Here’s a date for your diary: Saturday December 5th. This is Party Day with a tree planting to give you an appetite! Transition Inishowen is inviting people – individuals and families – living in all the Transition Initiative areas of the North West to plant scores of native hardwood trees and shrubs on land around the Fort Dunree Visitors’ Centre, which is about twenty minutes north of Buncrana on the shores of Lough Swilly, starting at 11am.
You are invited to bring wellies and a spade! Also bring with you your favourite pie, cake, salad or dessert to share with all the other folk who will be doing the same.

The Visitor’s Centre café will be the venue for the indoor party, which will include your songs, music, games, story-telling and maybe a dance – the bigger the crowd, the greater the craic! There will be information on the growing worldwide Transition Towns movement, and prizes for those arriving using a more sustainable form of transport. Finally if you have any ideas for a more sustainable less money-orientated Christmas, bring those along too.

Transition Initiatives such as those in Inishowen, Derry, Donegal and Omagh, are a grassroots community response to climate change, increasing demand on finite oil reserves, and the economic downturn. The groups support one another through creative discussions, showing films and learning or relearning self reliance skills such as growing and cooking your own food, foraging, baking your own bread, insulating your house, making your own baskets, reducing your carbon footprint and generally “living better with less”.

Many such workshops and events in Inishowen have been oversubscribed this year and the Transition group anticipates an enthusiastic crowd on the 5th December. The Transition movement is all about getting out and doing something positive, and that means not only working together but celebrating together too. They invite you to join them!