ONE YEAR IN TRANSITION 2012-13
Invite to a Transition Initiative to host a young adult
1YT is a self-directed learning programme that starts in October and ends in July the following year. It is for young adults aged 20 years upwards who are strongly motivated to gain a wide range of skills that support them and their communities to flourish. The course prepares young people to navigate a future through the challenges of the end of cheap fossil fuel energy, the unpredictable impacts of climate change and the inevitability of economic contraction as we reach the limits of growth.
In experimenting with community supported learning we are reviving the apprenticeship and journeyman models within a framework of skills-based learning, community building, personal mentoring and learning champions. If you are an elder who can act as a learning champion, this is what you need to know:
2012-13 is the pilot year for the blueprint of 1YT. Once it has been trialled it will be shared as a model across the international Transition network. The young adults who participate will choose either to stay in their own communities or to experience living and working in a Transition community that they do not yet know. In either case one of their first challenges is to set up a three-month experience of helping to drive forward a project within a Transition or Transition-type initiative. This will last from October/November 2012 to January/February 2013. The rest of their training is through group meet-ups, placements with skills masters, and year-long personal mentoring.
Is there something you want to see initiated, run or rejuvenated in your community? Can you let a young person lead on a project? Maybe you have a dream that needs youthful energy to take it to places that currently seem impossible. Being trusted and given responsibility is a great thing for a young person: they need to be handed responsibility and power together. Plus be given the chance to fail and to learn. They could help set up a Community Supported Agriculture scheme or a food hub, map the local high street for resilience, initiate a schools programme, put together a directory of local goods and services, build a barn or a house, start a local brewery…. whatever your community needs.
They will need a place to stay and food and have been set the challenge of moneyless exchange as 1YT is experimenting with gift culture, a way of being that relies on each other more than money. So they will be offering things like informal child-care, gardening and dog walking as well as looking for part-time paid work. They will also need a learning champion within your community who can keep them on track.
These young adults are not interns, they are the innovative leaders of the future who have the passion and ability to make things happen. At the end of the year they will be stepping into a community project that they have devised and will run themselves; you may want to invite them back into your community to do that.
For detailed information contact:
Isabel Carlisle, Education Co-Ordinator, Transition Network isabelcarlisle@transitionnetwork.org
Tel: 01803 847 976 Mobile: 0777556648
Website: www.transitionnetwork.org Blog: www.transitionnetwork.org/blogs/isabel-carlisle
