May 23, 2022
Post Growth Ripples: May 2022
An overview of our key activities and impact through the various pillars of our work.
Here at the Post Growth Institute, we collaboratively develop ideas, programs, events, and alliances that promote the equitable circulation of money, power, and resources in our local communities and global economy. Each month we publish an overview of our key activities and impact through the various pillars of our work.
Post-Growth Living
PGI team member Natalie Holmes’s personal essay about healing from dissonance and dystopia was republished by Resilience.org and Desultory Heroics.
Post-Growth Entrepreneurship
The latest round of our Offers and Needs Market Facilitator Training came to a close at the end of April, and we continue to receive inspiring feedback from participants. Ebony Gustave of the Cooperative Journal podcast shared:
The Offers and Needs Market [OANM] increases the resilience of a community because you’re mapping assets, and it’s relational. I experienced an OANM at a virtual conference and was inspired to run one for my apartment building [in NYC.] In urban areas, opportunities to commune with each other feel limited, especially since 2020. This process allowed us to create a safer space for each other: it was an amazing icebreaker. I highly recommend doing an OANM with your neighbors — it dissolves the rigid identities that we hold onto based on our day-to-day roles. I will continue to use this to create inclusive spaces for my neighbors, artists, and others in the cooperative movement.
She further talked about our approach to developing capabilities around the facilitation of silence:
Facilitation is the gift to be able to hold space gracefully and be comfortable with what may emerge. Using silent reflection during an event is non-ablist — it’s different from the usual construct where we’re expected to answer immediately without time to process the information. In the digital age, it feels like things are happening faster than you can think. To allow people that spaciousness and give them all the same opportunity to respond is integral to holding a space where everyone’s voices can be heard.
The PGI’s Director of Education, Crystal Arnold, was interviewed by Ebony for an episode of her Cooperative Journal podcast. As well as exploring the way mutual aid can be facilitated by the OANM, the pair spoke about the practices we need to evolve into a post-growth society, facilitation skills to create spaces of belonging, and asset based mapping as a tool for community resilience.
We also published an article based on the podcast of Post Growth Fellow, Monicah Muyoha, who spoke to entrepreneur Mary Nyaruai about global inequities in menstrual health, and how her grassroots startup Nyungu Afrika is producing sustainable pads based on Kenyan womens’ lived experience.
And an article by Post Growth Fellow Symone Jackson on her lessons from launching the 2021 Black Solidarity Fund was republished by Resilience.org.
Find out more about the Post Growth Fellowship.
This month, we also provided a workshop on lean approaches as part of the Anxiety to Action program; and consulted with the Sustainable Compassion Institute on lean approaches, social media strategy, and branding.
Contact us now to book a PGI team member for a workshop or consultancy.
Post-Growth Economics
Our work was recently profiled in the newsletter of the Global Tapestry of Alternatives.
Meanwhile, Shareable published an article about the not-for-profit world, by PGI co-founder Jen Hinton.
Find out more about the Post Growth Institute on our website.
