What if, in going out to meet real people, you decided to keep travelling?

The Decentralized Society Research Project demonstrates this philosophy. Included on the website is a link to “offices” (hackerbases) throughout the world.

Extracted from: http://dsrp.eu/about

I am Mathijs de Bruin from The Netherlands. Having been frustrated for a long time about living as part of ‘the system’ (the economic and social structures that dominate our lives) I decided to exchange my house in Amsterdam for a more sustainable and humane form of life.

Within several (3-4) years my plan is to either join or found a sustainable community, being largely independent of dominating power structures forcing the exploitation of our planet and one another.

However, I do not know yet what this would look like.

• What would be the best way to organize, how can we make sure all participants are fully represented?
• How can we allow sustainable forms of living to scale, allowing more people to live in harmony with their environment?
• What can be done to lower (economic) barriers for people to escape ‘the system’?

These and other questions I am trying to answer, while I am travelling around Europe visiting several sustainable communities or eco-villages but also hackerspaces and related events. Taking part in communnity life, contributing and talking to founders, philosophers, researchers and fellow travelers.

Extracted from: https://decentralize.hackpad.com/Decentralized-Society-Research-Project-T0zwOQD4JaS

http://dsrp.eu

Open Source

This project, as well as the communities in focus, work along an Open Source or ‘libre’ principles where:

• Sharing is the default: unless privacy prohibits there should be full transparency at all times.
• Leaders have no (formal) authority of any kind.
• ‘Forking’ allows for fragmentation without degradation, allowing (fundamental) disagreements to persist while maintaining the strength of collaboration.

Photo by Lyalka

Photo by Lyalka

Photo by duncan

The post Project Of The Day: Decentralized Society Research Project appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Extracted from: http://www.audacities.co/#about-audacities

Productive Cities are Prosperous Cities

Cities are where the battle for a sustainable, equitable world will be won or lost.

The majority of people in the world live in cities, and cities are now the epicentre of economic power (600 cities will generate 60% of GDP by 2025) as well as the primary drivers of impacts on planetary life support systems.

Cities are positive human creations in so many ways, but right now, they are also often extractive and destructive to both people and planet in how they are built and maintained.

We need to rebuild cities from the inside out so that they are regenerative.

Remaking Cities

Creating prototypes of more self-sufficient cities, through relocalised and distributed production of food, energy and manufacturing, will help cities progress towards carbon and waste reduction objectives.

Relocalised production can also help contribute to developing more meaningful, secure livelihoods for people in a world where traditional jobs are fast disappearing, through automation, offshoring, casualised work, and an increasing number of people working as freelancers.

Enabling people to produce more of what they need for themselves – through providing open access to productive technologies, fostering a circular economy, and the availability of a shared design commons – can contribute to making cities regenerative.

This approach is known as ‘design global, manufacture local’.

Extracted from: http://www.audacities.co/#what-we-do

Prototypes
AUDAcities will establish a prototypes in interested Australian cities based on the Fab City Global Initiative’s Poble Nou district in Barcelona, which aims to demonstrate how relocalising production of food, energy and manufacturing can work. These ‘fractals’ of self-sufficient, productive cities can help inform and catalyse a wider agenda of industrial and economic transformation.

Photo by michelle-robinson.com

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Extracted from: https://www.facebook.com/RefugeesWelcomeGR/posts/1731879673741900

The phone line of the cooperative call service ‘Refugees to Refugees (R2R) Solidarity Call Center’ has begun to operate!

For three months now, refugees and people from the solidarity movement have been working cooperatively together, through open and democratic processes, in order to create a cooperative initiative that will provide information about transit, stay, or settlement in Greece, from refugees to refugees.

Thanks to the support of the hackborders team, the asterisk operator was recently set up and therefore the phone line for the call center is now ready!

This action will be an important milestone, because it is being developed by refugees themselves who speak the same language and have been through the same difficult experiences in transit. We hope that this can bring a level of trust and sincere collaboration among the people who contact and the people who work at Refugees 2 Refugees Solidarity Call Center.

We want to coordinate and interact with numerous individuals and collective initiatives throughout Greece and abroad, to strengthen solidarity with refugees and migrants and to be able to respond to all the common struggles together. With the current situation that refugees are encountering where they are, both in refugee camps and outside, we as a Call Center project can help to strengthen cooperation and communication among people living in concentration and in isolation, away from the cities, the solidarity movement and each other, with limited access to vital information about the common struggles and related latest news.

This cooperative project is one of the initiatives that FairCoop Thessaloniki is supporting for building a fair economy ecosystem. Our vision and objective is the creation and networking of a truly fair and participatory economy from below, open to all the people without discrimination, building bridges between the refugees’ solidarity movement and the alternative economy movement, with experiences like the Refugees 2 Refugees Solidarity Call Center.

The funds for the economic sustainability of the project, as well as for the equal distribution among the refugees working in this cooperative initiative, are coming from an international crowdfunding campaign for a collective fund that was created for the development of cooperative refugee initiatives, the Refugees Fund.”

