Organizing a Rapid Response Team

THE PROPOSITION:

You are ON THE TEAM FOR PLANET EARTH. We all want to see a better, more beautiful world - a just and sustainable world that works for us, for our children and for all of life. We all want to make a difference, and to feel the pride of contributing to the greater good. 
 
Listen to your heart. Feel your membership in the greater whole. You are not alone. You and your friends are a powerful force for change. Heed the call.   It’s time to do something practical, real and hands-on that will do some good for he environment and for your community. It is time to create a Climate Action Team! 
 
HOW?
 
A simple procedural guide...
 
Here is a simple set of steps you can follow as you build your climate action team. These are here to help you succeed and thrive as positive change agents in your community. Consider them carefully, then take action!
Don't forget the basic goals: set out to do some real, specific good... and have some fun doing it! You will easily succeed if you and your team is well organized and you enjoy doing this work together. Think of this as a team sport, and form a team to play the game gracefully and well. Enjoy the short term rewards of learning together and seeing your impact. At the same time, take a long-term perspective; like any team, in any sport, you will improve your game with practice.

BEGIN:
 
Gather a small group of friends together. Not too many – perhaps two, three, or four, or even just one, to begin. (It's best to start small. You can add additional team members later, if you like.)
 
Choose people who you know and like and respect, people you communicate with easily and who resonate with you in heart, mind, and physical proximity. Invite them to join you in a first informal meeting to talk about choosing some managable project that you can do together as a team – something that will serve a local need or fill a nich of service or regeneration. (Later, when you have had some practice working as a team, you may want to do bigger projects.)
 
DEDICATE:
 
Forming a Climate Action Team to serve the community and biosphere is in one sense a game, a team sport, which will be great fun. In another sense it is a mission of great purpose and seriousness, a deep commitment of body, mind and spirit. It is also a JOYOUS opportunity to learn and grow and create beauty. In Climate Action Teams, all of these aspects are combined into one. Each time you come together in your team, before beginning a session – before working, planning, or playing together - it is good to start with a moment of silence, a prayer or a poem to focus your energy. The presence of spirit, friendship, calm goodwill and depth of purpose will unify, inspire and focus your group.
Allow yourselves to connect with your inner well of optimism, capability, and togetherness. Let harmony and unity of purpose enter you. Let joy enter you. If you like, you can hold hands in silent meditation. Feel the strength and goodness in each other's hands and hearts. Know you are strong, powerful, capable, honoured to be in service together as a circle of friends joined in common purpose.
 
This is the dedication.
 
Remember that the very existence of a biosphere on this planet of ours is a miracle, that each living being, each butterfly and hummingbird, each dolphin and flower, each mangrove tree and human being, is an act of powerful magic, a living jewel within this most extraordinary world, the only living world for light-years in any direction.
 
Remember that this biosphere has emerged through eons beyond understanding, as our ancient and ever-renewing Earth circles our life-giving Sun. Remember how extraordinary it is to simply be alive!

ENVISION:
You have brought together your circle of friends, and taken a moment to dedicate yourselves, as individuals and as a group, to serve your community and the biosphere of which we are all a part.  
 
Now, take the next step: Envision your specific purpose together. Ask everyone for their ideas for a small project that you can do together to create some positive outcome for your community and fort he earth.
 
But first, before thinking of how you can contribute solutions, make an inventory of the problems that are asking to be solved. Invite everyone to think about the local realities of environmental destruction, of habitat degradation, species driven to extinction, air and water pollution, poverty, water shortage, the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, inadequate education, over crowding. Think about these issues globally and locally. 
 
Now, invite the group to think about how you would like to see the world around you change. Imagine a positive vision of what you would like your neighborhood and region to become – socially, ecologically, physically -- and what it would be like to live there. How is it different from your neighborhood or city as it is now? Be as specific as you can.
 
Imagine.  
 
