Incorporating Drawdown Toronto as a federal not-for-profit organization means first and foremost that we are committed to promoting positive solutions to the climate challenge. Formalization itself is not a goal, only an instrument. With incorporation, we can start building the infrastructure and processes to ensure that Drawdown Toronto will become a driver of the low-carbon revolution. It frees up our volunteers to do what really matters.
For the time being, it means no dramatic changes in the way our organization is run on a day-to-day basis. We will continue to be a group rooted in our community, depending on and driven by dedicated volunteers to help popularize the drawdown approach, promote climate solutions, and lobby for a green development strategy.
We are required to have a board of directors, we are required to have by-laws, report certain things, but that’s not why we’re here. Our goal is to safeguard the effectiveness of this entity we’re bringing into being, Drawdown Toronto.
Yet — just like reaching Drawdown is not a purely technical problem, so bringing into existence the organization called Drawdown Toronto is not purely a technical matter. It’s the spirit that matters.
This spirit is reflected in Paul Hawken’s “Principles of Drawdown”:
Always present problem and solution together;
Always put problem in the context of possibility;
Stop emphasizing the problem instead of the possibility;
Be collaborative; there are no experts;
No oughts, shoulds, or musts;
No fear, threat, doom;
Stay calm, clear, cool;
No finger pointing, don’t “they” the world as though you are special;
No division, othering, no war analogies;
See the world as beautiful, the solutions as beautiful;
Ground everything in facts;
Tell stories: we remember stories, not facts
“Be joyous though you know all the facts” (endell Berry)