Aaron Fernando works with Bay Bucks, a local currency and business community in the Bay Area of California. He is now passionate about money reform and believes that local currencies address a wide range of problems including inequality, environmental degradation, and the erosion of social capital. He formerly worked in the nonprofit sector in Washington DC, spent some time traveling in Southeast Asia, and ultimately moved to the Bay Area specifically to work with Bay Bucks and promote local currencies. Aaron sees the Bay Bucks currency as a well-designed tool to build trust between members and increase community resilience. He is an advocate for new economic thinking, writes for Sri Lanka’s leading business magazine about these issues, and hopes to become a thought leader on money reform. Aaron holds a B.A. in International Development & Social Change with a focus on Economics from Clark University.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Transforming Money to Benefit Society

John will explain how to choose from thousands of possible plant selections for use in our regenerative landscapes, and where to find them. Learn how to source from back yard plant swaps to commercial nurseries and international germplasm repositories, including legalities, precautions, ethics, and building local community resilience.

Presented By: John Valenzuela

Friday, September 16th | 10:00 – 11:00 AM | Zocalo

Each choice we make is a vote for the kind of world we want to live in. The mission of ‘Adapt – A Permaculture Game’ is to educate individuals and groups how to design in the ethics and principles of Permaculture to each aspect of our lives. We will play through the creating of a world to thrive in by applying principles, patterns, and collective knowledge pools to cultivate caring choices for our communities and our own self-care needs.  This playshop will provide you with the inside scoop on the evolutionary teaching tool – ‘Adapt’ – while participating in a few rounds of game play. Explore with us the many ways in which this game and its pieces can be used through out a multitude of educational environments and community development.

Presented By: Bridget O’Brien

Sunday September 18th | 12:30 – 1:30 PM | Bioregional Hub

Chinese Galactic Cosmonaut

Alpha Lo is co-editor and co-author of the Open Collaboration Encyclopedia. He also helped to found the Gift Circle Network, and has created a number of social and economic architectures, amongst them Facilitator Improv, Empathic Dashboard, Sorry Circles, Coupon currencies, and the Participatory Commons.

Friday, Oct 6| 4:30| Bioregional Hub

How to Design New Social Architectures

2016 Convergence Workshop: The Evolution of Green Acres Urban Village

Anna Purna has lived in giant redwood trees to prevent them from being cut down, planted trees with children at their schools, converted diesel buses and trucks to run on vegetable oil and started a garden program at her daughters school.

2016 Convergence Workshop: There is No Away: Make Your Very Own Bottle Brick

2016 Convergence Workshop: Earth Bench: Build a Peace Cob Bench for the Solar Living Institute

Ayako Nagano is an attorney, entrepreneur and a community organizer. Ayako is a frequent volunteer at Transition Berkeley and the Northern California Resilience Network. She presently serves on the Board of ZenPlay, a charitable organization that crowd-sources funds to help under-served children both locally and globally. Ayako has utilized her non-profit and legal experience to support diverse causes including the Japanese-speaking persons living in the United States; tenant rights in Oakland; the HIV Law Project in New York City; the Union of Needletrade, Industrial, and Textile Employees; women’s rights, and human rights.

Beyond the Culture of Separation uses an innovative approach and interactive learning modalities to expand white-identified participants’ capacities to work toward a racially equitable society. Because shame and isolation are integral aspects of white socialization, our approach is grounded in encouragement and community building. We will explore levels of racism and introduce practical tools for shifting our personal and collective relationship to whiteness.

This workshop is for White-identified people *

*As white-identified people, we have a responsibility to educate ourselves about racism. In addition, coming together in a white-only space enables us to express feelings and share experiences without causing harm to people of color. Honest dialogues about race among white-identified people disrupts the white social norm that inhibits these conversations, while building our capacities to work effectively for racial equity.

Beyond the Culture of Separation is an 8-week class developed and led by me and my co-facilitators (4 cohorts of 15 plus participants over 2 years). we use an innovative approach and interactive learning modalities to expand white-identified participants’ capacities to contribute collectively to the creation of a society with greater freedom and dignity for everyone.

Presented By: Angela Sevin

2016 Convergence Panel: The Revolution Must Be Funded! Finding Resources for Your Organization & Projects

As a caring steward of life Bridget O’Brien strives to explore resilience through many pathways. Her studies and work focus on self-care, social, and land-use design. While utilizing her diverse skills, experiences, and trainings to provide a wholistic approach to culture repair. Bridget shares her passion for playful impactful loving service through her work as a Permaculture educator and designer. She is the Program Director for New Rising Sun (an educational retreat center, farm, and community developing in Ganges, Michigan), and is the creative inspiration of ‘Adapt’ – A Permaculture Game, in collaboration with PermaculturePrinciples.com.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Adapt – A Permaculture Game “Create a world you want to live in.”

Transition Streets is a neighbor-led project to reduce household energy and water use, build resilient local food systems, and build community resilience and increase social cohesion on your street. It takes the systemic thinking of Transition & Permaculture and breaks it down into a simple curriculum with actionable steps that add up to real change. If you’ve been looking for ways to engage your neighbors and launch resilience-building on your street, you will want to take in this workshop!

Transition Streets is a relatively new and very successful project of Transition US which has been used in dozens of communities across the country. It combines a number of strategies: saving money on household bills; getting to know your neighbors; leadership and facilitation development; community dialogue; as well as reducing energy/water/waste. It is definitely a “building bridges” project, particularly between near neighbors. The workshop will provide participants with a taste of the curriculum as well as tips on how to implement it (for example, outreach to neighbors & local media, running a successful meeting) and other takeaways/lessons learned from the project. Presenters will include TUS staff (Carolyne Stayton and Joshua Shepherd) as well as local Transition leaders who have implemented Transition Streets in their own neighborhoods. This workshop will be primarily informational although there will be a number of participatory exercises to really relay the flavor of the project and its potential for greater systemic change.