Extracted from: https://coopfunding.net/en/campaigns/refugees-fund-faircoop/

Almost 3,000 people have lost their lives so far this year trying to reach safety in Europe. EU leaders cannot ignore this or turn their backs on its tragic consequences. After months of prevarication they still have not established a coordinated emergency response and have failed to fundamentally overhaul the failing asylum system. Now is the time for self-organized civil society to use direct action, and to directly support those in need. There is an urgent need for the provision of adequate and humane conditions for those arriving and to really help them to organize their lives for the long term in the new host countries.

REFUGEE FUND CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN.

Global governments, and especially the European Union, have shown their worst side with the events of recent times. Economic Rescue is being exchanged for popular sovereignty. Neoliberal control, wage and pension cuts, tax increases, layoffs and all kinds of privatization.

And governments, rather than give in to demands for democracy from citizens, use brutality to end their resistance. These are policies that sacrifice the interests of the majority to benefit the interests of a tiny minority.

Together with the sovereign and austerity crisis, we cannot forget the refugee crisis.

Almost 3,000 people have lost their lives so far this year trying to reach safety in Europe. EU leaders cannot ignore this or turn their backs on its tragic consequences. After months of prevarication they still have not established a coordinated emergency response and have failed to fundamentally overhaul the failing asylum system. Now is the time for self-organized civil society to use direct action, and to directly support those in need. There is an urgent need for the provision of adequate and humane conditions for those arriving and to really help them to organize their lives for the long term in the new host countries.

A new Faircoin fund for refugees.

This fund will focus on helping autonomous and self-managed projects involving refugees and solving their need to retain full control over the decisions made in their lives. For example new settlements, and the creation of productive and holistic initiatives with which they can fulfill their material and immaterial needs on a daily basis, while offering something useful to the society in which they find themselves.

Cooperative working initiatives can also be included, giving the newcomers an opportunity to become self-employed, beyond the control of states over their right to work. And of course grassroots solidarity movements who work on an open and participative basis can apply for their costs to be covered.

This proposal is also intended for those who have undergone forced displacement for economic and environmental reasons, and includes stateless people who are in the difficult situation of having no rights because of the behavior of their countries of origin or third countries that don’t recognize them as citizens.

The goal of this proposal is to get at least 500,000 Faircoins (the minimum amount to create a fund in FairCoop) towards the needs of refugees today in the world.

For this campaign you can pay with any currency, and the money received will be converted to Faircoin in order to be added to the fund.

Also you can yourself buy Faircoin (for example FairCoop offers https://getfaircoin.net) and so make your contribution in Faircoin.

Photos by Maliakos Nikos

Photo by United Nations Development Programme

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This is the idea behind investment clubs. Individual members tout companies they believe in. The club pools funds and invests in a selected company.

Co-op Principal began an investment club aimed at supporting cooperatives. In addition to keeping money local and providing capital to organizations with a social mission, members learn about investing.

Extracted from: http://www.coopwatercooler.com/discussions//building-to-co-op-movement-base-with-investment-clubs

Canadian co-op studies scholar Brett Fairbairn locates a tension in what he asserts to be the “dualistic” view of cooperatives, characterized by the twin set of economic and social goals. Within that framework, “industry” people (for Fairbairn, often managers) tend to focus on the primacy of economic goals while viewing social goals as a secondary expense, while “movement” people (Fairbairn introduces the wonderful phrase “arbiters of cooperative purity”) perceive the social mission as the primary raison de etre of cooperation.

The jump to applying this time-tested model to investing in cooperatives was first made in Minneapolis in 2013, when Co-op Principal was established. Club members agree to invest $50 per month, and they meet monthly (often at a local brewery) to discuss and vote on co-op investment opportunities. Since its founding, Co-op Principal has had a five-figure capital impact on its local co-op economy, and the club has generated annual returns for its members in the 2-4% range.

The vision of Co-op Principal’s founders was not simply to create a club in their city, but to spread the model across the country. To advance this agenda, they created a parallel non-profit intended to house model documents and provide support to other groups looking to get their own clubs going. Since its establishment, a similar club is now up and running in Boston, and at least three more are in the process of organizing for early 2017 launches. Active conversations are also now underway around how the growing of network of clubs can contribute resources to the non-profit for the purpose of developing the sort of shared plug-and-play online infrastructure that could drastically simplify the process of both starting new clubs and operating existing ones.

In short, co-op investment clubs are easy to set up (and hopefully will become even easier in the coming year) and have the potential to boost any community’s co-op movement in a number of positive ways. As such, every committed cooperator should seek out such a club in their community and, if it doesn’t exist, reach out to Co-op Principal for advice about starting one. Through small monthly investments and building a welcoming community of committed co-op enthusiasts, a robust network of cooperating co-op investment clubs could form the foundation of a reinvigorated co-op movement.

Extracted from: http://thecp.coop/

The Cooperative Principal provides start-up know how and on-going education to everyday people who come together to invest in a radically different, co-operative future.

 We were frustrated with Wall Street and the lack of alternatives so we did some homework. While the name investment club carries some baggage, as legal entities investment clubs are granted some benefits that we can actually use to change the status quo. Most importantly, they can reduce the financial hurdle that often exists if you want to do something interesting, outside of Wall Street with your money. So, we started the Cooperative Principal to provide start-up know how and on-going education to everyday people who come together to invest in a radically different, co-operative future.

