David, can you, in one short paragraph, sum up WWC so any one new landing here might better understand the objective of the project.

~ David said: (wish I'd remembered to ask to borrow Meron's forklift!) ~

LMFAO!!! Nobody lends out their wheels, man! Besides, my new wheels is a bicycle ; )

Right, Meron, one short paragraph - I'll try.

The aim is to divide up all the world's poorest countries into geographical areas of equal population size. Then randomly to match them with geographical areas of similar size taken from all of the world's richer countries. This will mean that two fifths of the world's population (the richest fifth and the poorest fifth) will be given a partner area to share interests and information with, to form friendships and, hopefully, to figure out ways to help each other. How each area goes about this will ultimately be up them, but a guidance manual (called the Worldwide Connectory) will contain step by step suggestions of how to approach the task (as well as complete listings of all the partner areas across the world).

Now Mark.

Mark asks:

David, could you please just walk me thru what you hope to have happen with me. I'm in Portland, Oregon, now what comes next?

The richer areas are divided up into 20 world zones, each having 120 individual partner areas.

Portland is part of the USA Western world zone (California, Arizona, Oregon, Washington & Nevada). 4 of the 20 world zones have already been divided up into individual partner areas, but USA Western is not one of them. USA Western has still to be divided up.

So:

1. When Portland has been apportioned, some feedback on the way it has been divided up would be appreciated. The aim will be for each partner area in Portland to contain about 400-500,000 people and to make one geographically unified unit.
2. Once our World Connectory Project website is up and running, please advertise it and contribute to the wiki pages set aside there for the use of people in your part of Portland and for the “mutuality” formed between your Portland area and the area allocated to you.
3. To use the time between now and Configuration Day to publicise the project and start enlisting supporters and participants. Ned.Portland would make an excellent recruitment centre!
4. On Configuration Day, the USA Western zone will be allocated 120 poorer areas from around the world. The poorer area allocated to your own part of Portland will be one of those 120 areas, drawn perhaps from 40 or 50 countries from around the world. So Portland partner areas won’t know from what part of the world their allocated area will come, but if they get a partner from a certain country, they will know what part of that country their partner is likely to come from. On the other hand the poorer partner areas will know for sure that their partner area will come from one of the areas in USA Western. It would help to have some contact addresses in the USA Western zone that poorer partner areas could contact in advance of the final allocation process to get more information about the kind of links they might like to develop with areas in USA Western.
5. After Distribution Day, when individual partner areas have been allocated, areas will be free to develop whatever links they wish with their allocated partner areas, but the Worldwide Connectory (Project Manual and Good Practice Guide) will contain guidelines about what the next steps might be. One suggestion will be to try and locate people from within your own partner area who have strong links to your allocated area - especially if they might then be used to educate the Portland public about daily life in the poorer partner area. In which case ned.portland might make a good venue to stage a "getting to know more about our allocated partner area" event

I could go on…

Does this help?

David, thanks for the paragraph, very nice.

I have a great appreciation for the ambitions of the WWC Project. As you know SOLID, under the Community to Community model, has been building a personal relationship between the citizens of SaltSpring Island and the communities of the Pitseng region of Lesotho over the last number of years. So, can we be assigned them? Seeing as we are already started and all.

:D

Meron points to the amazing links already developed between SaltSpring Island in BC and Pitseng in the Leribe region of Lesotho and very reasonably asks:

So, can we be assigned them? Seeing as we are already started and all.

:D

Well, the answer, I'm afraid, is no.

But that doesn't mean that this project is trying to undermine what is already happening between SaltSpring and Pitseng.

Instead of deliberately linking these two areas (which, unlike Portland, have already been apportioned):

1225. Lesotho - Butha-Buthe and Leribe districts

6129. Canada - British Columbia: Capital, Nanaimo & Cowichan Valley regional districts

Each will be assigned at random and the chances of their being linked is exactly one chance in 2,400. Better than your chance of winning the lottery, but probably not enough to put your shirt on!

