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Our purpose
The Association of Sustainability Practitioners (ASP) is here to promote learning that transforms behaviour from unsustainable to sustainable practices.
What we do
We are an international community of sustainability practitioners with a wide diversity of skills and practices, learning and acting together to create truly sustainable futures. We provide each other with the space to safely explore the challenges of this journey through mutual support and helpful connection.
Connecting – we compile and share regular news bulletins with details of “what’s happening” in the sustainability and purpose world. We collaborate on projects and other activities and promote our projects, research, upcoming events, interesting articles, new reports – in short anything that our members wish to share with our community.
We interact and connect with other Members via regular on-line social and learning events organised by and with our Members or external speakers.
Our social media groups allow members to connect with each other and the broader international sustainability community. Our members-only private email platform allows ASP members to connect with each other directly.
Supporting – we support each other to develop our ideas and thinking and address the many challenges we face – individually and collectively. We collaborate on each others’ projects and ideas on a diverse range of practices and skills. This allows us to find others who can help bring our ideas to life.
Challenging – we challenge each other by provoking discussion around relevant topics- testing theories and understanding. We can provide a “peer review” service to other members who wish to share ideas about how to advance sustainable practices.
Nature is the fundamental idea around which our Association was formed
From the very first, this has been a journey of many – a journey of inter-dependence. Of emergence. Of adaptation and change. And in common with all that we know of nature, ASP has lived through a number of cycles of change. This is a Phoenix organisation – full of renewal, magic and surprises – and the story of the whole is a fractal kaleidoscope of individual transformations.
Above all else we practice a “sense and respond” capacity to ensure we are conscious of what is relevant and urgent so we can research or develop appropriate responses and actions.
ASP is governed by the single idea that we are all part of nature. It is our individual and collective responsibility to learn how we and future generations can live in harmony and balance with nature.
Principles
Our principles create a framework that guides our choices and actions to contribute to the achievement of our purpose and goals. Our intent is to apply these consistently and to be transparent in everything we do. We welcome being held to account and receiving constructive feedback.
Our observations of nature give us a four simple core principles:
- Energy – Nature is governed by energy flows. Noticing the ebb and flow of people, ideas and activities keeps our expectations grounded.
- Feedback – Nature produces patterns which reproduce. The cultural pattern we seek to nourish promotes collaborative, constructive, supportive and inquiring behaviours.
- Diversity – Nature is rich in differences. The more difference life presents to us, the greater our opportunities to learn.
- All life is related – Ubuntu is an African term represented in ASP by the phrase ‘I am, because you are, because we are‘. Living things are inter-connected, and life is more than human.
What people say about ASP:
“It makes it easier for people to do what they want to do within the context of sustainability” – Mike Zeidler
“It’s a place where you can safely experiment – very quickly open and honest” – Kirsti Norris
“It’s the Association of Soil Particles – it grows the soil and the plants grow themselves” – Mike King
Practices
Connecting, challenging and supporting are ASP’s core activities that create and nurture the community of Associates. From our own experience we know that people work and thrive best when communicating on a human scale, face-to-face. Therefore our focus is on creating these spaces, for example:
- Inter-generational learning events
- “earth conversations”
- Walk-Your-Talk
- Open Space
- Wisdom gatherings
- Monthly Member check-ins
Social media provides powerful ways to connect people independent of geography and with minimal environmental impact so we have created a number of platforms. See the page footer for the links to these sites.
Your relationship with ASP
People often ask us: “What will I get from ASP?” Which sort of misses the main point.
We reply: “Well how do you want to contribute to ASP’s purpose? What do you want to give?”
ASP is a community, not a network. It’s a diverse, international, multi-discplinary community embracing several generations. The key characteristic of a community is that the members nurture and support each. Ubuntu.
Those who contribute most, receive most back, over time. We are all in different phases of our lives, careers, and personal development, so your relationship with ASP will be very personal, and will vary as other aspects of your life and career shift. You may be excited about collaborating on a project with others, attending the occasional learning event that is just what you need at the time, or you may just be a voyeur, keeping abreast of what’s happening. It’s all good.
So it’s up to you: what’s your passion? what do you have to give? what would you like to receive? The more we give to each other and support the ASP “core” with ideas, expertise, donations or time, the more we all benefit and the more swiftly we move toward our purpose: sustainable practices that lead to sustainable futures for all.
If this motivates you then join ASP.
If you wish to financially support ASP’s core activities you can make a donation that could make a real difference: Donate
