process that helps them work through all stages of increasing Transition: assessment, visioning, action planning, goal setting, and follow-up. The Greyton Transition Group is there to provide multiple process tools and suggestions so that our communities can customise the process for their needs.
What pulls us together is our passion to create a mutually supportive, lower-energy, more sustainable future for our community in uncertain times.
People involved in Transition Initiatives around the world recognise that next few decades are unlikely to be anything like the past few. We anticipate that we will need to learn to live more simply, within a declining energy base as fossil fuel depletion will inevitably lead to higher prices and increasing scarcity of fossil-fuel energy.
In what is being called ‘The Great Reskilling’, we will need to remember and re-equip ourselves with the everyday skills our grandparents and even our parents practiced; knowledge of how to fix things, preserve food, care for our health through better nutrition and traditional herbal medicines, perhaps even entertain ourselves without fancy gadgets. It may become advantageous and fashionable to make our clothing, fix our bicycles and tools, and construct our own homes out of naturally occurring materials rather than the current energy-intensive materials and methods. Growing at least a portion of our own food, storing and preserving it, and some level of animal husbandry are likely to become increasingly valuable skills over the coming decades.
Most of all, communities including ours, will need to regain greater resiliency—the ability to withstand shocks and stresses—and greater self-reliance. The future will we believe, be increasingly local in its character as a combination of climate change, peak oil and economic shocks undermine globalisation and then the very stability of nations.
But while we adapt and meet the challenges of the 21st century, we may as well do so with happiness, congeniality, inclusion, celebration and enjoyment.
Contact any member of the board, speak to your immediate family and friends, pull together ideas and human resources and lets work together to shape our future for the better.
