Transition Towns Aotearoa National Meeting. Your input requested.

Hi all,

This is an important message as we desire your input!!

You may have seen the notice and invitation for a TTNZ leadership gathering on Waiheke Island at the beginning of March (see here). At this stage this is a get together of people who have put their hands up and offered to volunteer their time to assist in the operation of Transition Aotearoa – in effect continuing and building on the work that James Samuel has done over the past 18 months.

James has already posted an open invitation to everyone who feels they wish to contribute to join us on Waiheke on this date.

However, we feel it is also important to gather as much feedback from the network ahead of time as we can in order to best serve the networks’ needs. So any thoughts, suggestions, feelings, ideas regarding the future of “national level” Transition Aotearoa are welcomed and appreciated. Feel free to post them to the email list, to the ning or on the TT website – or email James (james.samuel( at )transitiontowns.org.nz) directly.

To give you a starter for 10 – these are some of the important questions we all will need to decide on (this list is by no means exhaustive and you are welcome to add whatever comes to your mind):

The leadership team:

-          Is there a need for a national “leadership” team of Transition Aotearoa?

-          Should this be a body of elected members, volunteers, paid staff?

-          Is there a term of operation for this body?

-          How is the team accountable to the network?

-          How is it funded (if at all)?

-          Other:

The role of TTNZ - If there is a need for a “national level team” – what are its’ functions and roles? What are the needs of the network?

-          Media liaison at a national level (newspapers, Radio NZ, TV)?

-          Maintenance of a network database (members and events)?

-          Transition Training and Training of Trainers?

-          Liaison with national government (should this need arise)? Lobbying?

-          The development of a New Zealand Energy Descent Action Plan or Vision 2010/ 2020?

-          Development and operation of communication tools for the network, e.g. a monthly NZ wide newsletter or similar?

-          Maintenance of the TTNZ website?

-          The organization of a national Transition Towns Conference?

-          General aid / support to local initiatives?

-          Fundraising and administration and distribution of funding to local initatives?

-          Active promotion of Transition towns, e.g. “seeding” of additional initiatives, eg. through TT presentations in “new areas”?

-          Development and proposal of a New Zealand set of Transition principles / steps etc. for the network to vote on or similar? (e.g. “no doom on the mail list” and questions like that)

-          Other:

-          Other:

If you could take the time and sort the above list in order of importance to you this would be incredibly helpful. Feel free to delete any points you feel should not be part of TTNZ role – and add any other ones you may like to see.

Local initiatives:

-          What are the highest needs / priorities for your local intiative at the moment? How could a national level operation support the achievement of your goals?

-          What are difficulties you are facing that you could use help with?

-          Other:

With your help, we will use the days on Waiheke to work through all these questions and any other thoughts, suggestions etc. that we receive from you. Hopefully we will then be able to get back to the network with a proposed approach on how to achieve whatever goals and outcomes result from this analysis and a way forward for the network.

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Please reply to this before 1 March 2009.

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone else you feel should contribute to this discussion.

Many thanks.

Natalie