With Earth Day falling on April 22nd, London held “The Big One” event from April 21st to 24th. Across the 4 days, 100,000 people descended on Parliament to talk, to march and to demand change. People from hundreds of organisations across the UK answered Extinction Rebellion's call to action, including some ECOLISE members. Following a countdown of actions over 100 days, XR & friends surrounded the Houses of Parliament on April 24th. CfF was virtually there, via live streams (Day 1, 2 & 4) and on Twitter.

Transition Network founder Rob Hopkins spoke on 2 days (vid here, speech here), dressed in a space suit, having returned from the year 2030, he boldly proclaimed:

I'VE BEEN TO THE FUTURE. WE WON

At the recent reception for think tank TASC, Michael D Higgins condemned ‘neo-liberalism’ and urged country to ‘rebalance economy, ecology and ethics’ (Irish Times)

One of our ECOLISE colleagues is involved in this group TASC, Think tank for Action on Social Change. Suzie Cahn is a permaculture practitioner, amongst other things, down in Wicklow, part of ECOLISE member Carraig Dulra. She was part of the 2021 ECOLISE Council. The Presidents media team later shared a photo of Suzie (far left) with President Higgins (2nd left).

His strong words come 3 years after he was the first global head of state to back Doughnut Economics. This all comes just 2 weeks before the big Beyond Growth Conference ECOLISE is a supporting partners of.

This week marks an exciting milestone for ECOLISE! Last year, a small group of "early adopter" members started testing a prototype for an interactive network map, and now the first version is ready to be shared with the wider community. Designed by and for ECOLISE members, the map aims to make your profiles, work, connections, skills, and collaborative projects visible and easily findable.

The network map also highlights systemic and dynamic network patterns, sparking ideas and dialogue for building relationships and enabling value exchange, learning, collaboration, and growth within the network. You will be given an introduction and digital tour of the network map and invited to join and co-create it further. Additionally, you will learn how to practically use the map for network weaving in a self-organised way.

On Monday, May 8th, we invite you to join us for the next Communities for Future session. This event will focus on why social change organizations should develop radical people care (HR) policies and how to go about doing so. During the event, we will introduce the new ECOLISE People Care Manual and provide expert insights from People Support Co-op.

The ECOLISE People Care Manual was inspired by radhr.org, a website and database that we recommend checking out before attending the event.

ECOLISE's Policy team hosted an interactive online event to call for partners for its policy flagship project, the "10 Theses towards transformative community-led local development policies", an ongoing process about localisation and improvement of the European Green Deal through community-led initiatives. This has so far involved 300+ people from 70+ organisations. The next step in the process is to create an alliance of partners to advocate for community-led initiatives and to formulate key messages and demands targeting EU policies. In 2023, the #10theses process involves an Editorial Board as a steering committee, a Science Policy Board which delivers the academic and experiential evidence needed to convince policy makers, and a deepening phase with 4 online workshops (June & September). The goal is to publish a two-page document at ECOLISE’s main policy event at the end of October with the key demands and messages to influence EU policies.

With the #10theses process, ECOLISE is creating space for deep conversations to hold a shared vision of transformative development policies that can help community-led initiatives to scale, mushroom, replicate! If you are interested in partnering up with us in this #10theses process, keep reading and contact our policy team!

Connecting Communities of Practice to create Sustainable and Just Communities

The 23rd #CFFsession happened on 26th April 2023 and was co-hosted with the UrbanCommunity for Sustainable and Just Cities project (UrbanA), as one of their #CommunityConversation events. 13 people participated in the hour long session. The guest speaker was Mieke Elzenga from LiberTerra Geestmerambacht / Liberta Care Foundation, who is also a current co-president of ECOLISE. The event seeks to further connect 2 Communities of Practice: “UrbanCommunity for Sustainable and Just Cities” on LinkedIn, and ECOLISE’s “Communities for Future, European Day of Sustainable Communities Group” on Facebook.

Three of the ECOLISE core team participated physically in Climate Action Network Europe's (CAN-E) General Assembly last week in Brussels, acknowledging the impact of Europe’s leading NGO coalition fighting the climate crisis with a focus on EU levels (advocacy and lobbying): ECOLISE council member Justin Stevens, network weaver Laura Kaestele & policy lead Nina Klein used the opportunity to network with 180 people from CAN-E’s 180 member organisations (covering 38 countries) present at the venue. ECOLISE is a full member of CAN-E and was invited to speak at a workshop dedicated to “Sufficiency”, with about 30-40 participants. Our team gave insights from the the policy flagship project #10theses to the CAMPAIGNERs project (that ECOLISE is a partner of), as well as into the radical and joyous lifestyles which community-led initiatives lead, while trying to heed the planetary boundaries - which is for the time being not 100% possible as individual and social lifestyle changes depend on systemic changes in areas such as energy, transport etc.

CAN-E presented their new strategy to members at the GA which besides advocacy for ambitious climate policies and action now includes action pillars to reorient the economic system, lead a just transition, and empower grassroots initiatives.

Bethany Copsey and Ireen van Dolderen from RE-PEAT gave a workshop on peatlands and the imagination at Cafe Mellemfolk in Aarhus, Denmark, on April 1st, 2023. You can dive deeper in this organisation's vision by reading their manifesto.

RE-PEAT applied to receive a grant from ECOLISE to deliver a Climate Outreach Training in the Spring of 2023. This grant opportunity was given by SPARK, a project funded by the European Union. Reimagining Peatlands was one of the five selected applications.

As an output of this workshop a Zine was created featuring photos of the workshop, other photos and text: Reimagining Peatlands.

GEN Europe is involved with a project named EC2: Energy Community & Energy Citizenship Tools, which is supporting the research and development of energy communities across Europe in different cultural, economic, social and policy contexts.

Do you want to share resources and tools that can help budding energy communities start and strengthen? If yes, fill in the questionnaire to help the team in their effort.

We invite you to visit the resources section of our website, where you will find very valuable information and learning materials. From publications and webinars to podcasts and courses, these resources will keep you up-to-date and will be useful for your ongoing development.