At our September gathering, a small group of locals in Geelong made an important decision: our long-running Climate Café will now be known as the Geelong Connection Café.
Why the change? Because words matter. While climate is central to our concerns, the word often carries a weight of crisis and disagreements. We wanted a name that points to what helps us move forward: togetherness, resilience, and the energy of being connected.
Mel, who suggested the word, summed it up beautifully:
“I think ‘connection’ is a good word because we have a global loneliness problem at the same time as having a climate crisis, and I think the thing that will move us through the climate crisis and make us more resilient is connection – the only thing that will actually get us through. If we are prepared to connect before that happens, then it means that we’re more likely to do better in the future. It also puts a more positive tint on things, because climate can feel a bit doom and gloom, but everyone wants connection – it’s intrinsic to us.”
Anthony added that the word opens up many directions at once:
“There are so many things we can connect with – connect with each other, talk about what’s important in life, connect with nature, connect with other people. That same connection can apply to all of those things. And that’s actually what’s missing in society as a whole.”
For Adam, co-founder of the Geelong Climate Café, the new name also ties back to the history of The House, where our monthly café is hosted:
“For the founding members of The House, it was actually that lack of community that drove us to put together The House. So it definitely fits with the theme of this place as well.”
A step away from “crisis” language
The move also reflects a broader shift. Around the world, people are experimenting with new language for community gatherings on climate and sustainability. Joseph Gelfer, who talks about replacing “climate” with concepts rooted in service to life, points out that words shape our expectations and our energy. By naming our café around connection, we are choosing to emphasise possibility, relationship, and resilience, rather than crisis alone.
What to expect at the Connection Café
The Geelong Connection Café will continue to meet monthly at The House. It will remain an open, informal space for:
• Conversations about how we live well in times of change
• Sharing personal experiences and practical ideas
• Building supportive networks in Geelong and beyond
• Exploring ways to strengthen community resilience and connection
Most of all, it will be a place to practise what the name promises: connection.
. . .
Taking the idea a step further
Taking the Connection Café idea a step further: what if connection cafés began to pop up everywhere – small, local groups limited to around a dozen people? The idea is that the small size would be a strength: it would encourage new cafés to form in more neighbourhoods, streets, and courts, spreading connection outward like ripples.
The appeal lies in its simplicity. A connection café is not about climate or activism – it can simply be neighbours meeting over a cup of tea or coffee to talk, listen, and get to know one another. Even those everyday conversations build resilience. They help us face not just the cost of living crisis, but also loneliness, social disconnection, and whatever other local or global disruptions may come our way.
Suggestions for gentle “rules of thumb” might help such cafés flourish, for instance:
Eeeping groups hyper-local, so members live within 10 kilometres of each other in cities, or a wider radius in rural and regional communities.
Each café could also choose its own guiding purpose, whether that is a shared hobby, a local project, or simply the commitment to keep showing up and supporting one another.
This approach shifts the focus away from needing deep consensus or technical expertise. Instead, it’s about creating spaces that are easy to join, easy to replicate, and valuable in themselves. The simple act of connecting – talking face-to-face – may prove to be one of the strongest ways we prepare for whatever the future holds.
Join us at the Geelong Connection Café
When: 3-5pm on the fourth Friday of each month
Where: The House, Shop 8, Centrepoint Arcade, 132 Little Malop Street, Geelong
Entry: free
Next meeting: Friday 28 November 2025 and 19 December 2025
Using the power of connection to build a better world
The subtitle of Adam Met’s book ‘Amplify: How to Use the Power of Connection to Engage, Take Action, and Build a Better World‘ expresses exactly what so many of us are trying to figure out right now: how connection can lead to real change.
Adam Met is a musician – part of the band AJR – and a climate activist who’s spent years thinking about what makes people care enough to act. In Amplify, written with Heather Landy, he takes lessons from the music world – how artists build loyal communities of fans – and translates them into strategies for social and environmental action. It’s about turning audiences into participants, and participants into changemakers.
He draws on interviews with an impressive range of people: Adam Grant on how disagreement can strengthen a movement, Christiana Figueres on the art of finding a path to solutions, and youth activists like David Hogg who show what engagement looks like in practice. The book is a mix of inspiration and practicality and is a kind of roadmap for how to make connection work for good.
Listening, showing up, sharing honestly
Met doesn’t promise a magic formula. Instead, he offers a set of principles – or perhaps a recipe – that each of us can adapt. The ingredients are simple but powerful: authenticity, intention, collaboration and trust. He argues that real connection isn’t about shouting the loudest. It is about listening, showing up, and sharing honestly. In other words, people don’t join movements because of perfect slogans – they join because they feel part of something.
That’s where it ties beautifully into what we’re exploring in our Connection Cafe. We’ve been talking about what it really means to connect – not just to talk about issues, but to create the kind of relationships that make action possible. Connection is more than just a feel-good word. It’s a strategy for change.
Met’s big idea is that movements can learn from how musicians build communities. Think about a band’s fans – they don’t just consume the music, they carry it with them, talk about it, share it, live it.
What if our movements worked the same way? What if the causes we care about had the same kind of loyalty, excitement and energy? That’s the world Met wants us to imagine.
Of course, there is a caution here. Borrowing tactics from the entertainment world can be risky. It is easy to slip into performance instead of authenticity – to start managing people rather than relating to them. Met is aware of that tension. He insists that connection must stay real, rooted in care and mutual respect, not just marketing in disguise.
The book also touches on a challenge many groups face: how to turn connection into action. Conversations are wonderful – they’re the soil where trust grows – but at some point we need to move from words to deeds.
Amplify offers examples of how small, intentional steps can turn into movements. It’s about designing engagement that feels natural: inviting people to contribute, creating small wins, celebrating progress, and always returning to the human story at the heart of it.
For our Connection Cafe, that might mean asking simple questions: what’s one thing I can do this week that connects me more deeply with our shared purpose? Who can I invite into this circle? How can we make our meetings not just conversations, but springboards for gentle action?
Connection is the beginning of everything. When people feel seen and valued, they care more. When they care, they act. And when they act together – not because someone told them to, but because they feel it’s part of who they are – that’s when real change begins.
Met’s book is hopeful without being naïve. It doesn’t pretend that connection alone will fix the world, but it shows how powerful it can be when we use it wisely. In a time when so much feels divided, that reminder matters.
Maybe that’s what “amplify” really means: not to make more noise, but to make our shared humanity louder. To turn up the volume on care, curiosity, and collaboration. To help each other find our voices, and then use them together.
This was how we started out: