[All] Fw: Climate Parties

[Lanteigne]

Hi folks 
Now this is a really neat idea to foster debate and public awareness during the election. Forming an official Climate Party.  I've responded to help provide data re: economics and environment.  If folks are interested here is the email:  wilsonsophie77 at gmail.com
Lulu 😃

Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android 
 
   ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: "Caterina Lindman" <caterina.lindman at gmail.com> To:  Cc:  Sent: Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 6:13 AM Subject: Climate Parties  What happens when neighbours and friends get together and share conversation about any civic concern - in this case, the climate crisis?  Do people learn more about themselves and their neighbours?  Do 'climate parties' help people feel empowered to act together?  To help people experience these conversations, Divest Waterloo and the Grand River Unitarian Church are teaming up on a "Climate Party" initiative.  What follows is Sophie Wilson's  description of the initiative, and information on how you can get involved.  I plan to participate, as I think that having meaningful conversations about the climate crisis is one of the most important things we can do.    
 

At a climate party, a group of people who are loosely connected get together in someone’s home or backyard.  They talk deeply about how they want to live in the world.  There is food, and conversation.  The plan: We explore what we appreciate  about the earth as it is.  We share what we fear, with a focus on the current climate crisis and our future.  We imagine what the world could look like if things worked out for the best. We work backwards from there, to what we are called to do now.  There is good conversation, deep sharing, and of course food. 



We have noticed that these conversations work best when they take place among people who are connected in some fashion.  Neighbours, church members, or socially connected groups tend to speak more comfortably with each other.  As the conversation builds, we have seen people move along the engagement pathway, from contemplation, to planning, to action.  And we seen movement from small actions to larger, more committed actions.  Research shows this is one of the best ways to create behavioural change. 
We would like these conversations to happen before the federal election on October 21, but we do not see these as having any particular partisan angle.  We would hope they would play some small part in making sure that climate change is part of the election conversation.
This is a Kitchener-Waterloo initiative, but it turns out that another group in Toronto is creating a very similar set of events. They are ahead of us in planning.  To get a sense of what our events would look like, you can check out their website at www.climatefast.ca
Please email me back (at wilsonsophie77 at gmail.com) and let me know if you'd be interested in supporting us in any way. There are several ways of supporting us:•If you are interested in hosting or attending a climate party, please reply so we can arrange that.  •As well, if you're interested in training to be a facilitator or in helping us find more hosts, we would be delighted!  We hope to have training during the week of July 8-14. If you are interested in facilitating, click on this doodle poll link to let us know when you could make ithttps://doodle.com/poll/42ti6fcyyvq7nse2•Feel welcome to share this email with anyone who may be interested.
Thank you for reading this far, and for all you do,Sophie Wilson Grand River Unitarian Climate Action Group226-979-3977  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gren.ca/pipermail/all_gren.ca/attachments/20190626/f3103df9/attachment.html>