In order to make it easier for folks to start and run local investment clubs, we founded the Cooperative Principal. In terms of organizational structure, think of a bike wheel where the center or hub is the Cooperative Principal (CP), a Minnesota based non-profit. This center hub serves the local clubs that are at the end of the spokes, around the wheel. The CP provides the education, documents and some administrative support to make starting a legal, properly registered club easier. Then, on an on-going basis, the CP provides investment ideas and analysis, facilitates local clubs connecting with each other and promotes the growth of the larger co-op movement.

This is the beauty of CP Investment Clubs, people who on their own can’t afford to invest in their values now have a vehicle to do so and co-ops have access to a new source of capital.

Beyond the dollars and cents, there is a social and educational component to The Cooperative Principal. Members meet in person a minimum of 4 times per year, ideally in a social setting (think microbrewery!) and the clubs operate in a cooperative, democratic manner. Based on investment analysis from the central non-profit, or their own research, members discuss and vote on where to put their pooled funds. Club members are both participating in their own democratic organizations and supporting the co-op economy in a way that is only possible by working together.

Extracted from: http://www.sharesavespend.com/blog/investment-club-reimagined

The Cooperative Principal is a new nonprofit organization that provides know-how and ongoing education to help start and run a local investment club—all with the goal of supporting cooperatives, organizations owned and operated for the benefit of their members.

Even though investment clubs aren’t as wildly popular as they once were, they still offer a great way to build your investment acumen. They can also provide the opportunity to learn about businesses, in my case co-ops in my community, and meet like-minded people.

At every meeting a member of our club presents an investment opportunity. The state I live in, Minnesota, leads the nation in business related co-ops, so we have many options to discuss. Then we vote on where to put our pooled funds. We have invested in five cooperatives so far including food, maple syrup and an investment co-op that buys and develops real estate in our community.

 A few important takeaways

1. Systematic investing, whether through an investment club or on your own, is important for people of all ages.

2. Supporting local and regional co-ops through periodic investments is a great way to link money and your values.

3. Investment clubs can give you a forum to pool money with like-minded people and make a meaningful impact on your community and region.

The post Project Of The Day: CoopPrincipal appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Biodiversity is not a new idea. Humans were advocating for biological diversity decades ago.

Hivos, and advocacy and development organization, combined these concepts in its Open Source Seed Programme. They were not the first to do so.

The story of the Open Source Seed Programme provides contemporary illustration of the challenges in changing policy, commerce and culture.

The Open Source Seed Programme and biodiversity excerpts below date to 2014 and 2015. The maize infestation posts are from 2017.

Extracted from: https://www.hivos.org/why-open-source-seed-systems

Global challenge

The world’s agrobiodiversity, crucial to maintaining food security, is under pressure. While there are some 120 plant species cultivated for human food, it is estimated that just 30 crops provide 95 percent of human food-energy needs.

Most agrobiodiversity is maintained on-farm, and its fundamental role in income generation, adaptation to climate change, nutrition and food security is widely acknowledged (Padulosi, Bioversity International 2012). The main cause of genetic erosion is that modern varieties are replacing local farmer varieties (The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture). In addition to this trend, the patenting of plants and seeds further restricts experimentation by individual farmers or public researchers, while also undermining local practices that enhance food security and economic sustainability by adding a price tag to every seed (or cultivar) that used to be saved, shared and sown again the following year.

According to the FAO (The State of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture), conservation of species in gene banks has made considerable progress. A number of global initiatives exist that focus on safeguarding diversity, such as the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership. Other initiatives like “Access to seed index” aim to bridge the gap between the world’s leading seed companies and the smallholder farmer.

But inadequate policies that remain focused on high input agriculture offer few options to the majority of resource-poor farmers to bolster resilience, improve nutrition and enhance their own livelihoods.

Extracted from: https://www.hivos.org/focal-area/open-source-seed-systems

Open Source Seed Systems

Hivos believes in the importance of farmers’ access to diverse and ecologically adapted seeds and the need to prevent exclusive and monopolistic rights on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture and associated practices and knowledge.

Hivos’ Open Source Seed Systems (OSSS) programme aims to reverse this trend by promoting the freedom to use seeds and stimulate breeding, diversification and resilience. We support concrete initiatives, learn what works and use the results in our lobbying and advocacy for change.

Open source seed approaches

Increasingly, Hivos together with breeders, farmers, and others concerned with seed systems, has felt the need to develop an alternative system, based not on exclusive intellectual property rights claims, but on protected commons that subvert the IPR system. Inspired by the open source software movement, several initiatives around the world have established variations of open source seed systems. Breeders declare their seeds open source, and farmers and consumers support the search for well-adapted varieties and tasty crops suitable for current cultivation technologies.

The distinctive feature of “open source seed” is an express and explicit commitment—legal and/or ethical—to maintain freedom to use the seed and any of its derivatives. This commitment accompanies the seed and its derivatives through any and all transfers and exchanges.

Strategy

Three strands of activities are central to the programme:  building viable business models for open source seed systems; strengthening an emerging global alliance of breeders, farmers, gardeners and consumers through joint research and learning; and accelerating a shift in public policy orientation through showcasing the strength of national open source seed initiatives that create alternatives.  We invite governments and other stakeholders to join in this global development of open source seed systems .

In East Africa, we work with Bioversity International to enable resource-poor male and female farmers to increase food security and mitigate climate change.

We build global alliances with like-minded organisations such as Open source seed initiative US and Apna Beej India. With them and others we are building capacity and promoting open source seeds in Africa and globally, going against the current ‘exclusive rights’ stream.

Extracted from: https://www.hivos.org/blog/why-media-matters-sustainable-food-zambia

Hivos Southern Africa is currently implementing the sustainable foods programme in Zambia aimed at fostering a radical rethinking of food production and consumption that recognises ecosystems as the foundation of societies and economies.

The existing food system in Zambia, built on large-scale mono cropping of maize, is eroding ecosystems and crop diversity and reducing diversity on our plates. In our view, we need to put citizens centre stage to build a new food system that is sustainable, nutritious, diverse and healthy.

Sustainable diets are respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems, culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable, nutritious, safe and healthy. A diverse food system builds on the productivity and nutrition potential of agricultural biodiversity in food systems.

It enables women and men to use and develop their knowledge to further improve the diversity in production and consumption systems. Diversity on the farm is diversity on the plate. As Hivos Southern Africa Hub, we firmly believe that a sustainable food system can contribute to sustainable diets that are key to realizing the goal of a healthy nation

Extracted from: https://www.hivos.org/blog/armyworm-maize-attack-case-sustainable-food-production-strategy-zambia

Maize – Zambia’s most favoured crop – is under attack from alien armyworms. The pest has already invaded more than 10 percent of farms in the country. The army worms are caterpillars that “march” across the landscape in large groups feasting on young plants, leaving devastation in their wake.

In Zambia, maize is the primary staple crop, and over 90 percent of smallholders rely on it for food security and income. As with other countries in the region, maize dominates production.

Despite being a beloved crop in Zambia and other countries in the region, maize is proving a costly crop both at production level and to the dietary needs of Zambia.

Maize, which is suffering the most from the armyworm attack, is referred to as a ‘politicised crop’ because of government interventions to support it. Zambia’s government has promoted maize more than other crops such as cassava, millet and sorghum. Since 2007, it has spent on average eighty percent of its agricultural budget supporting the production of maize.

The inadequate production of alternative staple crops, climatic shifts, and poverty is contributing to widespread food insecurity in Zambia. Within the last 20 years, prolonged dry spells and shorter rainfall seasons have reduced maize yields to only 40% of the long-term average. Furthermore, the culture of maize monocropping is diminishing the diversity of foods in the fields and on the Zambian plate. The culture of mono diet is born from monocropping food production, which is heavily slanted towards maize.

The latest attack of the maize crop by armyworm highlights the urgent need for Zambia to diversify its food crops.  An investment in sustainable food diversity is urgently needed to combat hunger and micronutrient deficiencies as well as cushion millions of Zambia people from the unknown threat of climatic change.Photo by CIFOR

Link to an Open Source Seed Programme video: https://vimeo.com/189777328/483c1ddf0b

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Another trend is organizations forming commons. Creative Commons licensing and Mozilla Foundation are examples. Again, new commons collaborations have a template they can adapt to their specific needs.

But how do organizations formed prior to commons era transition toward an open model?

“There isn’t really a map for that,” Wendy Brawer told me.

Which is ironic, considering that Wendy’s organization is Green Map System. She went on to explain,

“In 2009, we opened up our OpenGreenMap.org site. Mapping data was still very propriety. So enabling users to upload their own content was a step forward.”

Green Map has been collaborative since its inception. So, with the development of multiple open mapping platforms, the Green Map board was persuaded to move in that direction. But how does a traditional non-profit corporation make the transition?

Green Map, of course, developed a map. That helped inform the journey-in-progress. We share it here in hopes that other proprietary organizations making the transition to open will benefit from Green Map’s experience. Similarly, we hope to profile the experience of other such organizations in future posts.

Regarding collaboration with other organizations, Wendy was part of an open mapping presentation at the 2016 World Social Forum. This year, Green Map will participate in Intermapping, a gathering of mapping organizations. The goal of the Intermapping is to find ways to collaborate and make their platforms more interoperable.

Extracted from: correspondence with Wendy Brawer of Green Map

Confirmed by Green Map System’s board in Spring 2016, going open includes relaunching GreenMap.org with a new ‘operating system’ in 2017. With inclusive participation central to our nonprofit’s ethic, we are elevating all types of spin-off initiatives, partnerships and place-making, and raising the status of slower processes and low-tech grassroots methodologies that cultivate ongoing involvement in community wellbeing.

In this era of municipalism and as part of this reboot, we are changing how we serve the diverse needs of agencies, organizations and institutions. For example, we are developing tutorials for robust third party mapping platforms to support our movement’s evolving and expanding network of users. , and take resource-intensive tech tasks off our plate.

Moreover, as the Green Map Iconography and tools go open, we are shedding our sliding fee model and seeking a pathway forward that is a sustainable balance aligned with the solidarity economy. New partnerships will help us consider options toward development of a fresh new business model and at the same time, share our experience to strengthen the commons.

Extending our pattern of piloting new approaches locally before sharing models with the global network, since Superstorm Sandy in fall 2012, our focus has been on ‘solutionary’ climate-centric local projects. Applying capacities developed making Green Maps, we have supplied mapping expertise, communications, systems-thinking and participatory design to local initiatives, including GardensRising.org (a $2M community garden as green infrastructure project), Ranch on Rails (a self-powered bio-industrial park in Long Island City – cutoffcoalition.org), the Return of the #StantonBldg (community resiliency lab) and more. These foreshadow new Green Map tools, and are already inspiring projects led by Green Map Makers around the world.

Extracted from: https://medium.com/@flgnk/without-commons-there-is-no-community-without-community-there-is-no-commons-f00f26e79311#.a0ktyw4b3

The question of how to make commons visible was taken up during the forum in a meeting of mapping initiatives. Silke Helfrich and Jon Richter from http://transformap.co/ , Jason Nardi from Ripess , Wendy Brawer from http://www.greenmap.org/ came together to investigate the possibilities of interoperable standards for sharing data between different commons mapping projects. The group continue to work together and plan to organise further mapping events over the coming year. I also recommend reading Mapping as a Commons for more details on the concept.

The post Project Of The Day: Green Map appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Extracted from: http://seikatsuclub.coop/about/introduction_e.html

History

“Seikatsu Club”, is a voluntary association started in Tokyo in 1965 at the initiative of women who wanted to reform their lives and local communities as well as society.  In 1968 Seikatsu Club was incorporated as Seikatsu Club  Consumers’ Co-operatives which guaranteed democratic operation and management in order to promote the movement, continue business, and realize its goal. Since then, Seikatsu Club  has expanded its activities under a motto of “autonomous control of our lives” including production-distribution-consumption-disposal, the environment, social services, and politics. Presently 29 Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-ops (affiliates to Seikatsu Club Union) in over 19 prefectures conduct independent and unique activities.

Extracted from: International Newsletter on Sustainable Local Development. Newsletter #40 – July 1st, 2007

Today

As of June 2007, the Seikatsu Club is a union of 30 local co-operatives with a total membership of over 290,000 members, 99.9% being women. This is explained by the fact that Japanese society is in some regards very traditional. Therefore, social pressure strongly incites married women with children to quit the labour market, such as was the case in North America and in Western Europe a generation or two ago. This explains why the domestic consumption sphere is mostly a woman’s realm.

New social initiatives

Over the years, the members have launched workers’ collectives. There are now over 700 collectives, with nearly 20,000 members. Since there is no law in Japan for workers’ co-operatives, the members had to use the non-profit organisation (NPO) status. However, they function as if they were a coop (working ownership). The range of activities is very broad: preparing meals for elderly people, homecare, kindergartens, handicrafts, recycling, etc.

Having understood that merely making demands to local authorities was not enough, some members decided to get directly involved in politics by presenting candidates for local assemblies in the Tokyo Metropolitan region. The name they chose «Seikatsusha Network», means People who live in the sense of «inhabitants». Today, there are over 140 elected members in local assemblies, all women, who work to push these concerns.
At the local level: a Community Cooperative Council

The Seikatsu Club considers that to make a global change to society, a «cooperative» society, a society that works together has to be put in place. The plan is to create local Community Cooperative Councils, especially in Tokyo, composed of all organisations in a given territory: cooperatives, local producers, citizens’ movements, unions, workers collectives, associations, educational institutions, etc. The objective is that the community takes charge of itself. The principles are quite similar to sustainable local development or community economic development as known in Canada.
At the global level: a transformative vision of the public arena

Having realized that economic and social issues are linked, that all has become «glocal»; that the global and the local are so interlinked that we must act at all levels, from the local to the global. To have an impact on issues such as GMOs, the WTO rules, poverty and war, we are forced to imagine a «global community» similar to how we conceive local or national communities. Their vision is affirmed in the following manner (excerpt from a PowerPoint presentation):

We believe it is now the time for co-operatives to play a big role, both in their various communities and as the world’s largest NPO, in building the new glocal public sphere.

Extracted from: http://seikatsuclub.coop/about/economy_e.html

A Consumer Who Produces

The Seikatsu Club movement, “a consumer who produces”, promotes the following objectives in co-operation with consumers and producers who act as equal partners through collective purchase movement and business:

• To reveal absurdity and mechanisms of society from the viewpoint of ordinary citizens
• To share with producers the risk of time, space, and cost of improving agricultural methods and production process necessary for production
• To not deprive others of food (including overseas)
• To realize a truly necessary “alternative production-distribution-consumption-disposal” social system.

Independent Control and Auditing System

• Member themselves directly inspect the process from purchasing of materials to producing.
• In our Independent Control and Auditing System, based upon the Seikatsu Club principles of safety, health and the environment, members of the Independent Control Committee, consisting of both members and producers, form sub-committees for agriculture, fishery, livestock raising, processed foods, daily commodities, packaging materials, etc. and set independent standards.  The producers are supposed to disclose information as to whether their products meet the Committee’s production standards. “Mass independent control” gives the committee members an opportunity to actually check whether independent standards are truly realized through study session and on-spot inspection.  This is a unique auditing system and only Seikatsu Club can achieve such a high level of information disclosure. About 500 independent audits by about 4,000 members were conducted up to 2006. Once a producer achieves the independent standards objectives, a higher level of standards is set.

