The Vision of Transition Centre

1.  Transition Centre promotes an integral model for an effective grassroots program for developing, or rebuilding, local community economic sustainability and a growing level of security.

2. An integral ecosystem architecture of the self-reliant community and local economy.

3.  A comprehensive learning institute program to prepare youth and adults for the challenges of a society in a state of increasing disequilibrium.

4.  Innovative leadership capable of guiding the transformation of communities, from villages to urban neighborhoods, to achieve resiliency.

5.  Provide materials and resources to assist communities to achieve sustainability.

The genesis of Transition Centre was the spike in oil prices following Hurricane Katrina and then the 2008 Great Recession.  The problem we found was the potential for resource shortage in the global market. The recession also highlighted the decline of many American communities as a result of that global economy.   Our response was to develop local community resiliency.  Our approach is primarily economic.  

Transition Centre was formally founded in 2009. Transition Centre organized presentations and workshops and developed a network of interested parties to lay the foundation for a Community Sustainability Master Plan.  Developing this plan spanned two years and involved over 200 people.  We sought to develop a template for sustainable communities.  That document was subsequently updated as the Transition Centre Resilient Communities Blueprint in 2020.  The model continues to evolve.

Transition Centre Founder and Director Bill Sharp has a long history in sustainability and a career in project planning and management in government, higher education and business.  See more on LinkedIn.

We all want communities that are safe, secure and stable.  TC Resilient Communities is not an insurance policy but rather a model for making communities sounder, more robust and innovative.  

The Transition Centre approach to resilient communities is not just about keeping things in balance.  It goes to a level beyond that.  It is about building transformative capacity for change.  It is about recreating the economy upon which a community is founded.  It is about the type of spirit that created your community to start with.

Why depend upon the trends of the national or global economies?  These are about vast, complex and essentially unmanageable systems.  With business as usual, as that economy goes, so goes your community.  Our approach is self-determining local communities.  

We have two future scenarios:  A Star Trek future of peace and abundance.  Or not.

Sustainability is about managing things, trying to achieve a balance.  Sustainability is predicated on the ideal of living within our means.  The goal was to live in such a way as to leave enough for future generations.  That promise can no longer be kept.

Achieving an adequate level of sustainability is difficult.  TC Resilient Communities seeks to go beyond sustainability to a more effective model for achieving community well-being.