So what are the reasons for using random allocation:

• It would appear at first sight to be great if Pitseng could be assigned SaltSpring, but it might gain very little from the link-up. They are already linked. Nothing the WWC says should affect the strength of this bond.
• In fact if Partner Area 1225 is linked, not with 6125 (which contains SaltSpring - see link), but with Partner Area X, one of the easiest ways people in X could get involved with Pitseng would be to be support SOLID, perhaps by setting up their own “SOLID in X” organisation to support the Pitseng projects.
• Alternatively, people in X might want to create their own SOLID-type organisation to support other places in Leribe district or in Butha-Buthe district. SOLID is an absolutely brilliant role model for any WWC area - its story needs to be told throughout the WWC world! (That’s why I’ve linked this group here on ned.com to the SOLID group and to no other, so far).
• Random allocation ensures that every eligible area in the world has an equal chance to be linked to a great partner like Partner Area 6129. It would be unfair to allow any other method.
• It might seem that SaltSpring might feel half-hearted about supporting anywhere else but Lesotho. I doubt this very much. Whichever area it is allocated may very well have a major problem with HIVS/AIDS and the experience of SaltSpring in tackling this in Lesotho will be invaluable in developing links in Partner Area Y.
• Looking at the map of part of Partner Area 1225 (see Capital link above), you will see just how large an area each WWC area covers (of course, its much smaller inside a great city!). That means each WWC area contains many different communities, many different SaltSprings. That offers the prospect of self-organisation within each WWC area in order to further subdivide each partner area to make appropriate links between individual places within the mutuality.

Thanks for the question, Meron. I hope you can see the merit of entirely random allocation of partner areas - it need not be random after that.

~ David said: I hope you can see the merit of entirely random allocation of partner areas ~

Ummm, no ... I think it sucks. It's been a lot of hard work you know! But I get your answer.

Ummm, no ... I think it sucks.

Can you expand on this? It isn't intended to undermine anything SaltSpring has done and will continue to do in Lesotho.

This is a wonderful project, which I completely support in concept.

I would comment, though, that where an existing relationship already exists, a new affiliation will likely detract from what is already happening.

I also try very hard to avoid rolling rocks uphill - I much prefer rolling them downhill, so existing affiliations would allow exactly this. Having said that, two tiny NGO's swapping emails would not constitute "pre-existing partnership" so, where would the threshold be, or are you deliberately avoiding this issue with your the random strategy?

The value of existing "pilot" regions, which may allow you to adopt their pre-existing work under your banner is pretty valuable in your strategy?

What you could do is have a "cut off" point, where after a certain date, random allocation takes place. Before that date, twinned areas can apply to match themselves.

I would also like to know in your concept exactly which type of people twin with whom? Is it governments, social entrepreneurs, NGOs?

I would be very interested in looking at ways to link Kaduna State, Nigeria with a random area, although some pre-existing linkages are already happening. What is your process and timescale?

This is a wonderful project, which I completely support in concept.

Thanks, Ben, for a great post. I think you and Meron are both right to point to the problems that need to be overcome if the concept is to be translated into a workable and compelling project that maximises support.

(And that will need to include translation in a literal sense too)

Ben says:

where an existing relationship already exists, a new affiliation will likely detract from what is already happening.

I gather from Meron that this is similar to what she feels too. Clearly we need to take account of this.

I have something in mind and will come back and propose something soon.

Ben says:

I also try very hard to avoid rolling rocks uphill - I much prefer rolling them downhill, so existing affiliations would allow exactly this.

Very wise.

That means it's important not just that where there are existing affiliations, that those affiliations shouldn't be altered as a result of WWC allocations, but, in addition, it's important that the people who have created those links, or who are now maintaining them, mustn't be made to feel that these affiliations are being threatened in any way or devalued in any sense.

These existing projects need to be showcased not sidelined.

Jon Edmonds is currently in the process of setting up the Connectory.org website for me and I'm trying to put webpages together. I'd like every partner area to have its own home page. The page would share a common shape/format but it would be left to each area to complete the home page however they wished. These are the elements I think we might try to include in the format:

• Area definition and identification
• Area name (as chosen by partner area members)
• Current and previous allocated partner areas (new partner areas assigned every five years)
• Correspondent for partner area (contact details)
• Photos of partner area and its communities/activities
• Map of the area (with links to adjoining areas perhaps)
• Honours Board - a showcase to list and champion existing affiliations with links to the WWC partner areas concerned, together with contact points and brief history outlining work achieved and in progress, future plans, the kind of support that would be welcomed etc
• List of Non-profits based in or active within the partner area
• etc - other suggestions welcomed

Ben said:

two tiny NGO's swapping emails would not constitute "pre-existing partnership" so, where would the threshold be, or are you deliberately avoiding this issue with your the random strategy?

Well, it's true that random allocation avoids many of the cans of worms that arise otherwise: who decides what should happen if one area has two or more strong affiliations with different areas; if opinion in one area is divided over a choice of partner; if small areas (like SaltSpring) should be allocated a whole half-million sized partner-area; and what would be implications of different sized areas etc.

