Community Empowerment Through Grassroots Action: A Story of Building Personal and Local Resilience with the Transition Towns Model

Abstract

Nils Palsson and Virajita Singh have partnered in telling Nils’ story of his personal and professional journey with the Transition Town movement – its thought leaders, philosophy, practices, and relationship to the partnership/domination paradigm shift. Through his participation in the grassroots Transition Town movement, Nils found, cultivated, and ultimately shared with others a sense of local empowerment. In his rural home in California’s Lake County, Nils found community, following great personal transformation in his life with the passing of his father. He learned about Transition Towns, permaculture, and other concepts dealing with local resilience, grassroots empowerment, and regenerative and holistic systems and lifestyles. He and others employed the Transition model, as described in Rob Hopkins’ Transition Handbook in transitioning Lake County. In 2015 he became Communications Director of Transition US. In this position, Nils has come to see that the world of Transition is much larger than he had imagined, with citizen-leaders and change agents in Transition Towns working toward environmental justice for all.