The Anne Behan Community Sustainability Award
For Transition Initiatives on the island of Ireland

‘Sustainability is a concept more than a strict code. It refers to responsible and ethical methods of practice in economic, social and environmental management. In many ways sustainability refers to new methods of old practices. It is often misinterpreted as relating solely to the environment, but in practice, it is an integrated approach to all aspects of life - economic, social, environmental and cultural.’

Anne Behan, 1959-2004

The Anne Behan Community Sustainability Award for Transition Initiatives will be presented every year by Feasta, the Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability, to the community in Ireland which, in the opinion of a panel of judges, has done most to build local resilience, economic self-reliance, to strengthen itself socially and culturally and to protect and enhance its natural environment.

What is a Transition Initiative?
Transition Town initiatives engage communities in planning and action to build resilience in the face of peak oil and climate change.
http://transitiontowns.org.

Transition Ireland and Northern Ireland Network
The Irish Network was set up to inspire; to encourage; to network; to support and to train communities as they as they consider, adopt, adapt and implement the transition model in their district. If you are interested in finding out more, have a look at the website at transitiontownsireland.ning.com.

Objective of Award:
To celebrate communities and groups who are using the Transition Process to meet local cultural, social, economic and spiritual needs in ways which strengthen the bonds of the community, build its resilience, economic self-reliance and protect and enhance its natural environment.

Eligible Groups:
Transition initiatives on the island of Ireland that can demonstrate they have made a contribution to the resilience, economic, social, cultural and environmental sustainability of their community.

Criteria for Appraisal:

• Started the Transition Process
• Evidence that the project meets local needs using local resources in a sustainable way
• Evidence of broad-based local support and involvement
• Evidence of innovative thinking
• Groups that have worked in conjunction with other groups in the community and/or neighbouring communities will be favoured.

The judges are looking particularly for communities that have strengthened more than one aspect of local life by taking the integrated approach, which Anne Behan favoured and which the Transition Process advocates.
http://www.wexfordpartnership.ie/Action%20for%20Sustainability.pdf

There are two phases in the award procedure.

Phase One
Three communities are short-listed on the basis of the application forms submitted.

Phase Two
The panel of judges visits the three short-listed communities in order to decide the winner.

Winning Community
The award winners will receive for the year a bog oak bowl, hand turned by Ken Maye, Anne Behan's husband, and mounted by him on a modern oak base to represent the old and the new in harmony.

Feasta will provide a speaker for a briefing or event for the winning community. The nature of this event will be determined by the needs of the winning community. The winning community will also receive a sustainability resource pack from Feasta and the Powerdown TV show from Cultivate.

The two runner-up communities will each receive a Feasta publications pack and the Powerdown TV show.

The Award was launched at the Irish Transition Gathering 2009, which was held at the Convergence festival 2009.

In October 2009, we were pleased to announce the first winner of the Award - Transition Town Kinsale.

About Anne Behan

Article by Anne Behan outlining her approach to community sustainability

Community-related articles in this website:

Articles are ordered with the most recent ones first.

From the second Feasta Review, November 2004:

Book review: Dig where you stand: a message of hope

Nadia Johanisova reviews Soil and Soul by Alastair McIntosh

Book review: The mistaken turning on humankind's path

Jonathan Dawson reviews The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abrams, and The Other Side of Eden by Hugh Brody

From Short Circuit:

Chapter Two: Creating Enough Elbow Room

In the world economy, only a very limited range of activities is commercially feasible in most communities because of the intensity of competition from outside. We must therefore build independent, parallel economies if we are to fill more of our needs for ourselves.

PDF documents will open in your browser. However they can be large documents and so this may take some time. To download the documents directly to your hard drive right-click on the document link and choose 'Save Target As..'

To read a PDF document you will need a copy of Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer. You can get a free copy here.