Bill Sharp: Transition Towns

Transition Towns: An Agriculture Working Group Perspective

Transition Towns is an international movement designed to help communities gain greater resilience and local economic self-reliance. This presentation will briefly describe the Transition movement and related programs offered by Transition Centre through a multitiered program, from forming a local group to developing and implementing a comprehensive sustainability action plan founded on local foods.
Transition Centre draws on the legacy of back-to-the-land pioneer Ralph Borsodi who developed land-trust homesteader communities and prepared a systematic economic model to support them. He also developed a learning institute—the School of Living—for a village level and proposed a community university model for larger communities.
From these two threads, Transition Centre, working with veteran Transition Towns colleagues and partners, developed Rural Resilient Hub (RRH) which addresses the revitalization of small, distressed communities with a particular focus on rural America. Bill will refer to one such community engaged in that project and touch on the Vermont Farm-to-Plate project.
With a focus on Bahá’í principles related to the tillage of the soil, a village agrarian response, and the small and resilient community and its economy, Bill will give a short review of Paul Hanley’s recently released book on ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ‘Adasíyyih project.
Bill Sharp is co-founder and Director of Transition Centre (TC), a Pennsylvania nonprofit corporation (www.transitioncentre.org). The mission of TC is to promote and develop an integral model for local, self-reliant and sustainable economies and communi­ties. Rural Resilient Hub, a rural revitalization model, is a project of TC. Bill is the project lead for the Borsodi Community University, designed to provide educational and training support for small communities. He has conducted extensive research on Ralph Borsodi and has worked to restore Borsodi’s legacy as a keystone of community revitalization.