We are all dreamers. Beauty is powerful! Take some time, as a group, to ENVISION the world you want to create. See your world ten years in the future.
 
Ask these questions:
  1. How does the future we want to achieve look like?
  2. How does it feel, smell and sound?
  3. What do our homes and communities look like?
  4. Where is our food coming from?
  5. Where is our water coming from?
  6. Where is our waste going to?
  7. Where are the plants and animals?
  8. What are we doing, on an average day, in that future world  
Then, ask: What do we want to contribute to our neighboors, our city or the planet to create this future?
  • How do we personally want to create more beauty, harmony, well-being, health, community engagement, or ecological integrity?
  • How can our actions contrubute to the 2020 climate conservation goals?
Give everyone in the circle the chance to speak and give input. Listen to every person.
 
The more deeply we listen, the more we are able to co-create as a community and express new ideas into the world. Everyone's vision and inspiration helps to bring greater fullness to the whole. The person hosting the meeting is not necessarily the one who should do most of the talking! A good way to ensure that everyone is heard is to use a „talking stick.“ When someone is holding the talking stick, it is their turn to talk, and everyone else listens. Pass the talking stick around the circle. Give everyone a similar amount of time to hold the talking stick. If someone would rather be quiet, they can pass the talking stick along to the next person.

CHOOSE:
 
Choose an immediate and long-term FOCUS for your action.
 
Your team's long-term focus and its short-term, immediate focus do not necessarily need to be the same – they could be very different.
 
Bring all of your visions together and decide, as a group, what area of endeavor you most want to work in. Don't worry if you cannot make a final decision about this on your first meeting. Narrow it down to no more than two or three areas of interest. Eventually you will come to consensus on this question.
 
Consensus on your team's goals is important; be patient with yourselves, and take the time to form a real consensus that everyone endorses. There is no rush. No-one needs to be bullied into accepting a goal they don't really feel very interested in. Consensus does not need to happen at this first meeting.
 
If, after thorough discussion at one or more goal-setting meetings, nearly everyone has accepted the same focus and goal, yet one person is resisting, then check in. Ask if that person would be willing to accept the preference of the rest of the group, or would prefer to not to participate? If the person does not support the group's focus but would like to be part of a 2020 Climate Action Team, invite them to form their own team by recruiting people interested in their preferred focus. This is okay. Be respectful and supportive of each other.
 
Consider both your long-term and your short-term focus of work:
  1. What long-term focus or goal might you most want to work on, as a group?
  2. Ask each other: Where is the strongest intersection between that which gives us joy and that which serves our community and the ecosystem in which we are embedded?
  3. What immediate, short-term, very modest, small-scope project can you take on together right now, as a group, in order to get some practice working as a team and experience some solid results?
Choose a focus and a project that you can get excited about and that you trust you will stay committed to over time, until it is successfully achieved.
 
Experience will teach you to learn how to work together effectively as a team. Stick with it! Don't expect it to go very smoothly from the beginning. Be patient with each other, and with yourselves. Learn from mistakes as well as from successes.
 
For your first project, choose something that you can achieve easily and quickly within one week or one month of getting started on the work - not longer than that. For the very first project, it is a good idea to choose something that can be accomplished in just a few work sessions, each no more than three hours long. It is good to achieve a few early successes. That will bond you as a working team, and this means accomplishing a sequence of small, easy projects at first!
 
