Readying For Change: Supporting Sustainability Progress Through Inner Transformation

There is increasing urgency to accelerate sustainability progress and address growing social and environmental challenges. Current approaches to solving these complex issues, such as new technology and governance, are failing to support the kinds of changes needed to collective wellbeing. Interest is growing around how individual values, worldviews, beliefs, and consciousness can be transformed so that they align with sustainability requirements. The project examines: i) what kinds of skills and capacities would be most helpful for enabling positive change, ii) how these approaches could challenge old ways of thinking and doing that are detrimental to people and planet, and iii) how new skills could be nurtured to support present needs. This is the first project to develop and test a novel readiness assessment tool and therefore offers immense value to the fields of sustainability and social innovation.

Faculty Supervisor:

Daniel McCarthy;Derek Armitage;Sharon Stein

Student:

Partner:

Musagetes Foundation

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Other services (except public administration)

University:

University of Waterloo

Program: