What is a Study Circle?

A Study Circle is this: For ten weeks you read The Natural Step for Communities, a couple of chapters at a time, and then meet with a small group of your fellow citizens once per week to discuss what you have read and learned. You share your thoughts and experiences on the specific topics and listen to the others share theirs, examining the subject from multiple perspectives. Each circle has a trained facilitator. You will no doubt come out of the experience motivated and energized, and intrigued by all that can be done—the worlds of possibilities that you hadn’t imagined. You will probably come out of the experience with some delightful and vital new friends.

Interested? Get more information by sending us an e-mail!

If you want to do more to make Monona a shining example of sustainability—if you want to help shape its future—a Study Circle nurtures that motivation. The information you learn and the support you receive from the other participants empowers you. You realize that Monona can become a community that charges ahead in adopting sustainability practices—a community that leads. We don’t have to wait to see what other communities do first.

Study circles are about building a base of knowledge so you can discuss pertinent issues with people. That’s important. Everyone likes the idea of having programs that will benefit the community. But with the knowledge you gain in a Study Circle , you’ll feel better able to analyze proposals and issues that come before the community and to discuss them.

You’ll be better able to cite specific examples of sustainable principles in action when you speak with your neighbors, colleagues at work, friends, and family—your circle. You’ll also be better able to talk about the issues in ways that educate and inspire other people. Those other people, in turn, educate and inspire others, and so on. It’s like a ripple on a pond. It spreads out, eventually reaching the edges of the pond—the pond being Monona—and you will have helped to make those ripples. You will have helped to enlighten all of our community.

The Natural Step is for the gas station owner on Monona Drive, the members of the church on the corner, the resident who works from her den and the one who commutes to work by car, the alderpersons and mayor who make our laws and the police officers who enforce them, the person who rents an apartment and the landlord who owns that apartment building, our school children and grand-parents, families and single people, men, women, young, old, you, me, us. The Natural Step is for everyone. The Natural Step will make everything better for everyone. No one is excluded. We want everyone to be involved, have a voice, express opinions, and come together as a cohesive group to make the changes that we decide are best for us, for Monona.

Interested? Get more information by sending us an e-mail!