Examples of very small, easy-to-achieve projects:
  • Working as a team, clean up the street outside the house of each team member, for 100 meters in both directions.
  • Install high-efficiency lightbulbs in every room in the house of all the team members.
  • If some of you have a yard, plant kitchen gardens, working together. For apartment dwellers, put some plants – kitchen herbs – on the balcony.
  • Make plans to cook a really tasty low-carbon vegetarian meal together – learn some fun new recipes, and find some fresh, locally produced, organic ingredients. This can become a weekly tradition! You could then teach others „low cabon cooking!“
  • Fix up your bicycles, and commit to using them instead of a car whenever you can.
  • Find a patch of waste land, acquire some tree seedlings, and plant trees on it.
  • Update all of your groups’ cleaning supplies to „green“ and do a neighborhood wide flyer campaign about how to do "green cleaning"
  • End your use of plastic bottles and packaging. Find and distribute reusable metal or glass bottles, food contaners and filtered water systems for all members of your group and their families.
  • Learn about your „carbon footprint“: the amount of carbon dioxide (and methane) you are responsible for emitting. What are your biggest energy uses? Write down a list of things you could realistically do more efficiently, or less of. Think about the big things: airplane flights, automobile travel, heating and cooling your house, eating red meat (cattle-raising causes a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, chicken-raising and raising non-meat-eating food fish, like tilapia, uses less).
Take notes. Compare notes.
 
We suggest that you accomplish a few very small, easy-to-complete projects together as a team, before moving on to a bigger, more complex, longer-term project – unless you already have lots of experience working together in the past.

At the beginning of each new project, ask each other how ready you feel to take on a more ambitious project. Make sure everyone is comfortable with the scope. When choosing your projects, it is important to make decisions on a consensus basis. (In contrast, the details of actually carrying out a project are sometimes better handled by work-team leaders or chief organisers, chosen by the group, rather than by consensus.)
 
Now that you have chosen your short-term, small-scope project, think about who can do what, and assign yourselves roles and responsibilities.
 
INVENTORY:
  • List the skills of each member of the group.
  • List the resources you bring.
  • List the skills needed to complete the project.
  • List the resources needed.
  • List other people or resources in your immediate community or network that may help you.
  • Add these skills to your personal profiles on 2020Climatecampaign.org
AGREE AND WRITE DOWN YOUR PROJECT OBJECTIVES AND PROJECT PLAN:
 
Once you have decided on your project, and inventoried the resources needed to successfully achieve it, write down what you agreed to do, when you agree to do it, and who is responsible for what.
 
Write down your agreement in two sections: Project Objectives, and Project Plan. The Project Objectives section will likely stay the same, until the project is done. The Project Plan will be a 'living document“; you will update and change it often, as you learn from experience and adapt your plan.
 
In your Project Objectives, you should specify a definition of success: What is the specific outcome that you are striving for?... This is something you can measure your work against, so that you know when you are finished the project. (And can celebrate!!)
 
It may happen, during the course of carrying out the project, that you decide to change the nature or objectives of the project, opportunistically, as the world teaches you what is most useful. This is fine. You can agree, as a group, to change your project agreement, including your statement of Project Objectives, at any time. But changes should be a group decision that everyone agrees on and buys into. It's really important to maintain consensus on project goals and objectives.
 
Having a written agreement with each other is powerful because it strengthens everyone's commitment, prevents disagreements, forces you to clarify and structure your thinking about how to implement your project, and lets you know when you are done (at which time you should throw a party!).
 
It's very useful.
 
This agreement can be just a a few pages. No more is needed. Most of the text can be in the form of bullet points. Make it easy-to-read, practical and to the point.
 
PAUSE AND REDEDICATE:
 
The team has now chosen what to do, and you have a plan for how to do it. You have joined heart and hands in clear common purpose, clearly mapped out and fully endorsed by everyone in the team. This is magnificent! It's a good time to pause and celebrate this achievement. It is no small achievement. It is the single most important step. The rest is a matter of calmly moving forward and enacting the goal, making it come true. Manifesting the project in reality is a matter of calm determination, of being willing to make progress and mistakes without worry, knowing that the team will adapt and learn and continue walking together in the direction of fulfilling its chosen goal.
Take a moment to consider what you have done. You are now able to say:

We have chosen our common purpose.

We have come together to do something beautifu, to play our part in defending our mother Earth and all our cousins in this biosphere, which scientists and mystics alike call Gaia. We have the great honour of serving this purpose together, as a team of friends. We have chosen a specific project together that we can accomplish, knowing that achieving it will strengthen our sense of the possible and deepen our friendship, in the way that shared positive experiences always do.
 
