The Essential Guide to Doing Transition. The Essential Guide to Doing Transition. | Page 51

Sustaining the group & involving new people

When you have a good group of people you may want to close the group, so you can get on with working together. This is fine – and you need to think about how people leave the group, and how new people join.

There may be many people coming to your events who want to be involved – see if you can find ways to do this without letting the Initiating Group get too large, or having new people constantly coming in. Some initiatives have created working groups to help with things like an events programme, building partnerships, getting projects started, or to look at a particular theme such as food. Events like Open Space can help people to get things started for themselves, see our guide here: https://transitionnetwork.org/resources/run-open-space-events-guide/

Because inclusion is important in Transition some groups feel they have to accept anyone – but some people don’t have the skills or personal qualities that enable them to contribute positively to a coordinating group, and it’s fine to help them find a place in another part of the whole Initiative.

When new people come to your group it’s good to think about what they need to know so they can join in fully – and what you need to know about them! Will you accept anyone into your group? Are there criteria for joining (Being able to give a certain amount of time? Agreeing with the group’s mission statement? Signing up to a Code of Conduct?).

You might have a person in your group whose role it is to speak to new people before they come to a meeting to give them an idea of what is expected and where the group is at.

They could:

Get everyone to introduce themselves and their roles when new people come to meetings

• Ask new people to give a brief overview of why they want to get involved in Transition and what they can bring to the group

• Explain at the start of the meeting how decisions are made and what you are discussing

We have a more in depth guide on involving new people here:

https://transitionnetwork.org/resources/get-keep-people-involved-transition-guide/

A Transition Town Brixton making day.

Photo: Jonathan Goldberg.

Forming working groups on different interest areas is a very useful strategy.

Photo:Mike Grenville.

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