Extracted from: http://seikatsuclub.coop/about/rengo_about_e.html

There are about 500 consumers’ cooperatives in Japan. From Hokkaido in the north to Hyogo in the south, the Seikatsu Club Consumers’ Co-operative Union, (hereafter SCCCU) which consists of an association of 32 consumer co-operatives active in 21 administrative divisions (prefectures) of Japan, has altogether about 340,000 members, most of whom are women. In addition, there are six associated companies, including a milk factory.

The SCCU carries out the development, purchasing, distribution, and inspection of consumer materials (food, general daily goods, clothes, publications), and publishes PR and ordering information for pre-order collective purchase. In addition, the entire union works on problems such as GMOs and the environmental hormones issue by setting up committees and establishing projects which are run by SC members and SCCU staff.

The SCCCU member unit is based on the independent branches, all of which have independent management and activities. Seikatsu Club funding is from the members, who make monthly contributions of 1000 yen per person. These investments are the foundation of our healthy financial management.

Extracted from: http://seikatsuclub.coop/about/introduction_e.html

Problems we are facing

We are now almost drowning in the ocean of a consumer society which prevails all over the world. Although we believed it possible to achieve a fruitful life, as a matter of fact, we face problems such as the decline of food self-efficiency ratio, insecure food safety, the destruction of the environment, the widening gap of rich and poor, and poverty. Each problem is too huge to be tackled by an individual so we have to unite with our neighbour and neighbour’s neighbour.

 Seikatsu Club Principles: 10 principles on safety, health and the environment

1.    Pursuit of safety for consumer materials
2.    Raising self-sufficiency in food
3.    Reduction of harmful substances
4.    Sustainable use of natural resources
5.    Reduction of waste and promotion of reuse
6.    Reduction of energy use
7.    Reduction of risk
8.    Information disclosure
9.    Independent control and auditing
10.  Mass participation

Photo by Magdalena Roeseler Photo by polybazze

The post Project Of The Day: the Seikatsu Clubs appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Digital justice aims to provide access to the digisphere for those without it. With some support from government and local anchor institutions, ordinary citizens can self organize and address local needs.  The Detroit Community Technology Project fills this role in an impoverished community. This post features three of their endeavors.

Extracted from: http://detroitdjc.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/discotech_ddjc2010.pdf

A Discotech (which is short for Discovering Technology) is a model for a community-based and community-organized multimedia, drop-in workshop fair.

At a Discotech, participants learn more about the impact and possibilities of technology within our communities and take part in fun, interactive and media-based workshops.

A Discotech utilizes the unique skills and expertise within each community and morphs to adapt to changing needs. Discotechs are constantly evolving, there are infinite ways of holding the event!

DDJC’s Discotechs have integrated the following core concepts: Internet, Computers + Electronics, Policy and Community Resources.

Extracted from: https://www.alliedmedia.org/news/2016/11/16/introducing-%E2%80%9Cteaching-community-technology-handbook%E2%80%9D

The Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP) is excited to present the Teaching Community Technology Handbook. This 100+ page handbook will take you through the history of popular education while offering a step-by-step guide to developing community rooted technology workshops and curricula. The handbook introduces Community Technology as a series of educational practices, combining theories and methods by Paulo Freire, Myles Horton, Grace Lee Boggs, Bernice McCarthy, Susan Morris, Grant P Wiggins, and Jay McTighe.

Community technology is a method of teaching and learning about technology with the goal of restoring relationships and healing neighborhoods. Community technologists are those who have the desire to build, design and facilitate a healthy integration of technology into people’s lives and communities.

DCTP was commissioned to produce the book by New America’s Resilient Communities Program in partnership with New York Economic Development Corporation’s RISE NYC Program. DCTP launched the for public use internationally at the Mozilla Festival in Ravensbourne College, London in October.

Why Teach Community Technology?

“We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.’ It’s always about critical connections.” – Grace Lee Boggs

We produced this handbook because we recognized that having a particular skill doesn’t necessarily mean you are equipped to teach it to others. Community Technology focuses on teaching strategies that can be employed to make the process of learning how to use and create technology more accessible and relevant. We believe sharing these teaching practices has the potential to diversify and shape technology fields to be more community-oriented.

We’ve learned from Boggs, Horton and Freire that the way in which we teach, along with who is teaching, has a great impact on how people learn. The roots of teaching and learning with communities traces back to the citizenship schools of the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1960s, racist policies targeting marginalized communities in the South, such as voter literacy tests, prevented Black people from voting in order to shape the future they wanted to see. Through citizenship “schools” thousands of African Americans in the South trained thousands of others to read and write. In this context, the purpose of literacy was to build the power of disenfranchised communities to fundamentally transform the power structures of the country.

Today, we live in an era where technology is interwoven with government, healthcare, social services and education. Yet digital literacy inequality is high – Detroit has one of the lowest rates of Internet access with 40% of households lacking Internet. Digital literacy is essential for people to access basic life needs. As cities shift towards data-driven development and wireless infrastructures, it is important to build the digital capacity of neighborhoods. The more that people know about the technology around them, the more they will be able to participate in shaping their environment.

