Act: Inspiration

Transition Network – our New Purpose!

August 2, 2018

We’re pleased to report that the Transition Network team has agreed a new organisational purpose as part of our recent strategic review.  Our reflections about what our organisation is here to do and how it relates to the wider Transition movement were informed and stimulated by feedback from Transitioners around the world.  Thanks again to everyone who responded to our 2017 survey and to the people from Transition hubs who took part in online conversations.  We really appreciate the clearer – and yet very diverse – view you gave us of activities, passion, learnings and needs around the Transition movement.

We summarised the survey findings here and also provided more information about our team discussions.

We will use our new organisational purpose to guide our choices as an organisation; it will help us focus our attention and resources wisely, decide what projects to develop and when and how to act.  The Transition Network team will meet each year to review how we’re doing in delivering on our purpose and to reflect on whether and how it needs to evolve.

We hope you like what we’ve come up with and welcome further comments and questions.  See what you think…

Transition Network’s Organisational Purpose

Transition Network supports the Transition movement, amplifies stories of community-led change, and nurtures collaborations across difference to challenge us all to reimagine and rebuild the world.

Transition Network works in service to the international movement of self-organising Transition groups and Hubs, and others who are creating community-led change for a sustainable and just future founded on wellbeing.  From our place within the movement, we encourage Transition to spread and evolve. We facilitate the sharing of inspiration and learning, identify common needs and exciting possibilities, and curate and develop tools, training and resources.  We cultivate peer-to-peer support and build capacity across the movement.

We are learning to embody and integrate the inner dimension of Transition in all that we do, and commit to the love, beauty, passion, playfulness and courage so needed in these times. We are nurturing healthy collaborative group cultures rooted in caring for, and connecting with, ourselves, each other and the natural world.

We aim to make Transition more visible, creating opportunities for diverse Transition stories to be shared, to show that a shift to a more equitable and healthy culture is possible.  We seek to understand the impact and potential of Transition. We amplify these stories to engage those who are new to Transition, empower those already involved, encourage more participative and holistic decision-making to support community-led change, and attract resources into the movement.

We look for ways to collaborate across and beyond the Transition movement, and to support others to connect and collaborate.  We support and co-design emerging approaches that reimagine and rebuild a compassionate culture within resource limits, beyond the norms of the industrial growth system.  We experiment with and cross-fertilise ideas to help Transition become more diverse and to respond to changing contexts. We recognise that power and privilege shape our behaviour, as much as they shape the behaviour of the wider world. We actively commit to addressing this, and particularly to welcoming, listening, and responding to marginalised voices within and beyond the movement.  In the way that we work, as much as in what we do, we aim to bring people together, to help us to connect with our longing for a better future and our sense of interdependence. We speak from the heart to highlight alternatives to unsustainable systems and challenge assumptions.

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Transition Network is a support organisation to the international Transition Hubs Group and is exploring with that network how to develop new models of leadership, share power and resources, and collaborate across distance. In England and Wales, we are working with Transitioners to develop grassroots-led Hubs with the capacity to catalyse and support Transition in this territory and connect to the wider international network.

Sarah McAdam

Delivery Director for Transition Network. I play a coordinating role for Transition Network, keeping an eye on the overall health of our organisation and our relationships with others across and beyond the Transition movement.  I support and coach the team individually and collectively as we develop governance arrangements, strategies, external partnerships, internal processes and ways of working that we believe are increasingly effective, responsive, focused and resilient.

Tags: building community resilience, Transition movement, Transition Network