:Title: 1000 citizen yunus forums & Capitalism's Future :Author: chris macrae :Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:18:57 PST :Modified: Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:24:17 PST :URL: http://www.ned.com/group/community-general/news/80/ Last week I was among a small team of londoners who received news of the huge privilege of : choosing 1000 london citizens to meet yunus for 2 hours to identify citizen projects that can help wave social business's new capitalism around the world. .. image:: http://profile.ak.facebook.com/object2/1080/41/s5401874105_5540.jpg This is the book that I will be getting 1000 copies of to ensure that londoners have a common basis for propagating this debate. The subtitle reads: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism - the publishers summary is at http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=9781586484934 Its my understanding that if this experiment goes well enough, Dr Yunus will want to repeat it other cities where he has a couple of hours off from official itineraies. So I am hoping that other cities can help with sugegstions of how to profile who to invite and conversely that london can be a learning case from which others can build on ---- **Comments** :Author: chris macrae :Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:35:24 PST :Modified: Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:06:36 PST Broadly speaking our initial idea is to invite groups of people who before or after the summit wish to announce a collaboration project of relevance to progressing the community and sustainability debates that Dr Yunus and his co-workers and supporters are transforming. I will try snd list some of the groups we are beginning to invite and look forward to suggestions of who we are missing etc. This may also be a good opportunity to profile which types of networks I have connections with through london if you see a group you want to do an international snap with. y1 women of microcredit y2 various twin nation groups - eg london and Bangladesh; London & pakistan (where the next microcreditsummit is), London and any African country we can find a diaspora group of, and so on y3 education revolution groups such as those connecting round http://innovation-unit.co.uk y4 Green in the City photosynthesis groups which london is a world leading node of in terms of both clean energy and clean agriculture futures y5 youth entrepreneurs -eg those including Prince Frederick organising 1500 youth summit startin biannually in 2008 (philippines september but organsised out of UK) y6 world entrepreneur network 100 http://www.wes08.net/ -an attempt by one of the UK's leading people economists, Rebecca harding, to return entrepreneurial enrgy to be everyone vocational right y7 Brixton Hub (one of who's co-leaders is sofia bustamante http://www.ned.com/user/u435899568/?searchterm=bustamante ) - which is an incubator of citizen entrepreneur projects (transparency declaration - I have microfinanced them $40000 so that they have a 30 person workspace) y8 alumni of over 50 collaboration cafe http://collaborationcafe.tv that we have convened over the last 5 years around the focus experiemvce of a particular socila chnage agent or entrepreneurial revolutionary y9 journalists for humanity y10 revolutionary shareholders of The Economist y11 make poverty history 2.1 - a group that emerged from 70 person open space during MPH 2005 where we started to realise how often global aid is part of the problem not the solution y12 Global Reconciliation Network European Chapter- a largely Gandian inspired group whose 3 summits in Delhi , Sarajevo and London included http://collapsingworld.org y13 peoples for peace between East-West y14 espian networks who aim to develop web tools that restore Tim Berners Lee 24 collaboration designs http://wiki.espians.com/24_concepts y15 The UK's GreenChildren http://www.thegreenchildren.org/tgcf/community/tom y16 UK readers and correspondents and republishers of our world citizen guide to crisis learning http://www.valuetrue.com/home/gallery.cfm?startrow=5 our feature on taddy blecher's free university cida in south africa is a useful connection as we hear Dr Yunus is starting the First Free Womens University in Bangladesh y17 an open consortium of agriculture schools that are aiming to source peer to peer curricula for south african youth and community land y18 a muslim womens cultural appreciation group inspired by the book written by Somalian Shammis Hussein y18 london fans of http://www.ted.com and extreme innovation debates such as every city can have abundant celan energy if it chnages its roofs I'll be back with some more groups - any queries etc so far? ---- :Author: Jeff Mowatt :Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:27:52 PST Chris, Sofia in Brixton interested me as this was my childhood home. As you know P-CED have been social business advocates for some time, having sourced a full cost recovery project in Russia over 5 years. I'm reminded that leaving this part of London to be able to keep running a social business was something I found necessary a couple of years ago. Right now , the major problem that social business faces is one that affects all self sustaining small businesses, being paid on time. This is particular bad for those of us who have contracts with government. I have two government departments who've held up payment for a year, for example. This runs completely to the same governments support for social enterprise, which to those working without being paid is simply empty rhetoric. I'd like some support for my Pay on Time campaign which is something our goverment still drags it's heels on. How can we export our values to the developing world