Communities

Self-organising communities are at the heart of the Climate Coaching Alliance. After all, that’s what we are. In addition to our global community of members, we have other communities evolving: Local Communities, Language Communities and Pods (Communities of Interest). We believe that communities of coaches focused on leaning into the vast, opportunities and often overwhelming space that the climate and ecological crisis presents will be accelerators for our learning as practitioners, people and a global profession.

Why community? Global change happens at the point of intimate conversations and In Sally Gillespie’s book on Climate Change and Consciousness, she highlights the profound impact of a trusted community to enable us to grow in courage, consciousness and action. Small communities can:

• Move more nimbly and be ‘freer’ than one large global community and structure things in a way that works for the members.

• Share resources, co-coach and support reflective practice together to stretch their own growth and systemic practice development.

Finding a community The (list or world map below) can be searched to find a community that you want to join.

Getting involved We are an open community, that means anyone can join any community regardless of place, knowledge or experience. You can be in as many communities as you want and have time for. If you find the community, you will find details of the co-leads and a contact email address. If you can’t find the conversation you want to be part of and want to set a new community up, please do email: info@climatecoachingalliance.org

Where we live matters. Place and people create unique possibilities. Complex challenges in a place are best addressed through community in a way that builds ownership, understanding and new shared stories. There are no silver bullets, simple roadmaps or quick fixes. Those involved have to find their way based on local circumstances and the capacity of the community to find a way through.

Our language matters One language is not the same as another. In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, she highlights the vast difference between English language and Potawatomi language for example in terms of the embedded ‘aliveness’ or animacy in the language. The English language describes a world full of objects, Anishinaabe languages of which Potawatomi is one, describes a world full of beings. All languages are different in the culture, possibility and stories that form them. Being able to have dialogue in native languages, in diverse languages means different possibilities and learnings emerge that can offer profoundly new perspectives and lenses, stretching what might be.

Harvesting the Abundance We can’t make the steps we need to make if we make them through a centralised, one conversation at a time, approach. We know this, and our 6 monthly 24 hour events highlight this beautifully, we moved from centrally curated 24 hour conversations in March and October 2020, to a member curated 24 hour event in March 2021. The centrally curated conversations got us going, the member curated 24 hour conversation was an explosion of possibility, abundance and emergence – it was huge. Communities of interest are Members following their own interests, acting as magnets for others in the wider CCA community to come around them and explore, before feeding back through the seedbank in to the whole.

Local Communities

Local Communities focus on bringing people together in a geographical location or other identifiable region. Many of our local communities are national such as CCA South Africa, CCA USA, CCA Canada, but others cross national border such as CCA Oceana or CCA Asia. Other communities are much more regionally focused such as CCA Yorkshire, UK or CCA Southern, UK.

Language Communities

Language communities emerged from local communities. For example, we had a CCA France community, and french speaking people in other parts of the world joined in, so it became CCA French community, with participants from Canada, Belgium readily joining in. We now have a handful of language communities forming.

Pods (Communities of Interest)

Our Pods are initiated by you. There are a number that have started to take shape, such as the Politicians Pod, the Sustainability Pod, and the Education Pod to name a few. If you don’t see the community or the conversations that you want to be part of, then we would really welcome you to start one.