Post Growth Ripples: May 2024
It’s been a big month for the PGI’s Offers and Needs Market Team!
Here at the Post Growth Institute, we collaboratively develop ideas, programs, events, and alliances that promote the equitable circulation of money, power, and natural 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 events
It was a big month for the PGI’s Offers and Needs Market (OANM) team!
The OANM facilitator training cohort wrapped up five weeks of training, with 82% of participants planning to run their own event in the next year. Congrats to all members of this season’s cohort, from Indonesia to Iceland!
PGI Director of Development & OANM Training team member, Pri Das, hosted an in-person OANM at the Healthy Champaign County Food Summit 2024 in Champaign, Illinois. The event emerged from an OANM as part of a Food Fair event hosted by The Land Connection, co-hosted by Pri and former Post Growth Fellow, Mike Strode. The organizers of that event referred the OANM team to the organizers of the Healthy Champaign County Food Summit. Pri reflects:
As someone who has been living and organizing in Chicago for 10 years, I’m very grateful to be able to bring the OANM experience to values-aligned folks living in central Illinois. Growing up, my co-facilitator & fellow Chicago community member, Jonathan, would visit family in Champaign. It was wonderful to celebrate our shared humanity by bringing forth the wealth of passions, resources, and knowledge that connect this group’s interest in advocating for food security and access.
Meanwhile across the pond, the OANM made it onto the Beyond Growth conference scene in Vienna, Austria! The OANM was facilitated by Hannah Desaler, see the clip below for a peek at the event.
The OANM also made an appearance at Code Pink’s Local Peace Economy Gathering, where our Director of Education, Crystal Arnold, shared how the process can be used as a tool to cultivate local economies and organize communities.
In addition to hosting OANMs, the team also offered consultancy sessions, which provide personalized support for convening inclusive, meaningful events. According to one of this month’s clients:
The OANM consultancy really got my creativity flowing, with opportunities and ideas arising. I gained the confidence to plan and run one. Afterwards, I noticed the shift in my body, I felt energized and sure of myself. I plan to use this community organizing tool in my work encouraging engagement with the Time Bank and community currency project in Turkey.”
Book your personalized session today with one of our certified facilitators and consultants.
Post-growth stories
In the latest article on our blog, Steven Liaros of the Circular Economy Villages Co-operative explores the tension between work and freedom, and shares a vision for networks of communities where everyone has time and space to purse their passions.
We are also continually reminded by the importance of post-growth culture and workplaces. Aynur Yilmaz Ataman, a PGI Volunteer and Post Growth Encyclopedia Team Member based in the UK (originally from Turkey), shared this heartwarming anecdote:
Being a part of the PGI team has positively affected me. From the meeting check-ins to grounding exercises, and support from team members during work, I am changed. And this change has positively affected other parts of my life. I recently returned to a previous workplace and the relationships there are different now (in a good way!) with the way I show up and communicate.