Whether you’re a novice technology user who is interested in facilitating sessions on how to use a smartphone, an intermediate technology user who wants to teach people how to use hashtags, or an advanced technology user who is interested in designing interactive maps for community empowerment, this handbook provides tools, strategies and hands-on activities to support you in facilitating accessible workshops and programming.

DCTP has used the handbook to help grow digital stewards programming in Detroit through the Equitable Internet Initiative, and in New York with the RISE – NYC Resilient Communities program. Through customized trainings with community partners, we use the handbook to help build capacity in neighborhoods for others to be able to teach the digital stewards program.

Extracted from: https://www.alliedmedia.org/dctp/eiiThe Equitable Internet Initiative

The Equitable Internet Initiative is a collaboration between the Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP), Allied Media Projects (AMP), Grace in Action Collectives, WNUC Community Radio, and the Church of the Messiah’s Boulevard Harambe Program.

From July, 2016 to January, 2018, we will work together to ensure that more Detroit residents have the ability to leverage digital technologies for social and economic development.

The goals of this initiative are to:

• increase Internet access through the distribution of shared Gigabit Internet connections in three underserved neighborhoods;
• increase Internet adoption through a Digital Stewards training program that prepares residents of those same neighborhoods with the skills necessary to bring their communities online; and
•  increase pathways for youth into the opportunities of Detroit’s burgeoning Innovation District through intermediate and advanced digital literacy trainings.

Through the Equitable Internet Initiative (EII), DCTP will accelerate outreach, training and wireless broadband sharing on the neighborhood level in Detroit. The EII will serve residents in Detroit’s Southeast, Southwest, and North End neighborhoods, which were selected based on their comparatively low income and educational levels in contrast to the Greater Downtown area, and based on their proximity to existing DCTP hubs, whose support can be leveraged.

Community Anchor Organizations

Three community anchor organizations will implement the EII programs in their respective neighborhoods:

•  Grace in Action (Vernor/Lawndale in Southwest Detroit)
•  Church of the Messiah (Islandview in Southeast Detroit)
•  WNUC Community Radio (North End)

The EII will build upon existing community technology programs at each site, which include a community makerspace, a youth-run technology collective, and a community radio station that focuses on developing local storytelling and journalism. Through their participation in the EII, these community anchor organizations will grow their capacities to respond to rapidly changing digital opportunities and threats in Detroit.

The Equitable Internet Initiative will accelerate outreach, training and wireless broadband Internet sharing on the neighborhood level in Detroit. Led by the Detroit Community Technology project of Allied Media Projects, the Equitable Internet Initiative will ensure that more Detroit residents.

Extracted from: https://www.alliedmedia.org/news/2016/09/02/bring-%E2%80%9Cdetroit-music-box%E2%80%9D-community-radio-application-your-neighborhood

Detroit Music Box is a community radio application that broadcasts stories and media from people living in the Cass Corridor. It is currently accessible on the CassCo community wireless network as a “local application” which means it can be accessed without using the Internet through the CassCo wireless network. The Detroit Community Technology Project (DCTP) has been collecting stories for Detroit Music Box since launching it over a year ago. We are excited to share that you can now download and install Music Box for your own neighborhood! Read on to learn more about Detroit Music Box, how you can access it in the Cass Corridor, and how you can set up this storytelling application in your community.

Why We Started Music Box

In 2016, Detroit has become a perceived mecca of possibility, a “comeback city.” On the surface, that’s a great thing. Unfortunately, the comeback narrative does not encompass the full story of Detroit, including the the voices of the predominantly black residents of the city, who have been largely misrepresented or not represented at all in these narratives.

Without knowing the stories of longtime residents of Detroit, most people would believe that the “comeback city” narrative was the full story. Capturing the stories of residents who never left – the residents who are creatively reimagining their neighborhoods despite decades of neglect – is crucial in portraying a counter-narrative about Detroit that shares the city’s rich history and uplifts the voices of marginalized communities.

Detroit Music Box makes it easy to collect and preserve the stories of residents and community members so that they can build a community-generated history of their neighborhoods, create alternatives to mainstream narratives about Detroit and educate people who are new to the city.

Detroit Music Box in the Cass Corridor

Detroit Music Box is currently available on the CassCo community wireless network, maintained by DCTP with support from the  Detroit Digital Stewards Network. CassCo is a community wireless network that allows communities to distribute and share Internet connections.  Every community wireless network has an “intranet,” a local network in which users can send and receive information wirelessly without connecting to the Internet. Because Music Box is housed on an intranet, it is available and accessible to a wider audience, including users whose Internet goes down and those without access to Internet, which is roughly 40% of Detroiters.

“CassCo” represents Cass Corridor, a neighborhood in Detroit that has seen rapid gentrification. This area has since been renamed as Midtown, but for many Detroiters who have lived in this neighborhood for decades, it will always be Cass Corridor. The implementation of CassCo and Detroit Music Box in an area like Midtown is significant because much of what once was is no longer there. Storytelling is a participatory way to preserve the past and archive the people’s history of Detroit.

DCTP launched Detroit Music Box in the Cass Corridor by asking the question “Do you remember the Cass Corridor?” DCTP gathered stories from residents in the Cass Corridor neighborhood by posting a public call online, putting up flyers in the neighborhood, doing door-to-door outreach and interviews, and hosting an event at Allied Media Projects called “Remembering the Cass Corridor,” which brought  together longtime and existing residents, business owners, and artists from the Cass Corridor to share their stories. At the event, each story was recorded live and archived on the Detroit Music Box radio application.