But that was not the rationale for random allocation. Rather, it was in order to provide a completely level playing field while maximise the possibility of new links. And, of course, most allocations will not lead to permanent affiliations, but nevertheless they may shed light on unmet needs and in many cases hopefully this will lead to collaborative and innovative, if temporary, responses. And where communities within partner areas really hit it off, permanent affiliations are a real possibility. Permanent links between whole partner areas may be less likely. But that just emphasises the important difference between essentially temporary coalitions of communities that make up a whole partner area and the more permanent associations that are likely to develop between specific communities within two temporarily linked partner areas. Those specific communities might well be geographic - a town, a school, a neighbourhood, an island - but they may equally well be thematic - faith-based, shared membership of an international organisation, interest groups related to music, photography, sports etc or commitment to a common cause.

I don't see either the allocation process or the distinction between permanent and temporary partnerships as major difficulties. Most communities could sustain important permanent links with several other areas if they wanted, with the added benefit that this might lead to three or more areas becoming interlinked.

But the WWC allocations are intended as four year projects in sharing and exchange that may or may not lead to a longer term affiliations. In the process, the idea is that existing affiliations should be showcased and supported, either by financial donations and other efforts on behalf of the original partners, or else by emulation (using the showcased affiliation as a blueprint for the start of similar affiliations elsewhere)

I can see merits in both sides of the debate, being myself involved in projects already linked to particular places (Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Jamaica).

Because I'm impressed by the scope of the WWC and the way it has been structured, I want to support it, and see how the randmoness works.

David, I think the WWC is brilliant - congratulations for such a wonderful idea.

(edited for grammar)

Beb said:

The value of existing "pilot" regions, which may allow you to adopt their pre-existing work under your banner is pretty valuable in your strategy?

Now I don't see the WWC as being about adopting anything, although I quite like the idea of all the mutualities being under one overall shared banner.

I wouldn't want the World Connectory Project to lay any kind of claim or sense of ownership over pre-existing projects, though you're right in saying they might be seen as good examples (rather than pilots) demonstrating what might eventually be done when two areas of the world work together to make good things happen.

What you could do is have a "cut off" point, where after a certain date, random allocation takes place. Before that date, twinned areas can apply to match themselves.

That would certainly be a valid way to proceed. But I can't see any real benefits in this.

What could twinned areas achieve by applying to match themselves? They already are matched - and matched much more permanently than for the four year span of the WWC cycle. Granted it might stop other areas from getting involved in this particular locality. But what is the value is that?

The idea is that World Connectory partner areas should all contain about half a million people. There will almost certainly be many other other groups in all areas whose cause will not yet have been championed under the pre-existing affiliations, if only because, generally speaking, the target population for pre-existing affiliates is likely to be very much smaller than 500,000 people.

Finally, Ben asks:

I would also like to know in your concept exactly which type of people twin with whom? Is it governments, social entrepreneurs, NGOs?

Governments - this is unlikely to happen, but it would be good to see a political dimension to the project if people in any area are politically inclined. One possible area for development is at a local government or community level. Top down projects from central governments have often been vulnerable to corruption at all levels of the process. Grassroots up type projects often are hampered through lack of resource and the difficulty of capital investments. Government at a community representive level can sometimes be a particularly effective in combining greater financial resources while retaining local ownership and local supervision over a project. I've read about some very good projects of this kind, but can't remember where. I need to get into the habit of tagging!

Social entrepreneurs from linked partner areas could prove a powerful combination and perhaps offer the promise of sustainable development.

NGO's might also be influenced to direct some of their efforts to developing projects in their allocated areas.

But the intention is not for the project to focus of one group rather than another. I see it as a matter for the people of a mutuality to decide for themselves what kind of mutual associations they most wish to develop.

I see the project not as some kind of imperial mission intent upon bringing people into one overall organisational structure whether they like it or not, but a set of global scaffolding that people everywhere can use to build mutually beneficial associations and enterprises in their own local areas.

To that extent I guess it is targetted more at networking with existing organisations (by linking them with people of similar interests in their allocated partner area) rather than attempting to build things from scratch.

Thanks, Ben, for the stimulating questions - perhaps others would like to contribute some answers of their own.

WWC is not about blanket top down solutions: it is more like Open Space. The answers that people develop in their own mutualities will be the right answers...

OK, Houdini! That's good to know.

:D

David, just a few comments on your last post...

