Two more world zones completed: France and Germanic North.

After struggling to find any data at all (sometimes) when apportioning poorer countries, the problem now is that the extent of information available. That is to say, with the exception of cities of more than 500,000, where there is a unitary administrative authority and no information apparently about any smaller subdivisions, there are if anything too many choices to be made and a danger of over-elaboration.

Still, two more world zones divided up. Just starting Germanic South (which includes Austria, Liechtenstein and Switzerland)...

Thanks Jon and Moses!

It's a bit of a slog at the moment, but I think I'm getting there. I've just finished Switzerland to complete Germanic South, the eighth of the twenty world zones for the more economically developed countries in the world.

Next for apportionment will be Italy, followed by Japan (North) and Japan (South), hopefully before Christmas.

Jon refers to "the next step" - I take that to be the next step after Apportionment of all 20 world zones is complete. The next steps (some of which would ideally be commenced before Apportionment is complete) include:

1. Getting the right message up on the WWC website at Connectory.org (I've found this difficult: need to be clear who the target audience is and what exactly the website will be inviting them to do and when)
2. Engaging non profits & NGOs in the WWC idea so that there some current projects are listed for as many of the 2400 List A* areas as possible [* See below]
3. Development of an Advice on How to Proceed guidance manual to be incorporated into the WWC. (In addition to listing all the partner areas, the Worldwide Connectory will need to contain step by step suggestions about how each partner area might be mobilised into effective action)
4. Practical solutions to the problems of translation and the rapid promotion of the WWC idea worldwide (including perhaps the development of a development team in each region or large country in the List A areas and for each of the twenty List B world zones)

[* Instead of referring to Richer and Poorer partner areas, as I have previously done, I now think it would be better to refer to the two lists of partner areas as List A and List B.

List A will contain areas of the world where there is little wealth and has been relatively little economic development. Here the residents are happy, miserable, powerless, empowered, resourceful, unadventurous, uneducated, educated, healthy, sick, talented and inspiring.

List B will contain areas of the world where there is much greater wealth and economic development. Here the residents are also happy, miserable, powerless, empowered, resourceful, unadventurous, uneducated, educated, healthy, sick, talented and inspiring.

By linking up each partner area from List A with a partner area from List B, the stage will be set for mutual sharing of physical and non-physical resources and the two-way fostering of friendship, cooperation and sustainable development.]

Ideas about next steps and using the terminology of Lists A & B would be very welcome!

David, I recall you once had a list of NGO's-by-location you were building - does it still exist? I can't seem to locate it in the workspace.

I was thinking I could add my own little NGO/charity (especially now that we're doing international projects), assuming that's not unhelpful.

"Phoenix Community Works Foundation (pcwf.ca) - community projects at home (Canada) and abroad (Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Kenya)"

That's right, Jon. I stopped working on it when it was suggested that WiserEarth had already developed a better list.

I'm still not decided on this. WiserEarth is more comprehensive and will continue to expand and be updated. It is a really useful resource for a people wishing to find out about useful organisations that are working in any given country in the world.

But I'd been planning on including in the WWC listings not only links to organisations working in a given country, but links to the specific areas in the country where they were working. In this way, people could easily find examples of projects already operating in their allocated partner areas and perhaps plan ways of supporting these. I'd still like to do that, but with apportionment continuing to be my priority right now, I'm not sure that continuing work on the nonprofitslist is still time well spent.

As it stands, and if a more complete list were compiled, it would at least point to the countries in which, let's say, nonprofits X, Y or Z are currently working in. That would be useful.

The next stage that I planned was to contact the listed organisations, sending them lists of the partner areas for the countries in which they were were working and asking them if they could specify exactly in which areas their projects were located.

That way, when a particular area was allocated, people living in its partner area would have an immediate link to organisations already operating there and if they wished could start planning ways to offer their support of these projects.

So if anyone want to take a look at the nonprofitslist workpage and work on it in any way that would be great!

Please add PCWF to the list Jon (or I can add it myself). Better still, could you add the WWC number(s) for the area(s) in whihc PCWF is operating?

Thanks, Jon, for pointing out that I'd not transferred the nonprofitslist workpage to ned.com. Pleae let me know if you are still having difficulty in accessing it.

Hi David - apologies, I didn't have the wherewithal to add the WWC partner areas right away - and when I back to add them in tonight, you'd already done it for me. Much thanks!

Is the non-profits list something you'd like a volunteer to work on?

(edited by Jon A. - added 2nd para.)

You bet!

A team of volunteers even.

:)

OK - you got it!

I'll start working on it, and others are welcome to join me.

It appears to be straight-forward, David, so I'll just start in - perhaps you wouldn't mind taking a peek on occasion, and letting me know if I've gone astray or if I should be aware of something I've missed.

Thanks, Jon!

I've been dividing Italy up. Just finished. That's nine of the 20 world zones for List B countries completed. Slowly getting there.

I'll take a look at the nonprofitslist tomorrow. You're right - compiling a list of organisations working in the listed countries is fairly straightforward. Finding out exactly where their current (and future) projects are located is a bit harder, but need not be tackled straightaway. It would be good to enthuse nonprofits with the WWC idea: they should stand to benefit if we can get the idea to take off.

So how best to go about this?

Good question David -- I've been thinking about the subject a bit myself.

Getting a website that houses and concisely describes the project (connectory.org or similar) will be a big help -- I've had some feedback indicating that people are feeling too swamped to join a member-driven social network a la ned.com just so they can learn more (I'm working on that).

I'll muse on it further.

David,

You've made considerable progress since I last took a look. the list of non profits is great. Have you created a way to sort this by country? Or by cause?

I keep getting contacted by youth organizations in Africa and keep encouraging someone to build a database/social network for these organizations so that they could help each other attract more of the resources they all seem to be struggling to find.

Where else do you host this list other than here on Ned?

My goal of building a list of tutor/mentor programs (see http://www.tutormentorconnection .org ) is to help programs connect with each other, and to help volunteers and donors interested in the goals of these programs to connect with them as resource providers. Thus, I try to take a more active role than just building the list, which in itself is a huge task.

As I have future contacts I'll encourage them to take a look at the work you're doing here, unless you'd like to point to a different web address.

Good luck.

Hi Dan, I'm sure David will want to weigh in, but your post prompted me to put down on paper some ideas I've been "half-baking" as I visit the nonprofits list, making little additions to it here and there - I think they jibe with what you are suggesting:

• it would be great to have the nonprofits list in a database format, so one could sort and search on various fields (name of org, type of work, location (country/region/WWC#)
• it would also be good to have a mechanism to keep it updated - some of that would have to be manual, but at least web site URLs could be auto-checked periodically

There are online resources that do some of this already (cataloguing non profits), as David points out e.g. wiserearth, but the WWC# is a key item that is unique to the project, which takes extra effort to identify

We created our own survey tool and information display page in order to tailor the information we were collecting the way we wanted to. It's at http://www.tutormentorprogramloc ator.net/programlocator/prgloc.a sp

We're now training programs to log in and update or add their own data.

I'd like to see someone doing something similar to this in other countries.

Thanks Dan and Jon for your thoughts.

The training issue is an important one for the WWC project and as you suggest, Dan, I think the process needs to be devolved to local areas to operate in ways that are meaningful to them, both in terms of information selection and systems maintenance.

The more that goes into the nonprofitslist the better, imo, but I don't think it need be an absolutely essential element in the WWC project. However, I hope it might spur people on in each List B area (i.e. richer countries) to set out to discover what projects are going on in their List A partner area so that they can mutually develop their own local lists.

It would also be good to get nonprofits to see a listing in the WWC as a useful promotion of the work that their organisation is doing and a potential source of support and donations. Ideally also it might enable local communities to help shape the projects undertaken in each area. This will require the careful writing of some standard letters explaining how the nonprofitslist might be used. There's so much to do.

