Building Lifeboats – Building Community: Navigating Uncharted Territory

We need to change the narrative now, embrace a new story truer to circumstance — a storyline in which we heroically face adversity together, creating abundance out of crisis together, moving with agility through chaos toward new community values that will sustain us in the unsettled years ahead.

Woodland Community Land Trust

The Woodland Community Land Trust was incorporated in 1979, making it one of the oldest Community Land Trusts (CLTs) established in the United States. Located in the Clearfork Valley of northeastern Tennessee, a low-income Appalachian community dominated by extractive industry and concentrated land holding, economic, and political power, Woodland recently marked its 40th year in operation.

It Brought Back Memories of When they Fled their Countries

Refugee Women of Bristol (RWoB) is a charity organisation that’s run by refugees, for refugees. The charity has been up and running since 2003 and I’ve been involved for more than 10 years. Connecting through food has always been at the heart of our work.

Appalachia’s Front Porch Network Is a Lifeline

Appalachia knows need, and knows that in times of increased struggle, need increases for all. While much of the country might fall back at this time, Appalachia has stepped up in ways both official and grassroots. “Pandemic or not,” Keller said, “we still have a job to do.”

Building Resilience in the Days of the Coronavirus: Lessons from the Great Depression

An overview of the narratives of these resilient women reveals a pattern of resourcefulness, persistence in the face of setbacks, courage to take a stand, and through all the challenges, pride in family and community. All of them continued to be active in community life, and all of them were proud of what their children had accomplished when the walls of segregation came tumbling down.

What the Transition Movement can Teach us About how to ‘Bounce Forward’

Central to the Transition movement from the outset has been the idea of resilience. Usually framed as the ability to ‘bounce back’, it is seen in the Transition movement as being better imagined as the capacity to ‘bounce forward’, i.e. to use it as the opportunity to move forward to something better.

The Border of Life: A Response to the Pandemic from the Amazon

Our philosophy is materialized and represented by the Sisa Ñampi, the Border of Life or Living Path of Flowers. This perimeter of flowering trees is being planted around our territory to represent the fragility of life, the ephemeral limit of existence between life and death.

Reflections on Lockdown in the Countryside: Life Goes on Almost as Normal, but my View of Home has Changed

With everything and everyone locked down, my comparisons between somewhere like Lincolnshire and somewhere bigger and brighter – like London – have reverted back to zero; right now, we’re all on a level-playing field, and Lincolnshire, quite frankly, is coming up trumps.

How a Communist Mayor is Defeating Privatisation in Chile

By strengthening local government ownership of public services and bringing them back under public control, these initiatives offer promising pathways out of neoliberalism.

One that stands out as a particularly strong example is the local government of Recoleta, a commune in the metropolitan region of Santiago, Chile.