RC Classes Taught on Care of the Environment
An 8-week Community class
After Diane’s powerful report in April 2016 on the role of our organization at the Paris Climate Talks of December 2015, our West Berkeley Area held a summer 8-week community class on Care of the Environment in Summer 2016. I led it, assisted by Julie Saxe-Taller and Bikku Kuruvila.
I am attaching the overview of the class. It went very well, and moved all of us forward. We had about 8 or 9 people who attended regularly despite changing summer schedules.
I found that it helped so much to focus on our human connections and on early pleasant memories of the environment, and then early defeats, before diving into current distresses about current climate change. It was important to notice sources of hope and power, and to know that we are not alone. I appreciated the flexible class outlines offered as part of SAL, and the vital perspective about oppression it offers.
One of the best resources I found outside of SAL,was Al Gore's 16-minute updated TED talk explaining the environmental crisis and offering hope. We all discharged so hard, given some hope! As a group, we also listened to online environmental and climate change information, did mini-sessions, and then did a"jigsaw" process where each person would retell to the group a preassigned portion of the important scientific information we had all just listened to. This helped the speaker and others present to gain an understanding of the specifics of the problem, to be able to describe it in our own words.
In our region and area, we had also discharged effectively at many workshops, classes, and gather-ins about the Care of our Environment since the World Conference Goal was decided upon, but the strength of this class was that it was sustained over 8 weeks and therefore provided more in-depth discharge and a group moving together.
As a direct result of the class, I personally started riding a bike again after 30 years. Very hopeful! Others in our class moved forward in our commitment to ensuring the Care of the Environment, both in choice of work and in social action.
With love and appreciation to all of you,
Gail Mandella
ARP, West Berkeley, California
U.S.A.
December 20, 2016