Working groups are the heart of our work as Transition Santa Cruz. They are where the rubber meets the road for meeting two of our main objectives:
- Designing a Community Resilience Plan for the City of Santa Cruz
- Creating projects that further the goals of Transition and encourage community participation
Working groups accomplish these objectives in different ways. For example, our flagship working group, on Food, discovered early on that some members were primarily interested in advancing local policy agendas that support more resilience in our food supply. Other members were more interested in tangible projects such as installing food gardens and setting up food sharing networks in neighborhoods.
There is room for both these kinds of people in working groups, because we need both smart policy proposals and useful, visible, inspiring projects in order to move our community towards resilience.
To join or learn more about one of our current working groups, click on its name in the sidebar to the left.
Creating a new working group:
The main requirement for creating a working group is committed leadership. We are always looking for people who understand Transition well, have a burning interest in a particular aspect, and have good group facilitation skills, to take on creating new groups.
In some cases, there may be existing non-profits, groups or projects whose work is essentially equivalent to what a new working group on a particular topic would do. We want to link with these groups and "cross-pollinate" to create more activity. (No need to re-invent the wheel.) Please let us know if you think that becoming a TSC-affiliated working group makes sense for a group you are part of.
We encourage anyone to organize for Transition in any and every way possible. When you get to a point where you would like to be an "official" TSC working group, post to the website, announce events through our email newsletter, and so on, please check out our working group guidelines, and then contact us. We would love to talk with you.
Some working groups we would like to see form:
Energy • Healthcare • Local Economy • Awareness-raising Events • Re-skilling • Youth • Emergency Preparedness • Water and Wastewater