Grey Lynn 2030 Vision and Mission Statements

In this month’s Grey Lynn 2030 meeting we want to form a Vision and Mission Statement for our group. The Steering Group believe we need this to keep our community group on course. We need something to refer to when choosing films, speakers, supporting our focus groups.

What is a Vision Statement? – The big picture, the highest goal By 2030, Grey Lynn will be a …..sustainable, resilient community….?

What is a Mission? The how, the way we are going to achieve the Vision
I see GL2030 as an umbrella group that encourages communication, action and bringing together ofpeople in Grey Lynn, Westmere and Ponsonby who want to work towards our mission.
Grey Lynn 2030 will be a source of funding for the focus groups
Grey Lynn 2030 will be able to represent our communities needs to other groups we want to engage with – funding agencies, council, community boards, political parties.
But these are just my ideas…

Last month the Grey Lynn 2030 Lobby Group came up with some words that describe Transition Towns and particularly lobbying.
Community resilience / economic and legal reform / doing things differently in the future / understanding processes / achieving desired outcomes effectively for equality and wellbeing for all / enabling / future community / working cooperatively / urban ecology / sustainable systems / learning and growth / validating community input / access and engagement / position / personal growth / advocacy / skill sharing / positive communication / transparency, media accountability, honesty, without corporate bias / channels of communication / influence on practical policy and programmes / representatives / awareness / monitoring / values / consequence / ecological progress as opposed to economic.This is a useful exercise and it will be good if you can come along with a few words for the meeting.

How do others describe Transtion Towns? Transition Town initiatives are bringing people together out of a desire to explore how we – and our communities – can respond to the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil. We know we don’t have all the answers but we believe we have the innovation to create those solutions.

Each transition group networks with their local community on a coordinated range of projects designed to transition from high energy to low energy lifestyles in a positive and creative manner. Our aim is to re-localise our communities, making them vibrant, resilient and truly sustainable.

Transition Waiheke
Transition Waiheke is part of the Transition Towns movement: a grass roots approach to making our communities more self-reliant in the face of peak oil and climate change. Our aim is to engage all sectors of the Waiheke community in addressing the greatest transition of our time: from oil dependency to a low energy future.

By working with others locally, we can support each other, empower ourselves and get things done. We can seek local solutions. We can experiment and try out new sustainable approaches…local food, local energy, local industry. We won’t always know the answers but together we have the energy and innovation to create them.
What is a Transition Town by Les Squires

Transition Towns are communities – just like yours – looking peak oil and climate change squarely in the eye.
We live in an oil-dependent world, and have gotten to this level of dependency in a very short space of time, using vast reserves of oil in the process – without thinking ahead to plan for when the supply is not so plentiful. Most of us avoid thinking about what happens when oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive), but Transition Towns show us examples of how the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have positive outcomes. These changes can lead to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow more of their own food, generate their own power, encourage local trade and local currencies, and build their own houses using local materials.

What Does a Transition Town Look Like?
A Transition Town (or Suburb, Neighbourhood, Island, Village, Beach, etc) is somewhere that is harnessing local creativity to come up with real, practical solutions for how that community can manage the transition to a lower energy future by increasing it’s local resilience in the face of diminished oil supplies, and mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing it’s carbon emissions.

Local resilience means that each community provides more of what it needs. This doesn’t have to mean “going without”, but instead means that as the transport and manufacturing costs of our global economy increase (with the price of oil), a resilient community will actually have more high quality good and services available, and greater opportunity for meaningful employment, as it will have invested it’s wealth in local people and local businesses.

Imagine how the area you live in might look if more of your neighbours worked nearby and could walk or cycle to do their work and their shopping. Imagine the image of a noisy, smelly and dangerous local street being transformed into one with more local people wandering around, and more kids out playing. Imagine how your local shops might look if they were brimming with locally grown fresh food and locally produced craft goods. The transition to a vibrant local community is not only going to become necessary with the increasing cost of energy, but it can also result in better places to live and work if we approach the task with energy and creativity.

What did the neighbours come up with? Pt Chevalier has gone through this exercise and this is what they came up with.

Transition Point Chevalier -Mission Statement

Transition Point Chevalier is committed to creating an inclusive, cooperative, compassionate, fun-loving and vibrant community in Point Chevalier, by living and acting locally, applying sustainable practices and developing community resilience.

The basis for the statement comes from a community hui in which the following values and actions were offered as guiding ideas by the participants.
Values

Being own to new things, compassion, consciousness, cooperation, creativity, fun, growth / learning, health, inclusiveness, interdependence, positivity, respect, sense of belonging, sharing, trust, vibrance.
Actions

Awareness raising, being positive, buying locally produced products, composting (toilets), cooperative buying and selling, empowering others, fair trade organic super market, informing others, kaitiakitanga (stewardship), listening, making submissions to council plans, manaakitanga (taking care of each other), more environmental education, planting vegetables and fruit trees, rain tanks, recycling, riding your bike, singing in groups, small actions and events, talking with your neighbours, walking, wind and solar power, worm farms.

Focus Groups can have their own Vision and MissionWhile Grey Lynn 2030 is the umbrella group, each Focus group can have its own aspirations within this.

Waitaki Edible Garden

Vision:

We want to confront the emerging challenges of Post Peak Oil by strengthening our community in the immediate future with an emphasis on food production. As energy availability contracts and Global Storming/Warming pressures become more acute, we aim to establish greater Local Food Production and a Local Food Web.

Mission:

Supporting local food production strategies.

So hope you will come along to input your ideas into this. As somebody said to me, Tranistion Towns is a very modern movement. Very hard to pin down exactly. This is it strength.

Now does anybody have any ideas for a logo?