Transitioning Our Money to Invest Local
People often ask, “So what do Transition Town groups do?” One answer to that question would be, “We take good ideas, bring them home, and make them real.”
That’s what Pat Thompson and Sherm Eagles did when they attended Jay Tompt’s REconomy workshop at the Transition US National Gathering in St. Paul, Minnesota in 2017.
“Hearing that such a thing exists as the REconomy Centre, that was an eye opener. Wow! Someone is doing this thing and maybe we can do something like it,” said Pat. “I was also inspired by the people who attended the workshop. There was a woman from Brooklyn who owns a building that serves as a community center and helps percolate programs to start things the community needs. There were people doing online crowdsourcing to fund Transition-related things. There was local currency. All these different angles from different parts of the country.
“My first thought was that our Transition group – Transition Town–All St. Anthony Park (Transition ASAP) – could set up something like the Community of Dragons, community-supported entrepreneurship, that they have in Totnes. But we’re in a really big market here in the Twin Cities, and some things like that already exist. So instead, our group set up Transition Your Money (TYM).”
Sherm and Pat now convene a monthly group that talks about ways people can get their money out of Wall Street and bring it back into the local economy.
“Our neighborhood is a pocket of fairly well off people – not all, but some – and also people with a strong social conscience,” Pat said. “They’re concerned about climate change and they want to do something about it.
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