Transition Thrive can be thought of as the sequel to Transition Launch Training. While Launch focuses on the first few steps of the Transition process – understanding the global context, forming an initiating group, raising awareness, and cultivating partnerships with like-minded organizations – Thrive builds upon this foundation to provide answers to how to broaden, deepen, and scale up the impacts of local community resilience-building initiatives over time.

Over the course of eight weekly sessions, you will form mutually-supportive relationships with other participants, develop new abilities and knowledge, receive guidance for overcoming the specific challenges you are facing, and create a robust action plan to take your work to the next level.

Prior participation in a Transition Launch Training is recommended, but not required. This course is open to social change activists from all over the world, but is currently only available in English.

Sessions at a Glance

1. Maps for the Transition Journey (October 3): Identify your initiative’s current strengths and weaknesses using the Transition Healthcheck and explore how The Five Stages of Transition can provide an achievable path to thriving.

2. Cultivating the Collective Genius (October 10): In this session, we will look closely at our individual wholeness and unique collaboration styles while exploring ways of cultivating these so that the collective genius in our groups is more likely to emerge.

3. Running Successful, Practical Projects (October 17): This session will share design ideas for projects that bring tangible benefits to your community, engage and energize volunteers, and support working groups to be effective and rewarding.

4. Reaching Beyond the Choir (October 24): Learn how to create a tipping point of support for your initiative and cultivate strategic partnerships by telling your best stories, harvesting metrics, and designing value propositions.

5. Building Momentum and Capacity (October 31): In this session, we will cover running larger campaigns, forming diverse coalitions, taking a multi-faceted approach to fundraising, and establishing a healthy formal organization.

6. System-Changing Strategies (November 7): This session will explore the mindsets, practices, and structures that support community-wide and whole systems strategies, such as creating localized food systems or transforming local economies.

7. In It for Life (November 14): Here, we will discuss some of the unique challenges we encounter as long-term change-makers, and will suggest tools, mindsets, inner postures, and practices that help us stay inspired and prevent burnout.

8. Bringing It All Back Home (November 21): In this final session, we will circle back to the Transition Healthcheck to harvest key insights from this course, address major challenges, and create an action plan for your group to thrive!

How Does It Work?

Thrive Online consists of a series of eight pre-recorded presentations that will be made available for you to watch before engaging in weekly 90-minute live videoconferences exploring each of these topics in greater depth. We will also provide you with access to a private discussion forum that you can use to share resources and continue conversations in between sessions.

Please don’t worry if you don’t consider yourself to be tech-savvy. The platforms we use are designed to be easy to navigate, and we will provide personalized technical assistance throughout the course to ensure that your experience is as enjoyable as humanly possible.

While this online format enables you to participate in an international learning cohort from the comfort of your own home – at a lower cost and with a smaller carbon footprint than traditional face-to-face offerings – if you’d prefer to host a Thrive Training in your local community, please click here to learn more about how to do that.

Facilitation Team

Don Hall has had the good fortune to participate in the Transition Movement in a variety of capacities for more than a decade. Initially serving for two years as the Education and Outreach Coordinator for Transition Colorado, he went on to found and direct Transition Sarasota (Florida) from 2010 to 2016. Don was named Co-Director of Transition US in 2017. He holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Leadership from Naropa University.

Michelle Colussi has worked in community and economic development for over 20 years with a focus on community resilience and organizational capacity-building and planning. She was a co-founder of Transition Victoria (BC) and their flagship programs: Building Resilient Neighbourhoods and Resilient Streets. She has delivered Launch Training since 2009 and chaired the University of Toronto’s Transition Emerging Research Advisory Group.

Rebecca Blanco completed a Master’s and a Doctorate and has been a psychotherapist for 40 years. Her interest in eco-psychology sparked her conviction that personal transformation within an ecological-social context is crucial for a regenerative world. She’s participated in a mentorship with Dr. Andy Fisher and The Work That Reconnects Training. Rebecca is a workshop facilitator at Forest Center.

Sally Ludwig is a co-founding member of Transition Guelph, with particular interests in inner dimensions of personal and community resilience, ecological and climate justice, effective collaboration, and social applications of Permaculture. She is a trainer for Transition and facilitator of the Work that Reconnects, educator, mentor and consultant. Secretly, she throws seed bombs and does guerilla planting of fruit trees and raspberry bushes.