We are committed to being kind to each other and to enjoying our work together. We feel happy to create together. We are strong in heart and hands, and we are united in common purpose. This is our power.
 
PLANNING AND SCHEDULING OPERATIONS:
At the beginning of each session, after the Dedication and before getting to work, take a moment to review the Project Plan. What part of the Plan do you want to achieve today? Specifiy what do you want to get done? Checkk to see that you have all the tools and resources you will need to do today’s work. Schedule the day: What ist he time-line? At what time do you hope to be done, today?
 
In addition, schedule the next work party now, or better still, the next two work parties. Planning ahead is really useful! Consider what tools and resources you will need for your next two work days. Make a list of the tools you will need. Designate volunteers who will bring specific items to the next work sessions.
 
It is often a good idea to ask each volunteer to follow up in writing that they have acquired the tool and are ready to bring it to the next work session. If you all have access to the Internet, it is a very good idea to keep your Appoint a "Quartermaster“ for each work session, whose job it will be to contact the members of the team in advance and confirm (a) that they will attend, and (b) that they will bring the necessary tools and equipment. The Quartermaster can also help arrange shared transportation. It is a good idea to take turns being Quartermaster, it can be quite a lot of administrative work to be the coordinator of a work session. Share the load.
 
DO THE WORK!
 
Bring determination and good energy to the task. Show each other what you can do. Bring strength. And bring joy! Keep at it until you are done. If you find the end of the day's work session has come, and you have run out of time, and still not achieved all you planned for this work session, do not be discouraged! This just means that you need to adjust your planning, and leave yourselves more time to get a quotum of work done. With experience, your sense of realism about how much you can achieve in a single work session will improve. This is part of becoming an effective team. You will get better and better and better at it. Eventually, you will be an excellent team!
 
DEBRIEF OFTEN:
 
It is very useful to hold short meetings after a day's work, and also a longer meeting after a project is completed, to compare notes with each other about three things:
  • What went really well? What were we happy about, what should we do again next time?
  • What could we do differently and better next time? How can we get even better?
  • Has anything "personal“ come up (both positive or challenging) that needs to be shared?
During these debriefing sessions, take some time to AFFIRM. Tell each other, individually, some strenghts you see, things that you especially liked about how others in the group did their work, related to others, or innovated during this session. Keep compliments specific and sincere, so that people learn what is working well.
 
Feedback is important.
 
COMMUNICATIONS, ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITES:
 
It you plan to reach out to other groups, or to speak to the media, it is a very good idea to have a single spokesperson, chosen by group consensus. This will ensure clear messaging.
 
If your group is very small, you will not need to worry about assigning titles or formal roles. However, if it grows beyond perhaps three people, it starts to become useful to agree on your various roles and responsibilities. It is not necessary to get bureaucratic or hierarchical in small teams, but it can be useful to define clearly what each person's role is in relation to specific tasks that need to get done. These roles can change from time to time.
In reality, one of you will likely be the de facto leader of the group.
 
This is normal.
 
CELEBRATE YOUR VICTORIES:
 
When you do successfully achieve a project, CELEBRATE! Invite more friends to see the fruits of your labors and understand why you are doing what you are doing. Throw a party at the end of your project; congratulate each other; talk about what you learned and how you can build on your success together.
 
TELL THE WORLD WHAT YOU DID:
 
This is important! Get on the 2020 Website and tell us what you did. Share your story, tell us what was hard and what was easy, what you learned and what you would do differently next time. If you like, provide information that will allow other teams with similar interests, or teams with different interests working in the same geographic region, to contact you, so that you can plan to meet up and compare notes, celebrate together, maybe even join forces and plan work-and-play-days together sometimes.
 
