Starting a “Home Group”
I got my start in climate activism by inviting my local friends to a talk about Sustaining All Life (SAL). I didn’t know a lot and read as much as I could beforehand. It felt like a big jump from having Co-Counselling sessions and going to workshops to doing something public. I wanted to see who might want to do something very locally.
About twenty people came. I was going to Poland for COP24 [the 2018 United Nations conference on climate change], and I said I wanted to have a “home group” to come and report back to.
For the year after that, a small number of people came to my house to share thinking and have short mini-sessions. I talked about what I had learned and shared material from the SAL website. One of the people who came, a woman with a disability, had never been to a meeting of any kind before. Two of the people are now in my RC fundamentals class. Some have come to online SAL events.
I’ve found that bringing up the climate crisis in conversations with people is a good challenge. I started doing that about the same time as I held that initial meeting. Oftentimes people have known more than I have, or I’ve made factual mistakes, but I’ve learned a lot and carried on doing it.
Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, England
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders in care of the environment
(Present Time 207, April 2022)