Transition Towns Nambour news

Transition Towns Nambour - next meeting 21 July, CWA Hall

Posted by Jill from Beerwah
on 25/06/2010 at 02:26 PM
in Community -

"Creating local plans for resilience and sustainability in the face of ever rising oil prices and climate change"

This is a follow up to last nights meeting because I felt it was important to explain to those who could not attend what we learnt and achieved, and it also includes some useful information, date reminders and an offer from Permaculture Teacher Janet Millington...

• Janet Millington has a Permaculture Design Course starting next Tuesday 29th June for 2 weeks. She is offering Transition Nambour two free places at the course (normally costing $880 each) to help the group.

It is a pattern that Transition Towns with a number of people with a PDC are more effective and although we do have some members holding PDCs it would be good to have more and to honour a commitment to working in Transition Nambour with this opportunity.
Anyone interested or needing further information please contact James, numbers are at bottom of page.

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Transition Town Nambour meeting notes:

CWA Hall, Wed 23 June, 2010

1. The meeting yesterday evening proved to be interesting and amusing as we first enjoyed a networking cup of tea and then each person in the group (some 30 attended) had 15 seconds to introduce themselves and state their interest in joining a Transition meeting.
We then listened to an passionate explanation by Aniko Nemeth of the LETS alternative currency system. The Sunshine Coast Local Energy Transfer System has existed for 20 years and operates extremely well allowing participants to buy and sell (barter) goods or services in the district without the use of cash (and no tax!). It operates a credit and debit system like a bank account and each buyer / seller agrees the exchange value in "Rays" according to the energy expended in completing , making or growing of the good or service. Thank You Aniko.

2. Penny Hegarty gave a brief run through of her work with the Nambour Garden Club and indicated that things are moving in the right direction with support for a Nambour Community Garden. This is a subject close to Transitioners hearts and she will keep us informed of any news from the Council Task force. Her gardening club membership numbers and their wide ranging activities were impressive and their work is, and will be, a valuable local resource of knowledge and skills into the future. Thank you Penny.

3.Finally we arrived at the pro-active part of the Transition evening - Janet Millington explained the history and concept of an Energy Descent Action Plan (EDAP) being a written plan and list of resources to help a Transition town model, like Nambour, manage its descent from high to low fossil-fuel energy use and how to manage all the consequent repercussions taking into account climate change effects as well.
A written plan is useful in times of crisis and it can also be presented to local organisations to help them prevent problems occurring and to manage those problems well in advance.We are beginning a plan for Nambour by acquiring local knowledge and harnessing local genius to create a plan of actions for Nambour.

Transitioners each placed blue dots on our three most important "Domains of action" from a list of 17 and from these we chose the four most "dotted " to be the Domains for thinking about tonight.
We split into four groups - (i) Water, (ii) Food, (iii) Land Stewardship its use and the Environment, (iv) Economics and Employment - and brainstormed on each subject for 30 minutes auditing our thought process to explore the security of each Domain from the effects of Peak oil and Climate change, and how we can create resilience and sustainability as they start to take effect.
Each group came up with some great ideas, even revelations and some small but concrete actions that could be completed and brought back to the Domains at our next meeting. Thank you to Janet Millington and Chris Carroll and Lilian Richards.

the results will eventually be summarised and posted on our blogsite http://.transitionnambour.blogspot.com

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NEXT MEETING : CWA HALL , WEDNESDAY 21ST JULY A JOINT MEETING WITH SLOW FOOD SUNSHINE COAST AND SOME FURTHER EDAP WORK. BRING A FRIEND.

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TRANSITION TOWN NAMBOUR VISIT TO THE YANDINA COMMUNITY GARDEN - SATURDAY 17TH JULY

10am-12Noon SEEDSAVERS WORKSHOP BY ELIZABETH FEKONIA

FREE - BUT MUST BE BOOKED RING 5446 7373 OR EMAIL: info@yandinacommunitygardens.com.au

If you are not doing the workshop come at 12 noon for a social look around the gardens. Doug will light up the cob oven so bring your lunch to cook.

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lastly - for the diary: two further dates

at the CWA Hall, Short Street...

Wednesday 18th August