“This is a call for all people living outside Cyprus. We would love to hear from you your ideas, your own activities, in your own communities, anything that may help in practical ways to implement those ideas in Cyprus… We are united in this struggle against an economic system that has proven not to be working.”
Here is how they describe their initiative:
1.
“OpenCyprus is an initiative to find community-based alternatives to Cyprus’ pressing economic, political and social problems. It seeks to collect ideas from thinkers around the world, via video and text, and transmit them back to the people of Cyprus to consider. The initial call for papers will close on April 30, and will be displayed in an online congress. Following that, workshops will be held in Cyprus where the videos and texts will be presented for community groups to consider.
OpenCyprus will report back to the Bank of Commons, a coalition of Cyprus community groups.” (http://www.opencyprus.org/about-opencyprus/)
2. Bank of Commons: an Alternative Solutions for Cyprus
“Over the recent weeks the concern we all share under the threat of a collapsing economy is indisputable. Our trust on types of authority and decision-making is being challenged. Everywhere, people discuss one thing only: What do we do now?
What tools do we have as a society to find communal and collective solutions to the social, economic and political problems that put us under siege? How do we come to consensus around all these different ideas? We are looking for practical solutions to practical problems through conversations around many issues: alternative economy, the creation of jobs, new areas of entrepreneurship, local food production and sustainability. We are also looking for answers around questions of democratic representation, consensus building, and decision making, among other things.
The aim of this open, casual event on Saturday, April 13, is to bring together existing networks and build new ones, so that we can learn from each other and work together for the common good. We can start by finding ways to create jobs through cooperative networks and specialised entrepreneurship.
We will use Open Space Technology as a method of self-organisation.
Bank of Commons is open source and open to anyone who would like to take part in its development.”