It’s almost Spring (even though it doesn’t feel like it). Our group is awakening and there’s a lot coming up.
A big welcome to our new members from our Stroud Farmers market event. Here’s some information on how to find us if you’d like to come along to one of our meetings.
Can you help XR Stroud’s mass mobilization work?
We have an urgent need for someone to volunteer some time to help inform XR national about our groups new membership drive. This would include writing a summary of the actions we have coming up, numbers coming to meetings, and outreach events planned/completed. This would be a perfect role for someone that wants to help XR Stroud, but can’t always attend meetings. Please contact us if you’re interested.
Training and talks by Stroud XR
NVDA Train the Trainers – Sunday 15th March 2pm to 6pm venue to be confirmed. Please save the date, or see Facebook event nearer the time for final details. This training starts to set people up to begin training in their local groups – need to attend an NVDA as support trainer. Contact training@xrstroud.org for all training places and details.
XR Nonviolent Direct Action (NVDA) training, Thursday 26th March from 6pm to 9:30pm in Stroud (venue also to be confirmed). See Facebook event nearer the date to book places. This training will include an introduction to XR/NVDA to help inform, empower and motivate people to become active in XR. This includes what, why, and how, non-violent direct action information, de-escalation, legal basics, self-care and regenerative culture.
Heading 4 Extinction – Speaker Training – Sunday 5th April, 1pm to 4pm at Courtyard Rooms, Stroud. Training covers the details for giving the XR H4E ‘Talk’ using the slides and notes, and public speaking skills, in order to build confidence and knowledge to present the talk.
De-escalation session, including how to talk with members of the public about Climate and Ecological Emergency, using Non-Violent Communication approach. This will be held next week at our next XR Stroud meeting. There will also be a workshop on 11th March. The weekly meeting runs from 7pm to 9:30pm with food from 6:30 at The Beacon, Kendrick Street, Stroud. Here’s how to find us.
Induction Training – running an ‘Introduction to XR‘ session for members of the public.. this is a 90 minute workshop, often run ‘on the street’ to introduce XR, the reasons, methods and Principles and Values that have made XR the most successful movement raising public awareness of the climate change emergency we are facing. This will be at 11:30am at the Beacon in Stroud on Saturday 21st March.
Can you help with these action announcements?
Volunteers needed for the Market stall for outreach on 14th March from 9am for deescalation training at the Beacon. This next stall will be held at Merrywalks. We still need volunteers for the rota to speak to the public and start conversations with people about climate breakdown. Please contact us if you can help.
There will be some XR-led Cheltenham street event this Sunday 8th March 1pm to 3pm near Barclays. It will be a fun Cheltenham cup themed event aimed at raising awareness of the betting odds of climate breakdown. All ideas and help are welcome for this action. Does anyone have a bowler hat that our rebels in Cheltenham could borrow? Please contact me.
In the lead-up to COP 26 a group of rebels are walking from Spain to Glasgow, to raise awareness of climate breakdown. They’ll be going through Stroud and Gloucester during their mammoth journey in October/November time. They’re asking for support with accommodation, can you spare a bed or room for these rebels? This awareness event is in the early stages of planning, so please get in touch to help this event happen.
The rebel ringers are ramping up. These are volunteer campaigners who telephone rebels on our databases to try and encourage more people to attend actions. If you’re keen to help XR Stroud but can’t always make a meeting we would welcome any time that you can spare to volunteer by calling fellow rebels. Training will be provided, so please get in touch.
Anyone interested in helping with international actions? There are lots of international actions coming up 13th April Madrid, 8th May Barcelona and of course our very own 23rd May in London. Want to reach out to others internationally? Get in touch
Better safeguarding for children and vulnerable adults
A concern has been raised about the safeguarding of young people within XR. For example how our actions can potentially increase stress and anxiety for young people by having key action events during term times and during exam periods.
We explored whether or not we could create a safeguarding policy, to help us think about how we could help with issues like this.
There’s more information to come on this, but if you feel like you could do with some wellbeing support, or if you need some extra advice for avoiding burnout, I found this XR wellbeing guide called don’t panic really useful.
Debrief of market stall event
We completed our meeting with a debriefing of the market stall event held last weekend. For those who weren’t able to attend. We used a sticker board to engage with members of the public in Stroud, asking people to place a sticker on a board to gauge how they felt about climate breakdown.
Those that attended felt that it was a great way to engage with people, we discussed some ideas to improve and you can observe the results of our conversation starter as the top of this email.