ENCOURAGE OTHER TEAMS TO FORM:
 
Once your team has got going, and acquired some experience, you can mentor other teams. Tell your friends and family what you are doing.   Ask them if they, too, might like to form a team. You could also go to schools or colleges, tell your team's story, and encourage people there to form their own teams. Offer them your storiy and your encouragement, and if you feel ready to give advice about team formation and management, you can offer to mentor the start-up of their team.  
 
In this way, teams will virally replicate: experienced teams will encourage the formation of other teams. This is how a movement grows.
 
MEET WITH OTHER TEAMS TO CELEBRATE AND COMPARE NOTES:
 
We have set up this Internet portal so that you can find other Climate Action Teams working in your area. (You can also use social networking sites like Orkut or Facebook to find other teams.) You can get in touch with these other teams, and plan get-togethers. These can be just social gatherings, to make new friends and celebrate your victories and tell each other your stories. They can also be opportunities to join forces and work together in larger groups now and then.  
 
For example, if two or more teams in a region have chosen to focus on learning the craft of installing solar hot water systems on rooftops of houses, and connecting them to the house's plumbing, then it may be useful to coordinate your purchasing of materials.
 
Or if two or more teams have chosen to focus on planting trees on previously deforested land, to restore natural ecosystems, then it makes a lot of sense to plan work-days together and replant an area as a larger group. This day's work, or weekend's work, can easily then include a plan to have a celebration together in the evening after a good day's work. There are few greater pleasures than celebrating with friends after working well together all day, doing something that is truly useful for the ecosystem and community of which you are a part. You will feel deep pride in your work together. Celebrate working together by playing together.
 
RENEWING TEAM MEMBERSHIP:
 
It will almost certainly come to pass that your group will experience membership turnover. Someone will leave, either because of conflict with some other individual within the group, or because they get too busy with other things, or just lose interest in the team's project. This is okay! It is normal.
 
Your team should plan ahead for membership turnover. You should try to avoid making interpersonal dramas about this when it occurs. Knowing it will occur will help you avoid drama.
 
Set up a simple, elegant, calm way of accepting new members. If you would like to invite a friend to join the team, ask the rest of the team beforehand, perhaps during the debriefing at the end of a work-and-play session. The rest of the team has a right to say yes, no, or maybe. In general, it is a good idea to invite new members on an explicitly provisional basis. For example, you can let the prospective new member know that s/he will be expected to participate in at least three work sessions with the rest of the team, before the team will consider formally accepting the new member.
 
In general, it is best for the team to make the decision about accepting a new member on a consensus basis, and to make the decision when the new member is not present.
 
It can also be helpful to have a simple ceremony when the new member is accepted. For example, each new member could be presented with a small painted stick, with their name on it, in a simple ceremony attended by all the existing members, standing in a circle around the new member. (If the member later leaves the group, or is asked to leave, then this stick can be brought to the circle and broken in two, in a calm and respectful ceremony of leaving).
 
In this ceremony for accepting membership, the new member will affirm their commitment to working for the shared purpose of the group, for contributing harmony and positive energy to the group, for being thoughtful about the commitments s/he makes, and for meeting every commitment s/he does make.
 
The new member should also be asked to make a clear commitment to maintaining a high standard of personal ethical behavior. The core ethical imperative is the same one that we all have known about forever: it is the Golden Rule of mutual respect, in which we behave towards others in the same way we would have them behave toward us. In our circle, we extend this respect to our cousins in the biosphere, other members of the tree of life: we do not end the lives of animals or plants unnecessarily. We respect their lives, too.
 
It is not really possible to serve one's ecosystem and community while engaging in evil or criminal behavior at the same time. It is important for you to be selective about the sort of people you invite to your team, because each person carries a particular sort of energy and intention, and each person's energy will influence the team. Seek honest and decent people, and in your welcoming ceremony for new members, ask them to affirm explicitly that they choose to live with respect, honesty and decency, not only when they are working with the team, but throughout their days. 
 
