The New CS Community is LIVE!
We have very exciting news to share with you today!
The new Crowdsourcing Sustainability Community is officially live!
So come on in! ?
Ryan and I have been working away to bring you the best online community platform we can find and design an experience that will be exciting, inspiring, and fun, and that will genuinely support all of us to maximize our collective positive impact. This has always been an important part of Crowdsourcing Sustainability’s long-term vision, and we are thrilled to be bringing it to life with you!
This free community is a co-creative space. Our goal is to embody the true meaning of community, where everyone is where everyone is valued, supported, and encouraged to share their unique gifts. We believe this will help make our collective experience the best it can be. That means you all get to make this community what you want and need it to be! We will of course proactively facilitate events, conversations, and opportunities to connect and learn; and we hope you’ll also take the reins of your experience and let us know how we can support you.
By joining the CS Community you get:
- An ever-growing Resource Library. Access to a ton of free resources, practices, tools, and guides to support you in all aspects of your climate journey.
- Monthly live community events and access to the full library of event recordings.
- Weekly ways to engage in community and expand your climate knowledge and action, including prompts, reflection questions, challenges, discussions, action invitations, and more.
- A CommunityDirectory + Map. This is a networking dream come true! See who’s doing what and connect with the right people for you. This directory allows you to search by location, specific skills, experiences, interests, organizations, etc so that you can find the right people at the right time on your climate journey.
- Project collaboration and support. Got a climate project you’re working on? Or one you’ve had in the back of your mind for ages but haven’t known how to get started or connect with people who can help you? Our Community allows you to share your project and let people know exactly what you need so you can actively collaborate and mutually support each other.
- Community Discussion Forums. Start a discussion with your fellow community members to get their ideas, perspective, or resources on a particular topic. Or, join a discussion that’s already happening and contribute your knowledge and perspective!
- Climate Journey Paths. We’ve created a high-level framework to help you locate yourself on your climate journey, and we’ve curated resources specific to the questions and explorations of that phase of the journey. It’s kind of like a “mini course” that you can move through at your own pace throughout your time in the CS Community!
Our vision for this space is that it sparks your imagination for what is possible in our climate action and impact, and that is tangibly supports you to collaborate and bring ideas, projects, and relationships to life.
Workshops with Climate Experts!
In addition to hosting monthly free community workshops facilitated by the CS team, we are also going to be hosting workshops with guest experts! We’ll be bringing in practitioners, leaders, and experts from all across the climate movement and creating opportunities for you to learn from them and connect with their work.
These guest workshops will be offered at accessible sliding scale pricing. There will always be a free option! So if paying for guest workshops is financially stressful for you we welcome and encourage you to attend for free.
We never want cost to be the reason someone is unable to learn, connect, or gain the knowledge and inspiration they need to contribute to solving the climate crisis.
Our purpose and intention in adopting this structure is:
1) to pay our guest teachers well for their time and expertise and be a source of financial support for climate workers. We believe our economies need to shift to support work that increases the wellbeing of people and planet and we want to make that a reality as much as possible right now. We are excited to contribute to supporting the livelihoods of people working to address the climate crisis. The majority of the money from ticket sales will go directly to the teachers themselves.
2) to support the long-term financial sustainability of Crowdsourcing Sustainability. We are a small organization with big ambitions. While we have been grateful to receive a few grants from some wonderful foundations, securing long-term grant funding is very time and energy intensive, and is also unpredictable. We want to continue supporting you as long as is useful, and to always be able to focus on bringing you the best research, content, and experience possible – and the reality is that requires financial sustainability. CS will receive a small proportion of the proceeds to help cover our costs and support our staff.
To be clear – being a member of the CS Community and accessing all the wonderful opportunities our platform offers will always be free!
And we are always open to your ideas and feedback on how to make our structures and processes better. We want you to help us shape this space.
To kick things off, we have four live community events coming up!
I will be hosting two Community Meet and Greet + Orientation Sessions to support you to get comfortable with the community platform, answer any questions, and give you an opportunity to meet the other awesome folks who are in this space with you.
Community Meet and Greet + Orientation Session #1 – January 26th 1-2PM EST
Community Meet and Greet + Orientation Session #2 – January 30th 9-10AM EST
Session #1 is geared towards North, Central, and South American time zones. Session #2 is geared towards European, Asian, and Oceanic time zones.
Our first Community Event will be….
Climate Action Intention Setting for 2023
February 1st, 12-1PM EST
As we settle into a new calendar year, we know that meaningful climate action is more important than ever. This workshop will support you to gather, clarify, and commit to the climate actions that are most important to you this year, as well as the experiences you most want to have in your climate action. How we do things is just as important as what we do!
Our first Guest Workshop for the community will be…
Your Climate Story: Following your Feelings w/ Rachel Malena-Chan of Eco-Anxious Stories
February 21st, 12-1:30PM EST
Storytelling is a powerful tool for social and environmental change. This workshop explores our experiences with climate change through the lens of story as a way to center our values, identities, and emotions. As a Story Strategist with a passion for climate justice, Rachel brings insights about how she frames her own climate story, and how personal and public storytelling can foster change.
Through facilitated activities and prompts, participants will be supported to:
- Put eco-emotions into context so that you can respond to them with compassion
- Craft your own personal “climate story” around the themes and characters that mobilize you
- Communicate with others about the climate crisis from a place of personal clarity and empowerment
- Apply story as a powerful tool for organizing, connecting, and changemaking
We hope to see you at these events and in the new community! Thank you so much for all the ways you have supported CS over the years and made it into the amazing community it already is. We are so excited for you all to start getting to know each other, learning about the amazing projects your fellow community members are working on, and envisioning new ways to collaborate and make a positive impact together.
See you in the community!