July
Global Climate Change Café
July 17th, 6 – 9:30 PM, at the Nevada City Methodist Church, 433 Broad Street, Nevada City, CA.

August
Global Climate Change Café
August 19th, 1-5 PM, at the Miners Foundry Cultural Center, 325 Spring Street, Nevada City, CA

David Gerson of the Empowerment Institute invites you to join a nationwide campaign to cool America.

Download their invitation here (it’s a 420k pdf)

Nancy Margulies
The World Café had been around for more than ten years when the issue of global warming caught the attention of people worldwide. The need for meaningful conversation, addressing the questions surrounding this threat was clear. World Café seemed ideally suited. At that time Nancy Margulies had been hosting World Cafés for community and business groups worldwide. She and business consultant and educator, Anne Adams began hosting Global Climate Change Cafés in their homes. Nancy worked with the City Manager of Redwood City to host a similar Café for residents and City Hall staff.

Nancy is the developer of Mindscaping, a visual recording method that she uses to capture key insights during World Café “harvesting” of ideas. She is the author of several books including, Mapping Inner Space and Visual Thinking. Nancy is currently working on a comic about key principles and questions with author Margaret Wheatley.

Amy Lenzo
Amy is an artist, writer, photographer, and Web2.0 online communications & social media professional.

She runs Clear Light Communications and is a Community Technology Steward for the World Café and a number of other visionary groups. She blogs regularly on beauty, and is an avid proponent of the Online Beauty Revolution!

A long-time nature-lover and environmentalist, Amy contributes articles on art and the environment to Seeds for Thought, edits the ecopsychology e-zine Gatherings and is on the board of River Ocean, a UK environmental education NGO she co-founded in 1995.

Amy and Nancy Margulies were collaborators on the design for this blog and together they care for its ongoing maintenance.

David Gershon
David Gershon, of the Empowerment Institute and author of “The Low Carb(on) Diet, A Thirty Day program to Lose 5,000 Pounds” developed a seminar that includes a World Café in which people explore their fears and hopes, discuss what is possible and what they feel called to to. After the Café segment the Low Carb(on) Diet book is used to encourage forming teams, making pledges to reduce personal carbon use, and work collectively as well.

Emmett Miller
Emmett Miller, MD, one of the fathers of Holistic and Mind/Body Medicine, is a physician, scientist, musician, and master storyteller, who is probably best known for his invention and development of the first deep relaxation/guided imagery tapes (1973), combining music, nature sounds and his unique voice. During the last decade, his explorations have expanded to include the spiritual dimension of human life and global transformation. Dr. Miller practices Mind-Body Medicine in the Bay Area of CA and in the Sierra Foothills (Nevada City) where he facilitates World Cafes and is actively working with Power Up in Nevada County leading global climate change cafes .  He also conducts trainings for health professionals and lay audiences, and lectures throughout the country and abroad.

Hosting Global Climate Change Cafés means putting the basics of World Café to use for a specific purpose. The goal in most cases is to share ideas and motivate one another to take action such as lowering our own energy usage first, then encouraging others to do the same. In other cases action might mean approaching local businesses, government, schools and hospitals to encourage them to focus on energy efficiency and other green issues (such as using cleaning agents without harsh chemicals).

To begin: Send invitations via e mail and follow up with phone calls to encourage people to attend your Café. Here are two samples: 1 & 2, which you can also download from the ‘resources’ section on the right and fill in with your own details. Give thought to making the gathering diverse in cultural, racial, age and gender. Diversity can also mean people who hold a variety of positions in the company or community and people who are members of various groups.

You can create a Café atmosphere in any room where there is space to set up tables and can hold a Café for any number from 12 to 2,000. A typical room set up would include several tables for four, music for when people come in, a welcome poster, table cloths covered with paper, colorful pens, flowers and/or candles, and more. Here is a complete guide to help you with room set up.

As guests arrive they are greeted and asked to sit at tables with people they don’t know. The host(s) welcome everyone and then explain the basics of World Café and the context for the meeting. One way to set the context is to remind people that small groups, through peaceful coordinated action, have had enormous impact on social change in the past. A few examples can be given from history such as the Civil Rights Movement, the end of Apartheid, The Velvet Revolution,  and The Women’s Movement.

Examples of changes already taking place can be given such as how once littering was common place, how smoking in public places was common, how much more recycling is happening now than a decade ago.

In some cases it is useful to point out that the actions we can take to impact Global Climate Change are necessary and good for the environment regardless of the cause of Global Warming.