Members should be initiated one at a time, not several at a time, to underline their understanding that they are making a personal commitment, and that the consciousness of the whole team is on them at the moment when they make their agreement of membership.
 
Every member must always be completely free to leave the team, of their own free choice! There is no coercion in our teams. The choice to leave can be elegant and simple. Simply let it be. 
 
There must also be an calm, respectful mechanism for the team to ask a member to leave the team, when that member is not working harmoniously within the team. Remember that the team must maintain a positive spirit. Be willing to ask a member who is consistently disrupting the harmony and positive energy of the team to leave the team – even if that member happens to be the original founder of the team!
 
Maintaining and feeding the harmony and positive energy within the team is a duty for each member. It is useful to keep this simple thought in mind:
 
"It's not about me. It's about us, and our shared purpose."
 
CHOOSING AND PLANNING BIGGER PROJECTS:
 
After your team has completed a few small projects, you may begin to feel like an experienced, capable team that is ready for bigger challenges.
 
For a list of larger-scale projects, click this link _______________.
 
Taking on a bigger, longer-term, more complex challenge is different in important ways than taking on a small, easy-to-accomplish, short-term challenge. On the other hand, each big challenge can (and should!) be broken into a series of smaller, easy-to-accomplish steps. It is important to structure the plan for your bigger projects in bite-sized chunks, so that you can maintain momentum, experience a sense of progress, and avoid getting bogged down in confusion about what needs to be done next. This is one reason why it is so useful for your team to take on a few small, easy-to-achieve projects, before taking on something larger and more complex: it is important for your team to get skilled at accomplishing small projects, because large projects are best run as a series of small projects and discrete taks.
 
Often, the small projects making up a bigger, more complex project will operate in parallel as well as in series. For example, if your team chooses its big project challenge to be the organisation of a city-wide network of community gardens, some of you may focus on getting neighborhood schools and groups to support and participate, others may focus on working with the city government to obtain planning permissions and support, some of you may focus on acquiring equipment and seedlings, and others of you may focus on the hands-on work of showing community volunteers how to set seeds and nurture gardens. You may find that the bigger project will require the three, four, or five members of your team to each take on a particular sub-project, and to recruit your own sub-teams of volunteers to work with you.
 
COULD YOU DO THIS AS A SOCIAL CHARTERED ORGANIZATION?
 
Once your team is experienced at planning and accomplishing projects, and working together well, you might want to ask yourselves: Could we choose a project that will sustain itself financially? Can we run a project that contributes to our community and to the biosphere, as a business? 
 
For example, it would make a great deal of ecological sense for nearly every building in the world to have solar hot-water tanks on the roof or walls, integrated with the building's plumbing system, in order to heat water with the energy of the sun, rather than by burning fossil fuels or using electricity. In most climates, more than half of the heat energy required for household hot water tanks can be supplied by the heat of the sun. This is true even in cloudy northern countries like England or Germany, and it is easily true in Brasil.
 
Installing and maintaining solar hot water systems is not only a righteous work, which requires a smoothly working team of skilled people to do, it is also a team skill that can be exercised as a business, which can sustain all the members of the team.
 
RECOGNITION:
 
After mid-2010, we will begin to seek out teams who are doing particularly effective and valuable work, so that we can recognise them publicly. We will do this so that other teams can learn from them. (This is called „sharing best practice.“ If you know of teams doing especially good work, nominate them for Leading Team status on our Website.
Starting in mid-2010, our prize jury will award Leading Team designation to selected teams on an occasional basis, with a formal recognition ceremony and celebration, to which other teams in the region will be invited to participate.
 
NOW TAKE ACTION:
 
CALL THE FRIEND YOUR INTUITION TELLS YOU YOU WOULD MOST LIKE TO WORK WITH. TOGETHER WITH THAT FIRST FRIEND; PLANT THE SEED OF YOUR TEAM.

DO IT RIGHT NOW!

 

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