Presented By: Tina Clark

2016 Convergence Panel: Permaculture and the Indigenous Contribution: A Courageous Conversation

Carolyne Stayton is the Executive Director of Transition US (the national hub of the international Transition Towns Movement). She has an advanced degree in nonprofit management and her background includes serving as Director of New College’s North Bay Campus of Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community, an innovative educational institution that promoted advanced studies in leadership and community-building. Carolyne resides in Graton, California where she participates with others in building a future to live into.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Building Resilient Neighborhoods with Transition Streets

Chaz’s passion and knowledge comes from working in the solar energy field for over seven years, as well as having been a pioneer in the alternative energy for off-grid living segment in the 1980’s.
He is a life-long entrepreneur, starting and advising three successful business. Chaz also spent time in the telecom/Internet field as a business development manager and sales executive.
His experience as a builder and electrician help him administer complex designs in solar equipment. Chaz has completed an AA in electronics technology, while continuing his education with business and solar/electrical courses.

2016 Convergence Workshop: Solar & LEDs for New Closed Loop Agriculture

Saturday,Oct 7| 2pm| Zocalo

High efficiency greywater systems as a game changer for widespread adoption

Christina studied social psychology and has worked to shift the culture toward more just and sustainable practices ever since. Currently she is committed to exploring how art itself can serve as a change agent, by presenting regenerative solutions as irresistibly imaginative and fun. Having worked in glass and stone and built water features for community gardens and public spaces, she now uses whatever media can best raise consciousness about particularly pressing environmental issues (often water related).

In 1974 she tested affirmative action and was the first woman apprentice admitted to a CA plumbing union.  Later as a plumbing contractor, she plumbed many straw bale and rammed earth residences. In 1990 she designed and built a passive solar rammed-earth cottage in downtown Oakland demonstrating the feasibility of alternative materials for inner city infill.

In 2007 she joined the Greywater Guerrillas in creating a groundswell of support for greywater re-use and in 2009 helped craft a more reasonable state greywater code at stakeholder meetings in Sacramento. As part of the now mainstream Greywater Action she teaches hands-on greywater and rainwater installation workshops, professional installer trainings, and lectures about water harvesting and re-use options.

She is a guest instructor at OAEC, Merrit College, and other Permaculture courses

and directly installs rainwater and greywater systems.

She envisions we humans gracefully re-entering the nutrient cycle, offering what passes through our bodies back to the earth in the most delicious forms possible.

She holds several Permaculture Design certificates, is a Harner Method Shamanic Counselor, and sits on the boards of Women Eco Artists Dialog and the Metaphor Project.

She loves to play in her garden, graft, forage, dream, drum, listen to water sing, and take refuge in the woods.

2016 Convergence Red Talk Presentation: Permaculture and Art

2016 Convergence Panel:  Water Panel

The Cogarden platform enables a ‘Do It Together’ food gardening experience. Connecting food growers that share fence, or are miles from each other. Cogardeners help in creating a Community to Consumer food supply chain, that makes neighborhoods resilient, and culturally diverse. Sunil, Founder, Cogarden will introduce the Cogardening framework, its socio-cultural impact, and eco-commerce potential. Join us. Let’s Cogarden.

Presented by: Sunil R Nair and Rob Bennaton

Sunday September 18th | 3:30 – 4:30 PM | Bioregional Hub

As the social, economic, and environmental impacts of climate change become more pronounced, Community Choice energy can be a powerful vehicle for democratizing energy, spurring local sustainable economic development, and building more resilient communities. This workshop will consist of a 20 minute slide presentation followed by group discussion on the relationship between local renewable energy and community empowerment. Participants will learn about Community Choice energy and the role it can play toward a just transition to a new economy, and the vision for the Community Choice program under development in Alameda County.

Presented by: Megan O’Neil and Colin Miller

Sunday September 18th | 9:30 – 10:30 AM | Yurt

How resilient is your community? How ready are you for the natural and man-made disasters and disruptions that inevitably accompany climate change? Did you know that our work in permaculture, homesteading, and building resilient community is also disaster preparedness work? Join this vibrant discussion about these overlapping fields, and explore ways of leveraging ‘crisis consciousness’ to enhance your efforts to build truly resilient community. Learn how to assemble your own “go bag,” receive great practical resilience and emergency-prep tips that could save lives, and share your wisdom and experience in this interactive workshop, hosted by Nils Palsson of Transition US and Larry Goldberg of Transition Humboldt.

Presented by: Nils Palsson and Larry Goldberg

Saturday September 17th | 11 AM – 12 PM | Solar Panel: La Luna

Permie-journos Steven Saint Thomas and Trudy Thomas traveled from San Francisco to Seattle to document the West Coast’s burgeoning Transition movement. See how permaculturists are taking design principles to the collective level, transforming whole communities to build resilient, local food systems.

“Adventures in Permaculture: Transition West Coast” documents how permaculturists are transforming whole communities to build resilient, local food systems.

This film follows on the heels of “Adventures in Permaculture: Australia.” We interviewed leading West Coast permaculturists and Transitionists – including Penny Livingston, Trathen Heckman (Daily Acts), Brock Dolman (Occidentl Arts & Ecology Center), Carolyne Stayton (Transition US), Jackie Cramer (Beacon Food Forest) and Matt Bibeau (City Repair). If permaculture is going to be relevant in the next 25 years, it must take design principles to the next level – the community!

Followed by Q&A from the Directors:  STEVEN SAINT THOMAS & TRUDY THOMAS

Presented By: Steven Saint Thomas and Trudy Thomas

Friday, September 16th | 7:00 – 9:30 PM | Yurt

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