The Café then moves to “Round One” where participants, seated at their tables of four, everyone in the room explores an question that is posed by the host. After 20 minutes or so the Café host interrupts and asks one person to remain at each table while the other three scatter to new tables. People then share what they heard at the first table, continue to explore the question while listening for patterns and themes. After three or more rounds the whole group engages in one conversation where anyone who wishes to briefly shares something they heard in the Café that is important to them. This “harvesting” is recorded visually on a mural of flip charts. When possible, enlist the help of a visual recorder who will use words and pictures to capture all that is shared.

The harvesting process makes clear to the whole what has been occurring at the various tables. There is no official report-out, but rather in an informal sharing by anyone who wishes to participate.

As a process, the World Café can evoke and make visible the collective intelligence of any group, thus increasing people’s capacity for effective action in pursuit of common aims. It is exciting to realize how much the group has generated by thinking together and exploring questions that are important to them.

Questions that work well for Global Climate Change include:

What are your hopes and fears regarding Global Warming?

If you were assured of success, what would you do in response to Global Climate Change?

What might our lives look like if we changed enough to offset the threat of global climate change?

Given our present technology and the scale of the challenges we face, what is now possible that was not possible before?

What do you feel called to do next?

Usually a Café event involves two or three questions, although it is possible to use one and go deeper into it throughout all three rounds. Often the same question is repeated and explored in greater depth for two rounds and then the final round poses a new question, one that leads to action steps.

More details on how to set up and host a World Café here.

You can also download an excellent World Café hosting guide by clicking on ‘Café to Go’.

Details on an event developed by David Gershon that includes a World Café followed by time for forming teams and making specific plans can be seen here.

After each Café you host share your ideas, experiences and the questions you used, along with any specific action items your group generated, by sending them to climatechange@theworldcafe.com and I will post them here so that we can all learn from each other. The Cafés can move from single events to a become a growing network in which insights build on one another and information flows.

TAKING ACTION a Café variation:

The last round of any Café can be set aside for the a 15-30 minute "first meeting" of a newly-formed action team.

A suggested list of questions can be provided at each table to facilitate the best use of limited time.

For example:
When we will next meet?
Where?
Who will host?
Who else can we think of to invite to join the team?
What questions do we have about how to measure our carbon reduction?
What research may be needed before we meet again?
Who agrees to do it? 

You could also provide a sign up list at each table, with carbon copy. The carbon copy goes to the Café organizers so that they have a record of Café outcomes.
Who agrees to take the top copy home and email the contact info to all team members, along with a reminder about the upcoming meeting and assignments.
Who agrees to send a report to Nancy Margulies to post on the blog on behalf of the team, including a report about what just happened at the Cafe?

VARIATION:
"Passion Café".

Set up the Café as usual and number each table with a folded paper tent. Ask anyone who wants to (in a sentence or two) tell the group what they passionately want to discuss, with regard to global climate change.

Write the topics on a flip chart, numbering each one.  After you have as many ideas as tables invite people to go to the table whose topic appeals to them most. If two or more topics are related, you can combine them for one table.  If there are several people for one topic, they can break up into groups of four, using more tables.

People can stay at these tables for at least 30 minutes. You could have more than one round if time permits and, if not, go directly to a whole group discussion. Each table shares their insights and any plans they developed. Encourage one person to take the lead in following up on each idea and record the names of others who want to join the project.

Enjoy!

At a recent Global Warming Café we had hosted 80 plus citizens of Redwood City, which  just signed the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement this week.

The lobby of City Hall was turned into a giant café where dinner was served before the Café. 

Our first question was,

“What are you seeing that gives you hope about our responses to Global Warming?”

followed by a second round that focused on,

“What is possible (in our response to Global Warming)?

After round two we talked as a group and I mapped the ideas people had to share. We took a break, looked at the mural/map and then went to new tables for the third round, focusing on,

“What do you feel called to do?’

At the end of the round we passed out a project planning sheet, a carbon calculator page and a few pages from The Low Carbon Diet. People took a few minutes to look at the hand outs and fill in the first steps part of their project planner. Here is the Project Planner – click on it to see it larger:

The final conversation of the whole netted lots of good ideas.

The plans shared included planting more native plants, encouraging awards to be given by the city for the best “Green Businesses”, sharing information with neighbors re solar panels, looking into alternatives to driving to include a high speed ferry, free public transportation for people traveling with a bicycle, developing a year-round farmer’s market with local foods, encouraging churches to use real, (not Styrofoam, etc) cups and volunteering to wash them. Drafting local regulations to include a ban on Styrofoam.