May 2025: Seedlings
Transition Newsletter: news from the movement, opportunities, events, resources and more!
What’s ready to take its first step in you?
May brings that feeling: the kind of fresh start that comes with new shoots, and a shift in the air. In many places, the soil is waking up, and small green things are starting to grow. In others, the light is softening, harvests are being gathered, and there's a slowing down that invites reflection, like a different kind of beginning, where letting go creates space for what's next.
It’s a reminder that beginnings don’t have to be grand or certain. They can be small, unsure, a bit messy, and still carry so much potential.
This month, we’re noticing all the new things taking root across the Transition movement: new groups forming, collaborative ideas being tested, and the quiet bravery it takes to say, “let’s try.” Whether it’s a new project or a personal turning point, the first steps can be fragile; but taken together, they hold real power.
So we’re wondering: What are you beginning in your community? What do you want to plant, nurture, or reimagine? And what might become possible if we start small and local?
In Community,
The Transition Network international team 🌱
What's buzzing at TNi?
- Find out –and maybe join?– the Language Weavers group to support diversity and Language Justice within the movement:
Daniel Rudolph
- Come to celebrate the New Moon on May 27th for a global gathering to relish and manifest Collective Healing together.
Anahí Beatriz Pacheco
- Submit your story of change –in any language or format– through Sensemaker’s Community Research Project. You’ll help build a powerful resource for resilience and collective action. Our stories and data amplify impact, inspire change, and showcase the movement’s reach. Discover more here!
Deborah Benham
Heartbeat of the Movement
- [EN] Transition Town Warri has just sprouted in Africa - celebration! Read Don's experience there:
Don Hall
- [FR] Carol'Or is the local and citizen currency for the Charleroi region, France. It has been circulating in the life basin of Charleroi Country and the Haute Sambre since 2019. It exists in the form of tickets and electronic currency, and has more than 120 partners. It aims to promote local businesses, initiatives and service providers concerned about combining quality, solidarity and environmental respect. Carol'Or participates in the month of local economy organized by Financité! Discover more and join them to support your region.
- [EN] New video available! "Town Anywhere Tooting - A Future to Look Forward to". In October 2024, a hundred people gathered in Tooting to time travel into the future. Using immersive future scenarios, large scale model-making and timed challenges the Town Anywhere process helped participants to play and practice community visioning, ideation and storytelling. Not-to-be-missed, pure inspiration:
- [JP] Sustainable Soup online event featuring Ryoichi Shimizu from Ecovillage Pellan in Japan. He'll be sharing about the ultimate eco-friendly “people's lifestyle” he's practising. Details here.
What's alive in your Transition group? We'd love to hear and spread it further. Email us at comms@transitionnetwork.org
People of Transition
This month, Hanyun Xu interviewed and featured the one and only Richard Couldrey: "... the superpower of community. There are people in places there that can resource and hold you when you need picking up, when you need a bit of time just to go, to take a break and all of that. If you’re in a relationship with your local community, the community will catch you and hold you while you’re resourcing yourself."
Do you follow Hanyun on Instagram yet? Check the interviews on Youtube and posts on Instagram for some heartwarming inspiration. And do send some online love and reach out with your story as well!
Resources of the Month
Don Hall
Kirsten Bradley
Calendar
- May 17 · Reimagining Education for People and Planet (Transition DACH)
- May 20 · Collective Wisdom Session: Collaboration and Collective Project Planning (Practising Transition)
- May 24 · DeepEcology Free Sample Class on the Work That Reconnects (Community)
- May 27 · New Moon Collective Healing (Cultural Transformation)
Add your Transition events to the Transition platform calendar here to be featured in the community space, as well as the upcoming e-news. Make sure to set them up as "Public". How-to instructions here (see "Route 1").
Opportunities
- Transition Network international seeks a Community Weaver for Social Media and Virtual Platform Engagement. Check out the Infopack and apply before May 21 2025.
- Find out about Rhizome Fellowship on narrative hacking by Culture Hack Labs! This is an eight-month journey designed to equip you with tools and accompany you through a process of narrative-led systems change. Rooted in the Culture Hack Method, this fellowship provides a structured yet experimental space to develop and prototype narrative interventions that disrupt extractive models and seed regenerative futures. Applications close May 16th.
- The Youth4Climate Call for Solutions launches its third round of funding opportunities for young people aged 18 to 29 and youth-led entities. The Call is open to youth from 159 countries and territories covered by UNDP. Applicants to the CfS can request up to USD 30,000 in seed funding and successful applicants will also benefit from connections and visibility that may enable scaling and growth of their projects, group workshops, one-to-one mentorship, and project pitching and feedback opportunities. Find the step by step process to apply here. The deadline is May 26.
- Apply for an Earth Rising Grant. The Earth Rising Foundation invites applications from grassroots projects promoting youth activism, Indigenous voices and climate action. They provide grants ranging from $200 to $20,000 to promote bold, bottom-up action on climate change. Applications are now open and the deadline is June 30th. Learn more about this grant opportunity and how to apply here.
- From our partners YouthxYouth: Initiations into Adulthood with Gabriela Fagundes Moreira. In collaboration with Gabriela, YxY will be offering three open community-style processes through which a person becomes capable of taking on higher levels of responsibility. When a person authentically steps into their path toward adulthood, they shift from absorbing and consuming to creating, proposing, sourcing. (May 22nd; June 18th; and July 14th at 7am UTC). Register for those sessions here.
Which other opportunities would you like to share with fellow Transitioners?
Greetings from the Future
Field Recordings From the Future just launched a CrowdFunder! Will you support this endeavour to shift the direction of humanity using the power of imagination? Join Rob Hopkins and Mr. Kit!
What is your own message to humanity from 2050? Send an artistic expression (drawing, short clip, collage, you name it!) to comms@transitionnetwork.org with your postcard from 2050 (or the year you manage to travel to) so we can share in the Transition Newsletter upcoming issues!
Feel free to communicate in your preferred language, and send the clip in any format or size you like. We can do the rest.
PS. We're preparing a special contest - the most imaginative postcards from the future we receive during this year 2025 will get some love!
Stay connected!
Would you like to have some of your content featured in the next newsletter editions? Please write to comms@transitionnetwork.org
For June e-news, the deadline for submissions is May 30th. For July issue the deadline is June 25th.
Let's keep the conversation alive on the Transition Platform:
Connect on Facebook | Instagram | Bluesky | LinkedIn | YouTube
You can also donate to support the amazing work of Transitioners:
sam rossiter
Thank you so much for making it until the end of this edition of the Newsletter. We hope you felt as excited as we did while crafting this. Stay tuned and hands-on!