I ask, when how we practice business at home, is to take delivery and avoid payment? That in most cultures would simply be regarded as theft. It's not a good grounding if we hope to tackle the problem of corruption elsewhere without doing something about our own. Jeff ---- :Author: chris macrae :Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:44:45 PST :Modified: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:46:54 PST Jeff its saddening how big organisations often treat what they perceive to be smaller ones on the sorts of issue you raise Maybe we are being optimistic but whilst most of the Brixton Hub work is below the radar (like yours so to speak), we aim to cultivate some big friends. It certainly energises our co-worker culture; whether it will cause accounting departments to treat us with respect remains to be seen! ------------ As well as Y invitations, we seek to issue P invitations p1 http://theelders.org Hello This follows up from a conversation which I had with Natalie on Friday where she asked me to send a summary note. Yunus1000 Forum is an emerging intercity 2-hour event where Dr Yunus greets 1000 citizens interested in popularising debates on the future of capitalism which open social business enterprise models can now sustain across cities. We will be celebrating Dr Yunus' new book on this subject http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=9781586484934 Londoners have been authorised by Dhaka to assemble the first such Forum, probably in march 2008 coinciding with a planned visit of Dr Yunus on other matters. I am on the assembly team looking after world class networking partnerships due to my 25 years old experience on world class brands, and social network futures (my father's entrepreneurial specialty at The Economist between 1950 and 1990). http://macrae.tv/_wsn/page3.html As Dr Yunus is a Mandela elder and Sir Richard the chief UK elder, we wanted to inquire about mutually beneficial ideas for multiplying goodwill of Elders and YunusForum1000. A particular focus of YunusForum appears to be empowering citizens to identify action projects both before and after the forum. This is a role my fellow assembly team member Sofia Bustamante supports out of the Brixton hub - a 30 person workspace for testing citizen projects. For example, the hub is the planning centre for Green in the City: a 150 person theatre arriving on the South Bank next year alongside the Queen Elizabeth Hall - a citizens demonstration space of how photosynthesis offers abundant clean energy to any city that changes its roofs. YunusForum also hopes to connect action projects from other summits beginning with the world entrepreneur network 1000 person summit http://www.wes08.net/ in January hosted by Rebecca Harding, formerly chief economist at the Work Foundation Yunus1000 Forum was finally authorised last week so we are at the very open co-creative stage of executing the value Dhaka has asked us to live up to : Impossible becomes possible when right action right place right people right time Love any questions, ideas... chris macrae us tel 301 881 1655 ---- :Author: Chris Cook :Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 03:00:00 PST Jeff Small world. There's a group including Sofia planning to get together in London during November for an LLP workshop. She seems quite taken with the model, and can see the potential for "micro-investment" as opposed to "micro-credit". As you know, we have developed a partnership-based enterprise model of the type that Yunus describes as "Not for Loss". Simple, but radical. Best Regards Chris Jeff Mowatt said: Chris, Sofia in Brixton interested me as this was my childhood home. As you know P-CED have been social business advocates for some time, having sourced a full cost recovery project in Russia over 5 years. I'm reminded that leaving this part of London to be able to keep running a social business was something I found necessary a couple of years ago. Right now , the major problem that social business faces is one that affects all self sustaining small businesses, being paid on time. This is particular bad for those of us who have contracts with government. I have two government departments who've held up payment for a year, for example. This runs completely to the same governments support for social enterprise, which to those working without being paid is simply empty rhetoric. I'd like some support for my Pay on Time campaign which is something our goverment still drags it's heels on. How can we export our values to the developing world I ask, when how we practice business at home, is to take delivery and avoid payment? That in most cultures would simply be regarded as theft. It's not a good grounding if we hope to tackle the problem of corruption elsewhere without doing something about our own. Jeff ---- :Author: chris macrae :Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 04:50:21 PST :Modified: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 04:56:45 PST hi chris is there anywhere that I could read more on your partnership of partnership model- it would be good to have a team of 5+ attending Yunus1000 what we are trying to do is catalogue one project each team wants collaboration help with; not just at the conference or in virtual space but also at the 30 person workspace hub that sofia is a co-leader of in brixton; this has grown from zero in 4 months -something to do with people needing a pied a terre in london for co-work and probably the kind of hi-trust culture that sofia plants I will start a thread on what I think brixton hub dreams to be - its fortunate that as it was itself microcredited into existence as a coop, it has no owner interest to constrain it- and so can experimentally connect with