I've been making good progress in apportioning Japan North and will finish this by the end of this week. That will mark the half way point for apportioning the List B countries and 75% of apportionment will then be complete. My target was to get Japan North and South done by the end of the year. So I'm definitely on target! :)

Thanks Jon for all the work you've been doing on the nonprofitslist! And I'll answer your PM - I promise.

Hi David - thanks. No rush on the PM, I've forged ahead and found at least one NGO working in the Central African Republic.

I'm trying to make sure the list includes, for each country on the WWC list, at least one active NGO (based on the best information I can find).

I'm pretty close. Of course, this is only a start, and a small contribution - I hope it helps.

Ideally, I'd think we'd want at least one NGO per partner area - this would be a bigger job, in my estimation.

Congratulations on the progress you've made with the much more central task!

(Edited by Jon A - added text)

Dan, I have been playing around trying to get the right message for the WWC website at Connectory.org but haven't quite got there yet. So for the time being we don't have a website up and running. I think there are dangers in going public too early before the project is ready to launch.

So in the meantime, there is nowhere else but here where non profits could access and amend the nonprofitslist.

In the new year, I hope to get a basic message on the website about the WWC project, the proposed timetable for the project and how people can use the website to participate.

I see the website as the right place to list the following:

• all the partner areas (Lists A & B)
• nonprofits active in each area (if any)
• established international links for each area (e.g. the link between Salt Spring Island and Lesotho WWC# 1225)
• a contact address for a self-nominated correspondent for each area (with whom others in that area can make contact, leading in due course to some kind of organisational structure in each area and the election of officers)
• ideally, at least one local media address for each area whom participants might contact in order to establish new connections within and between partner areas
• guidance on how individuals, groups and organisations might get started on developing local activities and making international connections
• facility for updating information
• how to contact the WWC organisation centrally
• from Configuration Day, 20 lists (one for each world zone), each containing the 120 partner areas from which each individual partnership will randomly be chosen
• from Declaration Day, the complete list of current WWC partnerships
• local website details for each partnership (when available)

Until the website is functioning, ned.com seems a good place to develop the information that will need to go on the website.

I'm increasingly persuaded that as much information as possible should be stored and used at a local level. This could mean that while the website might host a regular newsletter with news, feedback and ideas from around the world, it would probably be best for each partnership to develop their own website, their own gallery of photos, their own messageboards, and their own accumulation of information about non profits involved within the partnership area. They may care to share the most important information of this kind, filing it centrally in updating the nonprofitslist, but it is probably more useful to gather an active working file in the area where that information will most be used. On re-allocation of areas, the new List B area partnering that particular List A area could inherit a copy of that same body of active, working information.

The aim would be for a low maintenance central website.

Hi David, I see the wisdom in what you are saying - it makes sense for the individual partnerships to gather and organise their own set of relevant information.

Having said that, perhaps the nonprofitslist you've created can serve as a starting point for the good work that I'm confident will result from this excellent project.

To that end, I can announce a very modest achievement - I believe there is now at least one organisation listed for each country in the "List of developing countries" (and in most cases at least 2, if you include NGOs' with broad coverage such as the Red Cross/Red Crescent).

I actually learned some valuable things about aid groups, so it was worth it to me to do it, even if it doesn't end up being fully utilised at a later stage in the WWC project.

Thanks for providing the opportunity for an enjoyable little project. Onward we go!

Congratulations, Jon!

That's great. It means there's a starting point available for everyone in a List B area to contact the non profit and find out whether it's active in their particular WWC area.

Also, I'm sorry, Jon, I didn't mean to undermine what you've been doing. I think what you're doing is great - and of real importance. I didn't intend to suggest anything contrary to that, nor that your work won't be fully utilised.

What I meant to convey is that a listing of a sample of active organisations in each WWC area (ideally) would be a good starting point for people living in those areas (or elsewhere, if they choose) to see what work they might support, publicise and encourage.

