Bestselling Author’s Work with Transition Town Awarded
PRESS RELEASE: WOBURN, BEDFORDSHIRE – 18 November 2009 – Today at Woburn Sculpture Gallery, Bedfordshire Businesswomen (BBW), a not-for-profit networking organisation for women who live and/or have business interests in the Bedfordshire area, now in its 21st year, announced their annual business awards for outstanding achievement in various categories. Amongst the six winners for the 2009 awards, which were sponsored by Barclays Bank, was Lynn Serafinn, a Bedford-based community leader, transformation coach, personal development trainer, public speaker, radio host and bestselling author of the book The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self. Ms Serafinn received the BBW award for “Working within a Community Organisation or Not-for-Profit Organisation” owing to her work as Founder of the Global Wellness Circle, and also as the Chair of Transition Bedford, a new initiative that is part of the worldwide Transition Network addressing climate change and fossil fuel dependency.
In spring 2008, Ms Serafinn noticed that there was a large faction of practitioners in the holistic health and wellbeing industry who felt isolated both professionally and socially, having no way to promote their businesses or to educate the public about the benefits of living a more natural, holistic lifestyle. In response to this, she formed the Global Wellness Circle (GWC) in May 2008, first in Bedford, but within a few months it rapidly expanded to other parts of the UK. GWC is a community of independent holistic practitioners and members of the general public, whose primary aims are to provide the public with information, education, support and access to a range of quality services and products in holistic and natural health, as well as to provide a truly inclusive social environment fostering open-mindedness, light-heartedness, fun and overall positivity, thus creating an atmosphere of holistic wellness. Now with five chapters (Bedford, Cambridge, Northampton, Milton Keynes and Hemel Hempstead, with another proposed in Dunstable for 2010), and having grown to a wider community of nearly 500 people in central UK, GWC is currently in the process of applying to become a CIC (Community Interest Company/Social Enterprise), with the aim of expanding their ability to help the wider community lead happier, healthier and more fulfilling lives.
Being truly passionate about helping people feel greater connection to themselves, to each other and to the Earth, Ms Serafinn had the opportunity to expand the parameters of her community work when, in June 2009, she was asked to serve as Chair of the newly formed Transition Bedford, a volunteer community initiative whose objective is to create a plan for a sustainable Bedford, addressing everything from climate change and energy, to education and community. Transition Bedford is part of the larger Transition Town Network of over 1500 towns, villages and urban neighbourhoods worldwide, which is a grass-roots initiative addressing the shift away from fossil fuel dependency and towards a sustainable environment by taking definitive, community-driven action in response to climate change and the impending impact of peak oil upon our lifestyle.
As Chair of Transition Bedford, Lynn leads awareness-raising events, community meetings and steering group meetings, and represents the initiative in a variety of public settings. Borrowing from her skills as an online promotion expert and personal development trainer, she also created and maintains their blog, coordinates their online social networking, writes articles and media releases, and offers both free and low-cost training to the public.
She says, “The link between the Global Wellness Circle and Transition Bedford is really pretty seamless. GWC in central UK can easily provide a link between the health and wellbeing sector and the Transition Town initiatives in our local regions, by helping society make the transition to a healthier lifestyle in which we relearn many of the human skills, such as herbal medicine, natural remedies, organic farming and food production, that enable us to be well, rather than compelling us to invent new technologies to fight disease.
Ms Serafinn is no newcomer to community work. Originally from the US, she worked in the 1990s with the Interfaith Action Coalition in Phoenix Arizona, helping to coordinate large-scale events that crossed cultural and religious boundaries and brought together thousands of members of the community who would not otherwise have been connected. In 1997, she was one of the founders of a worldwide non-profit organisation called GOKUL, which sponsored and coordinated world lecture tours of some of India’s leading spiritual teachers. In that capacity, she also created and managed their website, and was the anonymous audio transcriber/editor of several books on eastern mysticism published by that organisation.
Lynn is also no stranger to receiving accolades. Coming from a long history in the music industry, she was the recipient of the National Defence Foreign Language Fellowship in the 1980s, which enabled her to study music and philosophy in India, and she co-wrote and produced a number-1 electronic dance club track in the 1994. In 2005, she received the Microsoft UK Innovative Teacher of the Year Award for her creative use of technology in the Further Education sector. In 2007, her coaching company Create-a-Life won the “Best of Bedford Business Awards” for the best Health and Beauty Company, after only 7 months of practice. And most recently, her self-published book The Garden of the Soul: lessons from four flowers that unearth the Self became an Amazon bestseller in both the US and the UK when it was released in April 2009, outselling such prominent authors in the same category as Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle and Neal Donald Walsch. As a result, she is in demand as a speaker and coach on the topic of self-publishing and book marketing, and has also received countless letters from readers, thanking her for the healing her writing has brought them.
In addition to her community work in central UK, Lynn extends her influence to people all over the world via her weekly Internet radio show “Lynn Serafinn’s Garden of the Soul”. She says her core belief is that every human being is the hero of his or her own life, and that all facets of her work are aimed at helping others unlock their natural-born hero.
Transition Bedford, whose official launch event is being planned for mid-2010, will be working closely together with groups like Zero Carbon Castle, Sustainable Oakley, Goldington Golden Gardens, the Global Wellness Circle, Mile End Allotments and many others, as well as with Bedford College through their Education for Sustainable Development programme. The long-term goal will be to develop educational programmes, skills training and community projects that will not only raise public awareness, but will also help the town make the transition towards a more vibrant and self-reliant community in such areas of food and energy production, natural health, economy and environment.
“Our approach to climate change is not all doom and gloom, believe me,” says Ms Serafinn. “The real purpose of Transition Bedford is to help people feel uplifted and connected, and to allow them to see how essential a factor they are in the revitalisation of their town, and the world in general.”
Transition Bedford invite any and all members of the greater Bedford community, whether individuals, groups or businesses, to contact Lynn Serafinn at lynn [at] lynnserafinn [dot] com and get involved. You can also visit their blog at www.transitionbedford.org
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ARTICLE REFERENCES
Bedfordshire Businesswomen website: http://www.beds-businesswomen.org/
TRANSITION BEDFORD CONTACT INFO:
Contact: Lynn Serafinn
Email: lynn [at] lynnserafinn [dot] com
Web: http://www.transitionbedford.org
Forum: http://groups.google.com/group/transition-bedford
Tel: 44+ (0)845 880 25 28
TRANSITION TOWN NETWORK:
Web: http://www.transitionnetwork.org
LYNN SERAFINN CONTACT INFO (AUTHOR, SPEAKER, TRAINING):
Email:lynn [at] lynnserafinn [dot] com
Web: http://www.lynnserafinn.com
LYNN SERAFINN COACHING AND TRAINING ENQUIRIES:
Email: info [at] create-a-life [dot] co [dot] uk
Web: http://www.create-a-life.co.uk
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Tags: bedford, Climate change, Community, Global Wellness Circle, Lynn Serafinn, Social Reform, sustainability, Transition Town, World
Lynn…you absolutely RAWK!
Congratulations Lynn.
Networking, not-for-profit and health are my three favourite topics, so you certainly get my vote!