almost anything that might live up to yunus type visiosn for community-up worlds and localities Its mobiliser is a mitchell a guy who is recognised around brixton to have done about as much community building as any londoner of our era - when I say something like that I am delighted to hear of alternative nominations (for those who dont know london, community work in brixton has needed to be special http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=brixton+riots&btnG=Google+Search ) ---- :Author: Jeff Mowatt :Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 11:08:16 PST Yes, I was living there at the time of the riots and know that it was lack of opportunity combined with hard nosed policing that set things off around Railton Road. From the sound of it, this networking has all happened since I left the area 2 years ago. Before then social enterprise, as a full cost recovery model would draw blank expressions. I have less than fond memories of trying to get the attention of our APPG on microfinance and the one for social enterprise, neither wanted to know about "No Loss" models. Ours had been delivered to Tomsk, Siberia in the wake of the Defense Enterprise fund losses, pitched at the Clinton administration as "lets try something different from trickle-down". I like the LLP model too, I think there's scope for using it within what we've been planning in Eastern Europe, unfortunately I can't start one on my own. Our role in Ukraine as a social business is part advocacy part activism, very much part of the "Orange" movement and it's stance against corruption. we'd been there, or my colleague had more accurately in 2002 when challenging something being skimmed off before anti-corruption became more fashionable left him hung out to dry by those who'd supported him thus far. What we're pitching in Ukraine is a mixed strategy comprising a less that full cost recovery component (childcare reform & social enterprise faculty), with a full cost recovery (microfinance) and a more than full cost recovery (community broadband) component. In my mind there's scope for various models of investment. I believe the LLP would work well in an additional component, that of delivering affordable housing. They are responding in that they've announced a network of rehab centres for the disabled and just last week the national scale adoption program. As we stand, my colleague has been blocked from returning to the UK, we face a wall of obstruction from the "Not invented here" mentality of social enterprise and government in the UK and are being driven into the ground by those who don't pay for our services. Time to bang a few self-serving heads together! ---- :Author: Chris Cook :Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:36:49 PST Hi Chris You'll find some info here in the Open Capital thread. Also www.opencapital.net I have specifically developed a model for a proposed development of an existing - very busy - charitable development trust, the Albion Trust, in Edinburgh. I could email details if you like. Chris chris macrae said: hi chris is there anywhere that I could read more on your partnership of partnership model- it would be good to have a team of 5+ attending Yunus1000 what we are trying to do is catalogue one project each team wants collaboration help with; not just at the conference or in virtual space but also at the 30 person workspace hub that sofia is a co-leader of in brixton; this has grown from zero in 4 months -something to do with people needing a pied a terre in london for co-work and probably the kind of hi-trust culture that sofia plants I will start a thread on what I think brixton hub dreams to be - its fortunate that as it was itself microcredited into existence as a coop, it has no owner interest to constrain it- and so can experimentally connect with almost anything that might live up to yunus type visiosn for community-up worlds and localities Its mobiliser is a mitchell a guy who is recognised around brixton to have done about as much community building as any londoner of our era - when I say something like that I am delighted to hear of alternative nominations (for those who dont know london, community work in brixton has needed to be special http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=brixton+riots&btnG=Google+Search ) ---- :Author: chris macrae :Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 08:34:08 PST Chris, I will get some spare stock of Yunus future of capitalism book http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaffairsbooks-cgi-bin/display?book=9781586484934 around January 10- could we make a deal I post you a free copy if you will have a read and post a note on what open capital and yunus debates of capital futures have in cmmon and in difference. I would like to use the note in an open source way- eg this thread is one of 3 or 4 I will enedavour to maintain in my favourite virtual communities; I will also be trying to connect 1000 readers in a book club though whether that will be just an occasional event to join in or some other space, I dont even want to think about until we see how much participation people want to commune round in principle, happy to make this offer to 10 nedsters who care about debating capitalism, economics etc- if I was framing an oxford union debate ten the side I would take is we are being ruled by the (economics, accounting, just about every hard profession) of the big gets bigger and that isnt sustainable ; its a view my father wrote about from the economist 24 years ago and forecast 2008 would be the tipping point year to chnage as acharacter remarkable like Dr Yunus waved goodwill local to global around the web and real cities and villages http://macrae.tv/_wsn/page3.html ----