Comments

I am thinking that the residential community ... and mind you I am only right now considering the village part ... needs to have their own governing body. They need to be in control of where their village goes. They need to be the ones how decide how things will happen between themselves. I suppose this could be within the frame work of Opok Farm Enterprise guidelines but I don't think it is a good idea to have an executive committee telling them how their lives will be run. You can have the exec committee to oversee the whole operation and I think that is necessary. I think that the exec committee can offer advice to the village governing group. I also think that the community should use their own resources to develop the village and if they feel like they need money for some development and can make the case that the project adds value to the Opok Farm Enterprise holdings, they can go to the Exec Committee and request funds. Maybe even, Opok Farm has an advisory member or observing member on the village governing body. - Linda

Exactly, Linda. Thanks for chiming in. We want to offer a structure that enables many actors to act independently on the farm, but abiding to a code of conduct and overseen/coordinated by the Executive committee of the Opok Farms CBO. Yes on the community/village/school having their own governing body, with 2 representatives in the annual general assembly plus every resident over 15 with a vote in the general assembly. Over time - as I imagine the community growing - control over the executive committee actually shifts into the hands of the resident community to elect.

With regard to where the village will be on the landmass, well, I am not sure what the process needs to be - feels kind of chicken and egg. We have already broken ground on land that is intended for use by the community school, so if the community wants to use another part of the land instead then all this work will have been for... something different. There's a lot of the landmass that isn't accessible at all, so in practical terms the choices are a little bit limited. Who the community is at this point who should decide where we start building basic infrastructure is not clear to me, but we do need to start building basic infrastructure if anyone is ever going to be able to take up residency. I also think there may be some parts of the property that we'd like to reserve for ecotourism and for Okec family use; we're also talking with the university about allocating some land to student projects. So I'd not wish to see the community be able to push any of those other players out in the name of community control. Since there will be other players involved I think it calls for a coordinated approach.

One of the things I am trying to do is distinguish between the Okec family owned Opok Farm landmass as a collaborative demonstration space with many players, and the resident (intentional) community associated with the school as one player (with it's own governance structure and land use rights) within that space. The challenge is that we cannot leave the family and family ownership rights out of the land use and community governance picture. The CBO structure, with these + other membership levels & voting rights, becomes a vehicle through which the family can maintain influence over how their land asset is used (and maintain the right to use some of their land themselves) while at the same time creating an open space for other players to do what they want to do there and have a voice in how the entire family owned space develops. That's the hope anyway.

WRT how things happen, my biggest concern is that we have a code of conduct for using the land sustainably. If the community decides to start clear-cutting the entire forest on their alloted portion and using heavy pesticides, or dumping toxic waste from a newly invented processing system, that's absolutely not ok. Through adhering to a code of conduct anyone who's a land-using member at any level will have to agree on some basic guiding principles on how we will and will not treat the land in that space.

Confused on which community should use their own resources to build the community. The families of orphans? We've never discussed the Opok Farms CBO in terms of providing funds - I'd rather have other partners like Life in Africa continue to play that kind of support role as required. The CBO is really just a structure under which many kinds of community based activities can take place in a coordinated way on the Opok Farm landmass.

btw - Shall we move this to a discussion or continue here?

added alumni membership category above

Regarding which community should use their own resources...I think that The village - children and others - should use as much of their own resources to build as much of their lives as they can. Much of what needs to be done CAN be done with the soil and sweat equity. And the learning that goes along with doing things.

About a year ago Asoke was invited to set up a demonstration community on the University campus. It was after the rainy season and the initial structures were very rudimentary. The main goal being to get the land producing. The land they were given was garbage land. They had to have other communities supply them with fertilizer so that they could condition the soil. In a matter of a few months they had things going and growing. They have since then started building more permanent structures. When the students from all over the country came here in June to enroll in the university, they had to build their own houses. There were people to help and guide, but one group made adobe bricks and built an incredible house ...and I do mean incredible.

We are on the same page here... I can see this happening. So where we are at now is getting the land producing, getting other "communities" to provide some of what's needed to get the rudimentary structures up for that beginning enrollment to take place. By the time that happens, the land will be productive and ready for the community to take over. Clearing the land from the state it's in to get it to a productive state takes a really long time. So until we have enough land cleared to be able to support the community school, we are using the cleared land to generate income to clear more land. That involves a community of laborers, who also have survival needs. So we're building an office, storefront, farm store, health clinic and basic shared lodging/cooking structures. The worker community will be building their own houses. When the school community comes onboard they will be able to benefit from that basic infrastructure in the early community building stages, without being married to using it exclusively over the long term.

We are working on a video of the brand new community here on the campus and the Sisaket community that is nearly 20 years old so you can see. Part of the learning and growing and strengthening comes from seeing that they can do it themselves and don't need the government or handouts from NGOs. Once they know that...getting money from outside is a great bonus and can be looked at gratefully as a gift rather than as a necessary requirement. In many ways, this process is inadvertently designed to develop cheetahs. If the community has to dig the soil and make the bricks themselves, when it's done, they OWN it...inn their hearts and souls, and they are stronger because they did it by themselves.

