Step 2 - Awareness Raising

In this stage you will identify your key allies, build crucial networks and prepare the community in general for the launch of your Transition initiative.

For an effective Energy Descent Action plan to evolve, its participants have to understand the potential effects of both Peak Oil and Climate Change – the former demanding a drive to increase community resilience, the later a reduction in carbon footprint.

Screenings of key movies (Inconvenient Truth, End of Suburbia, Crude Awakening, Power of Community) along with panels of "experts" to answer questions at the end of each, are very effective.

Download the Transition Initiatives Primer (1MB pdf) for the lowdown on all the movies – where to get them, trailers, what the licencing regulations are, doomster rating vs solution rating. This film information is at the end of the Primer, which in itself is a great help and guide for people getting started in the early stages of a transition initiative.

Talks by experts in their field of climate change, peak oil and community solutions can be very inspiring. Articles in local papers, interviews on local radio, presentations to existing groups, including schools, are also part of the toolkit to get people aware of the issues and ready to start thinking of solutions.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that the general public are aware of the issues. While you may have informed yourself, and you notice that there is lots of media information in the papers and on the radio, so much of it fails to connect the dots. Good films can be a very effective fast track to awaken people to the issues and the opportunities.

You will soon discover you need flyers and posters, and powerpoint presentations. There are quite a number of these available in the resources page of this site.