Swennerfelt Visits International Transition Projects
Submitted by Louis Cox,
August 25, 2011, page 12.....

Following her retirement as General Secretary of Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) in early 2011, Ruah Swennerfelt visited a number of the growing Transition initiatives around the globe. She returned home July 15, after more than three months of living out of a backpack.
Ruah and I (her husband) have been active in the Transition Charlotte movement since its formation in 2009.
So far she has visited Transition organizers and projects in the U.S., Italy, Spain, France, Ireland, England, Scotland, Belgium, Netherlands and Sweden. She also visited a “green” kibbutz in Israel and a permaculture project in the Palestinian Territories. She has been reporting extensively on her adventures through her blog at transitionvision.wordpress.com.
The Transition Town movement started in 2005, shortly after permaculture activist Rob Hopkins helped the city of Kinsale, Ireland, develop an “energy-descent plan” to cushion it from the shock of the imminent, irreversible peak of world petroleum production and the resulting economic contraction. Hopkins’ Transition Handbook has sparked the formation of hundreds of Transition initiatives all over the world.
We first heard about Transition Towns at the 2008 QEW Annual Meeting. Returning to Vermont, we persuaded fellow activists in the Charlotte Sustainable Living Network that it was time to ally that group with the new but expanding Transition Vermont initiative and the umbrella Transition US organization.
Transition’s key words are “localization,” “re-skilling” and “resilience.” We believe that rapidly converging crises of economy, energy and environment are pushing toward global collapse. The question now is whether a renaissance of Transition communities, based on resilient, localized economies and a revived spirit of community, can survive to become the nucleus of a new society.
The initial phase of the Transition is mostly about community-building events, re-skilling workshops and ecology education programs. In the past year, Transition Charlotte has raised awareness of ways to conserve home energy and conducted workshops on topics such as canning, animal husbandry, composting and tool sharpening. There are plans to show The End of Suburbia and other videos. The next phase will be a “Great Unleashing” in which the whole community comes together to embrace its own Transition vision. The core group then will be replaced by various teams commissioned to work on transportation, energy, food production and other specific issues.
After meeting with dozens of Transition leaders in many countries, Ruah concludes, “The movement is about helping people work where they live, and helping them to feel connected to others who are doing the same thing. It is succeeding because it makes people feel more positive, wherever they live. Otherwise most people would be overwhelmed.”
“It has been interesting to see how different cultures have adapted the Transition concept to fit their needs,” Ruah says. “Yet there are many common threads. Unlike ‘us-versus-them’ politics, the Transition is about bringing everyone to the table. And there is a contagious joy of coming to know their neighbors and fellow village/city dwellers that tends to keep them at the table.”
In interviews with Transition leaders, Ruah has routinely asked three questions:
What draws you to the Transition work?
What is your vision for Transition where you live?
Is a world Transition vision emerging?
Very often people described their Transition work as fun, joyful, even playful. Some looked ahead to a world in which trade is fair and reasonable. People could still enjoy goods from other regions, but economies would be geared to local needs.
“Some answered that they didn’t want to hold out an inflexible personal vision, because they feared it could interfere with a vision emerging from the community. Others felt it is important to keep the focus on the local, letting the global vision evolve on its own.”
Ruah was surprised that many people talked less about concrete steps and more about building a strong community. “They want to see more people out on street corners talking to their neighbors. Many were open to learning from small, strong communities that are already established in developed countries. In all, I have been very taken with the enthusiasm, intelligence, sensitivity, knowledge, and good spirit of people I have met.”
One of the most touching encounters from Ruah’s trip was with an Arab farmer who was restricted to rain-fed farming in Israel. “Although he was an Israeli citizen, he was not allowed by the government to collect rain water. It was also amazing to find a vibrant movement in Bologna, Italy, that had been inspired by Transition Los Angeles. Most Transition initiatives have been based in small towns.”
While visiting Tramore, Ireland, Ruah was moved by the story of a young man who understood the value of community in hard times. When he was a boy, the community sustained his family while his factory-worker father was part of a two-year labor strike.
It was serendipitous for Ruah that her travel schedule allowed her to attend a major gathering of Transition organizers in France. As an indication of how fast the movement is growing, last fall there were about a dozen Transition initiatives in France. As of June 2011 there were more than 50.
Worldwide there are 375 official Transition initiatives in 34 countries, with another 420 community groups discussing the option affiliating.
Later this year Ruah plans to visit Transition projects in the U.S. and Canada. For more far-flung locations, such as Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Brazil, Thailand, Bangladesh, Chile, she will set up Skype or telephone conference calls.

To learn more about the Transition movement, go to transitionus.org.

Note: This is a modified version of an article about Ruah's trip
that appeared in QEW's BeFriending Creation newsletter.