Beyond that there will be a larger set of more detailed information (names and addresses, photographs, commentaries on visits to projercts, specific appeals, links to CBOs participating or associated with each active non profit etc) that might best be accommodated and updated on a website shared between the List A and List B area (though paid for and provided in all likelihood by the List B partners). All that would then be needed, in terms of visibility to others in the wider project, would be a link on the central website to the local website for the mutuality.

After five or ten years, when there is a new configuration and declaration of new partnerships, all the information gathered about work in each List A area would then be available to a new partner area for continued use.

The more specific list that David is referring to is what I hope to encourage in specific areas of the world. While initially my goal is that youth serving organizations might duplicate some of the database features of the http://www.tutormentorconnection .org site, they'd also build new features and information related to issues specific to their own countries.

As David says, these should be able to link up to more centralized information, networking and collaboration forums, where a list like David is compiling will be important to help people go up and down (global/local) in finding different organizations to work with, support, or network with.

You both make valid points, and I agree whole-heartedly.

And not to worry David - I really feel like I'm contributing to something brilliant and world-changing! Thanks for your words of encouragement.

A day or two behind schedule, but Japan North is now apportioned, and with it, the three-quarters mark has been reached: 3,600 of the 4,800 partner areas have now been defined and half of the 20 world zones (into which the List B countries have been grouped) have now been completed.

Hitherto, Japan has been a bit of a blank spot for me. But surfing round the city websites (English versions only, I'm afraid) I think I'm getting to understand Japan much better and I'm increasingly hopeful that the Japanese partner areas might prove to become really active. There seems to be a strong sense of civic duty and desire to work as a team in Japanes society and this could transfer well to WWC activities.

But first we'll need to get translations done and acquire some WWC ambassadors in Japan, as elsewhere in the non English-speaking world.

I think it would be good to offer a blueprint for getting started in any locality. While it is important that every partner area retains the right to organise its own activities in whatever way it thinks best, some suggestions about how to begin might be very helpful.

Even if 99.9% of the population are not one bit interested in the WWC, that would still leave 0.1% who might be! And since each partner area will on average cover a population of 500,000 people that could translate into 500 people! (With 499,500 people unimpressed!).

Typically 500 people in a single WWC partner area might well be distributed among up to a dozen main centres of population. So the starting point for anyone interested in developing a WWC Connection group in their own area might be to get together with a few friends and plan an inaugural meeting. This could done perfectly well by a single, well-motivated individual, but would probably be more fun done by a small group.

The first task might be to list every single organisation, club, school, faith group, group, team etc. active in that population centre. Then to send to each one of these, a summary of the objectives of the WWC project and an invitation to send one or two representatives to an inaugural meeting at a well-known meeting place for the area. These invitations might best be emailed, but posted or hand-distributed copies would do equally well.

We could produce a sample agenda to help organisers plan their inaugural meeting.

Once some momentum has been achieved in one locality within an area, it should be possible to export that momentum to other local centres of population. Then by working in concert with each other, once their partner area has randomly been allocated to them, it should be possible to subdivide each area so that links can be made between individual towns, neighbourhoods and villages within each partner area.

Then the possibilities are endless!

Congratulations and kudos, David, for reaching the 3/4 mark!

Your ideas about creating a 'blueprint' for getting the WWC project going, seem very sound to me.

I admit I feel a bit daunted by the potential tasks, but there may be a way to divide it up into manageable pieces, and allow "dilettantes" like me to take it a step at a time.

You've actually hit on something that resonates with me - I style myself a much better 'talker' than a 'writer', so holding an inaugural meeting will probably be easier for me than creating an introductory document.

Having said that, I will turn the idea over in my mind further.

One thing 'twigs' in my memory - did you say you needed assistance in preparing material for the connectory.org web site/concept? I ask because, in my view, that would be a great initial resource to have.

Maybe it would seem more do-able if it started off as simply a copy (hopefully searchable) of the archived onet/ned.com WWC discussions? It might offer new(er)comers to the project, an opportunity (without having to join ned.com - perhaps we do want to encourage them to join?!?) to read about the genesis of the WWC idea...? Just a partly-baked thought.