Weavers Circle
DAF is a living, evolving entity. A new governance model emerged in September 2023. Many dedicated people infused DAF with their hearts, energies and abilities. Some have moved on, while many others are still active. To honor the efforts of all who came before, a chronicle of DAF’s governance journey is underway. It will be published on this website when completed.
Of the 6 essential Functional Circles of the Deep Adaptation Forum Governance, one is specifically dedicated to DAF’s ethos and mission. This is the Weavers Circle. The Weavers Circle volunteers aim to promote throughout the DAF community, and beyond, enabling and embodying loving responses to our predicament.
These volunteers devote their time and energy to a broad scope of endeavors. One major focus is researching ways to reduce suffering and disseminating them among the DAF community and beyond. The intention is to build supportive communities and relationships to face the realities of eco-social collapse.
Weavers are active DAF participants. They are responsible for calling attention to activities within the Deep Adaptation Forum and beyond. Weavers give equal attention and respect to all dimensions of deep adaptation (psychological, emotional, practical, political, intellectual, etc.). Through networking and relationship-building, Weavers ensure communication flows from the center to the periphery and back again.
The Weavers Circle has five functions:
1. Vision and spiritual holding: Ensuring the community’s, including its organizational body’s, needs and concerns evolve and grow according to the DAF Charter.
2. Safeguarding deep adaptation principles: Upholding diversity and plurality in all deep adaptation aspects and decolonizing to reduce harm.
3. Fostering and encouraging mutual support among all DAF participants, particularly those with organizational responsibilities.
4. Advising the General Circle if and when needed, helping with accountability processes and taking part, or arranging trained support, in conflict transformation upon request.
5. Weaving all parts of the network together to strengthen integrity and cross-pollination of ideas, diversity and insights.
Weavers are committed to cultivating relationships throughout the network. They research and nurture sensitivity to the whole, calling attention to areas that are under-represented in DAF.
Weavers Circle volunteers do not make decisions on network strategy. They do contribute proposals to expand conversations on recurring General Circle topics. They also integrate strategic outcomes into their reflections on the network vision.
As opposed to the other Functional Circles, Weavers Circle volunteers are selected. The selection is held according to sociocracy principles. Selected Weavers commit for 1 to 3 years. These commitments are reviewed each year. The Circle strives for continuity and institutional memory as it evolves, welcoming new members. The current number of Weavers is 7 and they are:
Jessica Canham (Dominica, Eastern Caribbean)
Jane Dwinell (Vermont, USA)
Sandra Fishleigh (Toronto, Canada)
Eric Garza (Vermont, USA)
Matthew Painton (Brighton, U.K.)
Diana Reynolds (Wales, U.K.)
Kat Soares (Aberdeenshire, Scotland)
You can contact the Weavers directly by clicking on any of the names above or by messaging @DAF-Weavers-Circle on the community space.
Updated October 30, 2023/Ramey
Stash Hempeck
I would like to nominate myself for the open position on the Weaver’s Circle. I was born and raised on a multi-purpose farm in south-central Minnesota in the 1950s and 60s, to rather old fashioned parents who had gone through the Great Depression, who believed that farming was much more a way of life than it was about making money. We reused and recycled before those terms came to popularity. We were, in essence, as self sufficient as possible. I grew up with hand-me-down clothes, a huge garden whose bounty we both ate and preserved, and a respect for the land. University exposed me to civil rights, women’s rights, anti-war, and environmental rights. I have lived most of my life as lightly on the land as possible. Jem Bendell’s white paper “Deep Adaptation” brought into sharp focus my own thoughts, and actions, about the future of human civilization. The seeming fact that most people (in Western society, and those in power in non-western society) either do not share this stance, or are reluctant to embrace it, or do not seem to know how to embrace it, is painful for me to accept. At the same time, I understand and accept that individuals must come to this realization on their own, in their own time, and on their own terms. All I can really do, is to do what I can to push the DA philosophy forward to the extent that I can.