How Do Connection and Hopeful Action Support Resilient Community?

This capstone arises from the course, Initiatives in Peacebuilding (IPB). As a graduate student focusing on Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation, IPB was a required course whose content propelled me toward the study of resource conflicts. Advancing from that study, I chose to practice strategies to lessen these conflicts by means of positive action. Facing two challenges—that Earth’s natural resources are finite and that excessive use of fossil fuels has caused destructive climate change—I wondered how to help transform human awareness to value the conservation of resources and the abatement of climate change. My research brought me to Joanna Macy, an educator, ecologist, and trainer whose work helps change the culture of resource exploitation to a culture of Earth justice. My research question is: How do connection and hopeful action support resilient community? My efforts to answer this question generated a training that I developed to help people understand positive ways to face the challenges of resource exploitation and harmful climate change.