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When our Governor tried to ban additional Syrian refugees, I was not surprised that my wife and our Mennonite friends connected with a Syrian refugee family in Phoenix to offer support and friendship. I’ve had dinner at their home a couple of times.

Around the globe, people are adopting similar approaches to refugees. The Design Research Lab at the Berlin University of The Arts  incubated a project as a practical reponse to a three year symposium. The project is called Refugee Open Cities.

Extracted from: http://www.roc21.net/

Our goal is to unlock the vast potential of newcomers and welcoming locals alike. A holistic, sensitive approach involving the opinion, needs and skills of the migrant community is often missing.

This is why we facilitate open innovation processes to improve living conditions fast and inspire collective responsibility. We believe that change starts in the heads, but becomes a reality when it´s experienced at heart and realized with your own hands. Therefore, participants will be provided opportunities to change the space they´re living in, leading to collaborative results.

We´ve started our project in the midst of Berlin-Neukölln: About 600 newcomers, 1/4 of them kids, live there in an abandoned fashion warehouse on four vast floors. Similar to many of these emergency accommodations, the living conditions are basic; with eight people sharing one room, often divided by language and religious beliefs. Waiting for their papers for six months and more, they hope to find a regular job, a home to call their own and getting their families over to Germany.

Extracted from: https://www.facebook.com/openstate/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1225778857492040&hc_location=ufi

Our first round of interviews with shelter inhabitants and the managing team have led to a multitude of opinions, challenges and potential – from quick fixing the WIFI to installing a community kitchen to changing the role pattern of women and men inside the community. Whatever the challenge ahead will be, we make sure to share our solutions and methods open source and make them accessible for others.

In 2017 we´ll take our experiences to new places and premises. We will implement our best-practices on one hand and keep learning with our partners, refugees and locals on the other.

Extracted from: http://www.design-research-lab.org/projects/open-cities-symposium-12-02-2016/

Open Cities Symposium 12.02.2016

Concluding symposium of the international co-operation “Community Now? Conflicts, Interventions, New Publics” (2013-2016)

In recent years, openness, self-organization and participation have become key terms in the discursive paradigm of administrations, institutions and companies. In our understanding open cities are inviting and understandable for newcommers, they cultivate negociation and participation and are flexible enough to re-adjust to changing needs.

The current refugee migration is amplifying the struggles about openness and participation. This influx has created issues concerning registration, housing, education, security and health. Numerous innovative initiatives have stepped forward where administrations have been unable to cope with these urgent needs. Simultaneously, we witness the rise of strong discourse that seeks to close borders and even suspend civil rights.

In this situation we want to rethink our role as researchers, designers or urbanist and the tools we are working with. Can fences, surveillance and deportation camps really go together with the proclaimed openness? How robust are our tools and concepts of participation? Do we need to engage in re-designing the open cities in order to stand the test of time?

Photo by Arian Zwegers

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Makerspaces, aka hackerspaces innovation labs or fablabs, are providing local opportunities to realize that vision. Makers share their designs with other makers around the world, prompting new innovation and local production. Popular Science estimates 1,400 active spaces globally. For a global list of hackerspaces, makers spaces, and innovation labs visit Hackerspace.org.

Some hackerspace projects have become traditional enterprises Most remain part of the alternative economy, offering open source designs as well as viable products for sale. Barcelona’s Fab Foundation aims to connect alternative production with the alternative economy through its new project, Fab Market.

Extracted from: http://market.fablabs.io/manifesto/

The Fab Market is a new online shop where you can find a variety of locally made products designed by people from all over the world. All products are open-source and sold ready for use, assembly or fabrication, giving people the possibility to participate in the making process. The more you participate, the less you pay for the product.

Making products that adapt to people’s needs, culture or taste —and giving the buyer direct contact with the supplier— increases transparency in the supply chain and gives the opportunity to know exactly who you are working with and how.

The Fab Market wants to give talented creators, designers or makers a place where they can fabricate their creations for a low price and sell globally at the same time.

We want to invite all FabLabs around the world to become a part of the Fab Market network in order to create a distributed economy. By working together, sharing knowledge, equipment and customers, creates the opportunity for scalability without a great amount of investment.

Extracted from: http://market.fablabs.io/#products

Fab Market wants to offer good designs made to last and therefore all products need to be approved and tested before going on sale. Products have to be fairly easy to fabricate and come with step by step assembly instructions.

Designers and makers can present their creations to the Fab Market, and once they are approved, they are invited to their local FabShop for prototyping and testing.

Extracted from: http://market.fablabs.io/#sell

Designers and makers can present their creations to the Fab Market, and once they are approved, they are invited to their local FabShop for prototyping and testing.

In exchange for excellence, FabLab Barcelona will offer the creators a special discount of fabrication every time their product is sold.

Extracted from: http://market.fablabs.io/#fabshop

We want to welcome all FabLabs around the world to become a part of the FabShop Network.

Sign up now if your lab is interested in accepting the invitation!

Photo by aurelie ghalim

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