Ready Together - Campaign Update Greetings, Transition Family! We recently launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the national roll-out of Ready Together, a fun and simple project bringing neighbors together in communities all across the country to take practical action steps toward emergency preparedness.  Transition US is building a vital bridge between the related worlds of community resilience and emergency preparedness -- and we are now more than halfway to meeting our $6,000 goal! Today, we are inviting you to join in this grassroots funding campaign to help us develop the new Ready Together Handbook and spread this project far and wide! Will you make a contribution to this vital effort today? In 2015, I was displaced from my home by one of the record wildfires in California. It was around the time I started working at Transition US. I had been a long-time grassroots resilience organizer, co-founding Transition Lake County in my rural community in 2010. And when disaster struck, I saw my friends and neighbors (especially those I had met through Transition activities) step up as leaders and kick into action.
It was inspirational. Our efforts earned international media attention and supported community members through a very difficult time. And the whole incendiary episode ignited within me a deepening recognition that the work we do in Transition (building community, increasing local food security, strengthening our local economies, creating local alternative energy infrastructure, protecting our watersheds, educating, inspiring, re-skilling, asset-mapping) is emergency preparedness work, whether we know it or not. As I integrated my fire experience, I wrote this blog post about it.
Since that conflagration, there have been many other disasters, including another record-breaking blaze in 2017 in my current home of Sonoma County. There have been floods, droughts, hurricanes, tropical storms, winter storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, all manner of calamity - each begging the question: how ready are we?
Inspired by these climate-related disasters, I've become a certified first responder through my local CERT (Community Emergency Response Team), I've joined with other Transition-oriented responders to begin offering workshops on the topic of Community Resilience as Emergency Preparedness, and now I am pleased to witness the unfolding of Transition US's newest project, Ready Together.
This campaign includes a new series of webinars and workshops that will be offered all over the country, podcasts and peer learning cohorts, and a self-guided Neighborhood Emergency Preparedness Handbook that will be supplemented by Outreach and Facilitation Guides that you can use to rally your neighbors to explore low- and no-cost actions, collect essential supplies, and develop an emergency response plan that will make you and your loved ones ready for anything.
Your support (and your active participation!) will not only strengthen our collective effort to promote emergency preparedness and build stronger communities: it will feel good! Imagine yourself, your family and your neighbors feeling more prepared, more resilient, more connected, less stressed-out... Take a step today toward making your neighborhood a beacon of resilience. Join Ready Together today!
Also -- this is very important -- please take a moment to share this in your network. Forward this email widely in your local Transition group, share this on Facebook, and spread the word on other social media. Let your friends know you’re raising funds to bring this emergency preparedness curriculum to your neighborhood! |
