With every news report, the world seems to be careening off the rails. It's all too easy to slip into despair waiting for co-opted, self-serving governments to act.

The antidote to fear and despair is hope and action. We each hold the power to make personal changes that can drive local changes and cascade into large-scale social transformation.

This is the guidebook for ordinary people who want to create a new society now. The first section explores the idea of transformative change — what it is, what difference it makes, and how it is connected to learning.

The second section explores powerful new stories of everyday people who have challenged traditional understandings of food, shelter, energy, transportation, waste, and economics, and transformed aspects of their lives, their communities, and wider society.

In the final section, the authors provide a workbook to guide people, wherever they are, through the process of catalyzing change.

We all have the power to create a more just and ecological society. We all have the power to be changemakers.

Fay Weller is a community organizer, homesteader, researcher, and artist. She has focused on broad systemic change in her work and activism, and holds a PhD focused on social transformation. Fay loves the creative spark when working on new community ideas that increase ecological and just choices for citizens. She is engaged in numerous collaborative initiatives from a local bus service to sustainability planning, to affordable, low-impact heating. She nurtures, grows, and sells apples, eggs, and vegetables, and creates clothing from handmade fabrics. Fay has two adult children and a granddaughter. She and her partner Bob live on their Gabriola Island, BC farm with Yu and Mi, their two sheep, and numerous chickens.

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Mary Wilson has a longstanding interest in learning and communication for social change. She has worked for two decades as a facilitator, instructor, researcher, and instructional designer, and holds a Ph.D. in education. As a student of Buddhism, Mary is fascinated by the Boddhisatvas — metaphorical enlightened beings who embody wisdom, compassion, and practice. She sees the combination of wisdom, compassion, and practice as central to learning, and central to our collective efforts to live in harmony on our finite planet. An active participant in her Gabriola Island, BC community, Mary lives with her partner, her 92-year-old mother, and several critters. She and her partner are simultaneously caring for her mom, restoring a ramshackle island home, developing a permaculture food forest, and building an engineless catamaran.

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