I get this, and have nothing to detract from what you've said - only to add 2 things that relate particularly to the transitional nature of the Northern Ugandan population:

• In addition to what is built that stays to become permanent within the community at Opok Farms and owned by the community at large, I think it's also important to value the knowledge that comes through actually doing, which is a portable asset that nobody can ever take away from the individual. So once I've learned to build a house or keep bees I can do that anywhere my life's journey takes me.
• One thing that struck me when reading something about the Asoke community you sent me was the principle of reaching out to other communities with the concepts. One way to do that is to set up demonstration communities - like we are doing. Another way might be to organize community outreach programs. In this case I see in my mind's eye that we will by nature of the Northern Ugandan situation have a lot of people passing through on their way to resettle elsewhere. In playing to that, building up a strong alumni program will, I think, ensure that the sense of community ownership stays strong, but also that the concepts spread radially out into other surrounding communities and family structures.

I saw a DVD today of some shorts of the Asoke communities that were shown on Thai TV. One of my students is using a part of the DVD for his project presentation next week but I will be able to get my hands on the DVD after that. I think I can rip it to a format that you can watch. One of the segments shows them showing students from a school in a neighboring town how to grow organic vegetables. One shows them building equipment to make an organic pesticide. One of my students did his project report today on making bricks from recycled paper and cement. Another project was about recycling milk boxes into bags that can be taken to the market to eliminate the need for plastic bags! Another was about making mobiles from plastic bottles. One of the other grad students is doing a project working with Thai farmers who are in debt to change their "evil" (that s my word not his) ways and giving up smoking, drinking and gambling and then saving the money! They have been running the program in test mode and it is apparently being very well received.

If this discussion is primarily me and you right now, I would say, keep it here. When ever you are ready to move it public, move it to a discussion thread.

Another thing - on Razoo I had a guy join the Opok Farm Village group who already had a kind of Support Uganda thread. He sent me this message that I got this morning:

My reply to Cor to the email address on his website

Hi Cor!

Linda Nowakowski just showed me your message from Razoo - I'm tickled pink about your dome idea and really want to have a discussion about it. We're developing the project over at http://ned.com - please join us there and look up (and join) the Opok Farms group. If it's ok with you I'd love to use your message to Linda as a starter for a new thread on environmental learning/play activities targeted at school kids that we have slated for the farmspace.

Looking forward to connecting with you on ned -

Christina Jordan

Date: 09/11/07 From: Cory Richardson

Wow.... that is very exciting! Thanks for the back ground. I want to take part.

What will be happening there in November?

I want to build a geodesic dome using bamboo and fill it with a web of hammocks and swings. It would look like a playground, but it would be a place for children to sleep as well. It will be easy to sew tarps to cover it. It would be a massive wonderland where kids would be put to sleep with bedtime stories like circus preformances. All we need is bamboo, fabric, rope and bike inner tubes.

On the US Gulf Coast after hurricane katrina, I set up a 60ft and 30ft dome to be a community center supporting a relief kitchen that served 1000 people a day. This is a view of it from above:

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q& amp;hl=en&geocode=&q=771 8+W+Judge+Perez+Dr,+Arabi,+LA+70 032&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&a mp;sspn=39.729049,70.664062& ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&ll= 29.95648,-89.989869&spn=0.00 1032,0.001427&z=19

And a 30 minute video I made sharing the experience(the quality of this online version is not great, but you get an intimate view of what really happend: http://video.google.ca/videoplay ?docid=7741275027359055423&q =Making+Love+in+a+disaster+zone

Could you find Opok farm on Google Earth and send me the address?

What more can you tell me... or where can I find the info? I'll look on the Life in Africa site to start.

My objective is to bring attention to projects already happening... and add what I can to... such as a sewing room and playspace. I'd love to make Opok fram my main focus. Thanks for joining the Stitch facebook group. Please use that space to promote what you are doing. I also have a mailing list that goes out to many amazing people and I'm about to send out a bi-weekly report to them. If you have anything you'd like to add to the report... please send it... and add yourself to the list. The email form is near the top of www.actionheronetwork.net

With love,

Cor

Rather than try to categorise all types of members can't we include them all under Member Communities? It already looks like the Member Communities covers farming, resident, student etc categories. With this in mind, I think the Executive should have chairperson, secretary, deputy chair, treasurer, etc as members. As Member Communities join/develop the executive along with the new and existing members will decide on terms, activities, etc. The executive may also have to restructure accordingly. I have suggested this after being informed that the structure of a CBOs in the district need not be very detailed at registration as restructuring is easy and can be done as the CBO evolves. Since we need to register asap why not register with only three categories; Exec, Family and Member Communities that covers everything else?

Norbert

Sorry you missed that meeting, sweety :) LiA has faced some legal governance conundrums because of that very mistake: making changes later became complicated (according to the lawyers consulted) precisely because membership and voting rights for different kinds of members was not clearly defined in the original documents. This was the only section of the draft document we were working on with George and Finny that we decided needed some tailored thought, and is based on a membership structure we saw in some other CBO documents Finny has worked on. The exec board structure and all that is already in the draft cbo document that you can find in the Opok Farms folder on the WE Center Gulu server.