In December 2015, three residents of Aardehuizen took the initiative to found “Olst in Transition,” the newest offshoot of the Dutch and international Transition Towns network. Participants in these kinds of local, grassroots initiatives view their own neighborhood, district, village, or city through a unique lens, asking: “How can we make our local community more resilient by reducing our dependence on fossil fuels?” Putting the answers to that question into practice yields benefits on more than one front. This is also the case in Olst:
People who previously had nothing to do with one another began to come together around a variety of subtopics—such as health and well-being, the economy, energy, mobility, and food supply—and became active in their own communities.
All kinds of projects and activities are emerging that empower the participants and the local community as a whole in a positive way.
Dependence on fossil fuels and the associated CO2 emissions are reduced, thereby also reducing the local community's contribution to climate change.
The Soup Café - 2017
From December 2015 through mid-2020, Olst in Transition served as a unifying and project-generating initiative. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the core coordinating team at the time subsequently put the organization on hiatus. Olst in Transitie itself has not (yet) emerged from that hiatus. However, during its more than four years of existence, it did generate a significant number of activities and projects, several of which are still thriving today.
More about Transition Towns: