Consultancy is a somewhat fancy word. It's otherwise known as helping. We help people adapt. Adapt to what? Well, if you've read some of the material on this website, you'll have an idea of what we think you might need to adapt to. But ultimately, its what concerns or excites you that matters.
Often its the threats that command the most of our attention. Climate change, economic depression, resource shortages, pandemics, and the like. And that can't be safely ignored. But there are also exciting possibilities and potentialities that ask us to adapt, in order to meet their requirements. A life more connected to family, soil, food and community, purpose and generosity, and other wonderful things requires most of us to make changes and sacrifices, build skills and systems, and think differently to how we do now.
Our help comes mostly in the form of conversation—teasing out what's possible, what's most important, how to organise and prioritise the work, what investments to make and when, where to obtain the equipment, materials, expertise needed, and so forth.
But it can also take the form of design-collaboration, where we design together certain things you need. It could be structures on your property, or it could be a system. That might be a physical system, like water harvesting, or a workflow system, like a management strategy for food growing. Any of these might require some drawings and documentation, or they might not.
It might also be as abstract as a plan—a document that states how you will deal with a certain emergency, a staged plan for the development of your land, or a plan that articulates your path to economic freedom.
You can see why we want to name these diverse possibilities simply as 'help'. But that's also how we feel it. It feels like we all need to help each other along the road to resilience, and we are simply putting our hand up to give what we can.