ADOPTING Most people asking about WWC will simply say, "Well where is it actually happening" and "What actions are being taken"? By adopting some pilot regions, giving them some resource to develop their connections, you will have some exemplars or, if you like, "pioneers", which will facilitate further development. Adopting is no different really to the partnership working that you are proposing for the different regions. Both sides will gain information and expertise.

GOVERNMENTS I think there are two issues here. a) Firstly governments in the West tend to lack confidence in anything which isn't of their ilk - risk-averse, admin-competent, financially stable - but they are in my experience by far the best at applying for funding and there is a lot of twinning money about (quite rightly), although I am not certain there is as much as WWC might need. b) A recent conversation with Birmingham City Council, which is the largest local government in Europe, indicated that they always struggle to find overseas partners for joint-working. They have a whole department which works on this type of thing in an educational context.

Anything with government takes longer, so this could be the downside.

CORRUPTION Although corruption in overseas governments is not a subject I am very familiar with (being a newbie in this field), I would comment that your project is about "trust" and "multual friendship", amongst other things. Corruption may create mistrust, but it is also born out of it and I would think that demonstrating an ability to mutually joint work would demonstrate something important about how corruption can be overcome. This may be rolling rocks uphill however:)

ACCREDITATION Turning the project on its head, the WWC banner is clearly going to be of use in generating funds for projects, if it can show being part of WWC adds significant value to the content of partnership working. You may well be able to remove the need for governments in the mix, if you can create a level of accreditation with organisations affiliated to WWC, that people like the European Social Fund have confidence to fund such projects, since they pretty much only fund the statutory sector right now.

Christina asks:

who do you tell within a given geographic area that they are randomly twinned with another part of the world?

As with most aspects of this project, there is not intended to be just one way of doing this. Anyone or any group in any area should be free to make contacts with people living in their linked partner area.

But Christina asks specifically who might be contacted. And I suppose this implies the question also of how that contact might be made.

The Worldwise Connectory is intended to be not just a list of partner areas but also a manual for action. It will need to contain links to wiki pages for all the individual partner areas. Everyone will be invited from the start to begin to develop the information on those pages so that will be a resource that can be used for effective contact making. I've done a mock-up (follow link) on a workspace of the kind of information that these wiki pages might contain.

So examples of the kind of contacts that people might make with their linked partner area could include:

• person writing to a newspaper in their linked partner area highlighting that their two areas are linked and inviting contact, perhaps stating a particular purpose for this (like Kayiwa Fred asking for help with obtaining a computer and football equipment)
• person belonging an international organisation in one partner area emailing the same international organisation in its linked partner area to establish contact and a dialogue between the two branches of the same organisation
• a group of people in one partner area that share an interest or occupation meeting to plan how jointly to make contact with a similar group of people in the linked partner area
• a centrally based group of people from different partner areas (a group, say, here at ned.com for example) working together as a group to publicise the World Connnectory project by systematically contacting key organisations within each partner area. This approach might work best with a phased announcement of the partner area allocations.
• developing an organisational infrastructure within each partner area first to develop awareness of the various subsets of different interest groups and to breakdown the partner areas into a set of linked communities: teachers in St Paul with teachers in Mekele; staff at St John's Hospital in Maplewood, St Paul with staff at the Fistula hospital satelite in Mekele; White Bear township, Minnesota with Samre in Debubawi zone of Tigray region etc
• getting national media outlets involved in publicising links
• networking with other internet sites to publicise each stage of the WWC allocation process
• please suggest some more ideas

Great question, Christina!

And I forgot:

• Using international students. Almost certainly, if you live in a developed country, there will be students with some knowledge of your linked partner area who are living either in your area or not too far away. They would make a good source of information about good points of contact.
• Using WiserEarth, for example, to find out which organisations are active in any given country. Then to make contact with those organisations to find out if they are operating in your particular partner area.
• Using the established international links your country has with the country in which your partner area is situated (diplomatic links, the major international organisations with branches in virtually every country of the world, multi-national companies, VSO, Peace Corps etc)
• Advertising in your local area to find out whether there are ex-pats living in your linked partner area (or in a nearby region) who might know who best to contact to spread the word.

David Bale said:

Christina asks:

who do you tell within a given geographic area that they are randomly twinned with another part of the world?

As with most aspects of this project, there is not intended to be just one way of doing this. Anyone or any group in any area should be free to make contacts with people living in their linked partner area.

But Christina asks specifically who might be contacted. And I suppose this implies the question also of how that contact might be made.

...

