Dadamac Celebrating The Power of We - A Blog Action Day Post #powerofwe October 14, 2012
First I'll introduce Nikki Fishman and a project we're doing close to home called Collage-network.
Given we're celebrating “The Power of We” Collage-network is a good place to start, because one of its core beliefs is that we're “stronger together”. It's a social business looking at the “changing world of work” (unemployment, under-employment etc.) and addressing the issues in a practical, realistic and innovative way. Nikki and I live close to each other in SE London so we've begun work at a couple of locations here, but with an eye to replication all over the place.
Other Collage-network core beliefs are:
We live in a rapidly changing world.
“Things” are not likely to stay as they are (and are even less likely to go back to how they used to be).
We'd prefer to face an unknown future with people we know and trust rather than on our own.
A good way to get to know people and build trust is by doing small things together, or for each other.
After doing “the small stuff” we can do more, and increasingly know how to “look out for each others needs” and recognise opportunities for each other.
In that frame of mind, and as part of a network built on trust and working together, we can find new opportunities to create value as part of a team - in ways that we couldn't do on our own.
There are many different kinds of value we can create - social value, financial value, and mixtures of the two.
We're trying out various approaches to sharing our ideas and our network of people working together is growing.
My next introduction is to John Dada who, by contrast, is far way from London in rural Nigeria. He is the director of Fantsuam Foundation (FF) in Kaduna State
FF faces the usual challenges of community development organisations in rural Nigeria, poverty, poor infrastructure, and the like. Recently however things have been made even more difficult with post-election, “sectarian” violence (with many FF staff and volunteers leaving the area) and then the bombing campaign of Boko Haram (with all its associated outcomes including disruptive curfews).
John and I have collaborated in various ways since around 2004, mostly face to face in Nigeria. In recent years we have met online once a week, and Nikki has written up news of our meetings in her blog. This online collaboration makes John's work more visible, and the archive we have created has helped him in his funding bids.
This year John was briefly in London so Nikki and I arranged for a few people to meet him. One of the people was Steve Podmore, and his meeting with John led to another collaboration. It came about a few weeks after their meeting, when Steve heard that John needed some urgent help. Steve responded by getting up a fundraising initiative called “Fast Tractor”. It was a race against the clock. The tractor in question was part of a government scheme to sell subsidised tractors to organisations like FF. There was only a short time to claim the tractor, and the money for it had to be paid before delivery. Thanks to the way people worked together John was able to get the tractor which is now working to the benefit of the local community.
There are other “working together” examples to celebrate, but little space, so I'll end with a brief fun project with Andy of FocalLocal. We both live in London – a vibrant, energetic city, but one with a reputation for people not knowing their neighbours, avoiding eye contact, and not smiling at strangers. We decided to invite the FocalLocal folks to challenge this convention and try to increase the smile-per-hour rate by taking to the streets, chalking out some “safe-to-smile zones”, and demonstrating how to use them.
As a result Andy and I can claim to be the current world experts in the creation of safe-to-smile zones – a title we may soon pass on to Liam @hackofalltrades. He's currently in Mexico, and hopes to do a “safe-to-smile” on his return to Toronto. We follow each other on twitter so that's how he picked up the idea.
I love the possibility of a tweet taking safe-to-smile zones from the UK to Canada via Mexico. What a great way to collaborate informally on innovation. I much prefer a collaborative approach to the top-down approach of pilot projects that “scale”. As I see it “top-down” is an outdated model now that we can so easily communicate “across”.
I love projects that emerge through people knowing each other and responding to needs. It makes sense for people to work together on locally inspired projects. The projects can be shared as “open source ideas”. Any idea that starts off in one place can be shared face-to-face or via the Internet. “Prototype ideas” can be adapted and developed to fit local circumstances. Lessons that are learned can also be shared.
Working together locally and globally has never been easier. It's true in our experience, and bloggers world wide will be sharing their experiences too. That certainly is something to celebrate.