By Trathen Heckman, Founder and Executive Director of Daily Acts
2012 "Seeding Possibilities" grant


As I was bundling up some of the season's highlights of our ITP collaboration yesterday, I came across a resonant article titled "Are You Humbitious Enough To Lead?"  Humbitious being defined as an approach to leadership with equal parts humility and ambition.  Sitting at 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide emissions in our air for the first time in human history, we need both great gads of ambition and a large dose of humility to address our climate crisis. 

A quote from the article that really struck me in regards to the relationship between leadership and change were the words of Harriet Rubin who said "Power is about what you can control.  Freedom is about what you can unleash."  For any shot at a sane and liveable future, we need to rapidly unleash our shared genius, to unearth the intelligence, wisdom and survival instinct in every nook, cranny and corner of our communities, our networks, our neighborhoods, our organizations, our homes, gardens and hearts.
 
This unleashing of individual and shared genius is very true to each of our organizations and the ITP collaboration among Transition US (TUS), Daily Acts, Ecology of Leadership (EOL) and media man extraordinaire Pride Wright.  Together we've done a bit of unleashing this spring and like Casey (fellow ITP Grant Partner for The Organic Life documentary film) wrote about in her blog, there is much to harvest from our shared efforts.
 
In February TUS and EOL hosted the first in our series of webinars which focused on the leadership and group process skills that have been most requested by the network. It was a great launch with over 30 Transition leaders in attendance and EOL offering some critical stepping-stones for this burgeoning community of practice.
 
Shortly after this, Daily Acts launched our 4th annual 350 Home and Garden Challenge to inspire thousands of actions, which grow food, conserve water, save energy, build community and more. This is one of the models Daily Acts and TUS are collaborating on to spread throughout the Transition network through the month long Transition Challenge.  We hosted a second webinar for group leaders taking on the challenge, to share the model and best practices. And it was quite a harvest this year with 6,942 home, garden and community-powered actions around the country during the month of May.
 
Keeping the harvesting and unleashing vibe alive and building upon the great groups work that EOL and TUS are bringing to the Transition network, TUS, The Art of Hosting, Daily Acts and several partner organizations hosted the Art of Participatory Leadership. This was a 3-day training with over 60 leaders from around the bay area gathered to learn and practice simple but potent processes for facilitating powerful conversations, building community and building strong partnerships to affect greater change.
 
So all in all, while holding with great humility the scale of the challenges, there is much to celebrate and give thanks for in what this collaboration has brought forth.  And of course, what we appreciate appreciates.  So powered by our 'pause' and appreciations galore, we are inspired to continue to share these program models and tools to strengthen, align and unleash our networks of engaged citizens and groups.  Maybe stir a little climate change in our movements to look afresh at how we rise to the times.
 
Take heart, take action
Trathen