I've done a mock-up (follow link) on a workspace of the kind of information that these wiki pages might contain.

So examples of the kind of contacts that people might make with their linked partner area could include:

...

• a group of people in one partner area that share an interest or occupation meeting to plan how jointly to make contact with a similar group of people in the linked partner area

...

• please suggest some more ideas

Great question, Christina!

Great demonstration of what a WC web site for a particular partnership might look like, David.

I would add, perhaps as suggestion under the point above about how "to plan how jointly to make contact", that one way would be to organise cultural exchanges between the two partner-areas so that people from both places could meet and get to know each other.

Jon suggests:

one way would be to organise cultural exchanges between the two partner-areas so that people from both places could meet and get to know each other.

That would be a good way to go. I've been thinking in terms of:

Year 1: get organised, make contacts, stage exhibition about partner area to gain recruits

Year 2: stage festival to celebrate both partner areas, propose projects

Year 3: cultural exchanges and develop projects

Year 4: deliver & sustain projects & assess mutual achievements

Year 5: possible development of long term/permanent project links

With a time-scale like that, perhaps cultural exchanges would usually make most sense from the latter half of Year 2 onwards?

David,

I've followed the Connectory project for a long time now, and feel it's a great vision, but very difficult to achieve.

I looked through your wiki and found the link to http://www.fistulafoundation.org /hospital/prevention/outreach.ht ml . This page describes an organization doing good work and shows where the organization is located. Thus, drawing attention to it, and helping it get volunteers, dollars or other resources, from a partner city, or from anyone else who cares about this cause, is a good thing to do.

In many ways I'm trying to do what you're trying to do, but focusing on a smaller geography (the Chicago region) and a single category of service providers (k-12 volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs).

I maintain a Program Locator directory on http://www.tutormentorconnection .org that enables potential customers of each organization in the directory (volunteers, donors, parents, etc.) to seach by zip code,type of program, age group served, to find programs they might get involved with, or to learn about the availability of such programs in areas where they are needed.

My goal is that businesses, churches, hospitals, civic and social groups, adopt one or more programs as long-term partners who share the same vision of helping kids to careers.

I started collecting the program info 15 years ago and started building a public awareness campaign at the same time so that as I added a program to the database, I was also encouraging a volunteer or donor to find them.

Instead of brokering these matches, I provide information on my site that helps people understand why tutor/mentor programs are needed, where they are most needed, and how they can help. Instead of saying which program is the "best" I provide links to many programs in Chicago and around the country, so shoppers can decide what programs look the best to them.

Because I've had little money to do this, I've constantly worked to make the information availaboe on the Internet, and to make it possible for programs to add/edit their own information. If I can make this work, it decentralilzes the role of data collection, and it decentrializes the role of marketing and public awareness.

If you can build an interactive map on your web site that people can click into to choose a country, or a cause, and to add web sites of existing organizations, or existing knowledge, your site can broker the partnerships you're trying to create.

Here's an example of someone who'd doing this pretty well: http://www.ngf.org.uk/map/map.ht ml

I provide other examples of the use of maps and databases /knowledge libraries at http://www.tutormentorconnection .org/TMLearningNetwork/LinksLibr ary/tabid/560/rrcid/13/rrepp/20/ Default.aspx

If you build this concept into the Connectory,then you could focus on finding ways to flag organizations that might be the type of community connections you have in mind, based on the information they provide to the web site.

If this "flagging" is visibile to others visiting the site, people could see the growth of these connections over time, and that would stimulate others to join.

I hope this helps you.

Yes, Daniel, that's very helpful.

And it's a good, clear statement of the similarities and differences in what we are trying to achieve respectively. Trying to maintain an up-to-date database is yet another task tailor-made for Sisyphus and one that you warned me about many months ago.

So much so, that when Michael Maranda pointed out that much of the information that I was trying to gather about non-profits and NGOs worldwide was already available on WiserEarth, I abandoned the attempt to try to include as many links to existing projects as possible for every partner area and leave this to the people of that partner area to do for themselves.

I haven't abandoned all hope of ever including information of this kind, but I think the accumulation of such data might roll downhill more effectively if it is left up to the organisations themselves (who hopefully might stand to gain new supporters by this) to add and edit their own listings to individual partner area pages. They could be prompted of course to add these links - and an organised prompting exercise by WWC supporters might in turn help create more of the links between areas that Christina's question was concerned with.

Daniel makes another good suggestion in pointing to some excellent resource tools that are emerging and which could usefully be linked to the Connectory webpage.

Thanks for that too!