John's interesting idea for 10 to the 100th can be found here

These are Google's questions:

What one sentence best describes your idea?

Describe your idea in more depth.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

As John said in the Plan B thread (and copied to the intro above), the process of writing a Google proposal could help us improve the way we talk about it to others. These are ways I think it might help:

• focus on the unique selling points and merits of the Worldwide Connectory
• help find solutions and improvements for the weak spots (e.g. visibility, translation, starting from scratch in virgin territory, lack of connectivity, funding needs, where to talk, sharing ideas across partnerships)
• standardise WWC terminology / thinking
• encourage the formation of a team to develop and improve the WWC manual
• practice collaboratory skills that are needed for piloting WCP and launching it on 1.1.10

This is a quick draft - I haven't paid any attention yet to word limits. Critical comments would be helpful!

What one sentence best describes your idea?

We want to share out the world to bring it closer together

Describe your idea in more depth.

This is an attempt to complement the current “top-down” approach to meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with a “bottom-up” solution in which two-fifths of the world’s population will be invited to take part.

It is based on the idea that the best way to tackle a problem - even a problem as large as global poverty - is to break it down into manageable bits. For that reason, it has virtually no central administration: apart from providing a template of how this idea might play out and by publishing online a list of all the contact details for the partnerships required, the WCP is to be a totally decentralised operation.

The World Connectory Project has already divided up all the world ‘s poorest and richest countries into areas of a standard size - each containing about half a million people. The project has then paired them up, so that every poorer area now has a richer partner.

Paired areas are given a duty of commitment to connect with each other, share experiences, support the development projects already operating in their partnership area and collaborate on implementing new ones.

The details of how this might work in each partnership area will be down to the members themselves to decide. Within each area, there might be a dozen or so local centres, each choosing to twin with individual places or organisations within the partner area. This might be a link, for example, between two places of worship, two schools or hospitals, or between a local WCP group and projects that focus on an MDG that is of particular interest or concern to the group. Local WCP groups could be organised around existing organisational structures such as colleges, interfaith groups, community associations or bodies such as Rotary, Scouts or the WI.

What problem or issue does your idea address?

It was intended primarily to focus of issues of poverty in the widest sense. It was designed to overcome the disadvantage of those who always seem to be at the back of the queue by allowing a random allocation of partner areas to establish a level playing field.

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?

Both rich and poor areas would give and would receive. They may not give the same kind of things; they may not receive the same kind of things. Rich areas may donate from their surplus of resources and receive new understandings and new horizons. Poor areas might give of their unquenchable hopes, powerful aspirations and undiscovered talents and receive in return recognition, encouragement and opportunity. Who get most out of it: is it Father Christmas or the young person with the wonderful new present? It's hard to say.

But the really big beneficiaries would be the remote, unfashionable areas, largely untouched at present by development aid, who once every five years would now get an opportunity of being paired up with affluent communities, able for the first time to find out about their neglected needs and primed and committed to respond to them.

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?

The project will launch in January 2010 with the online publication of all 2,400 partnerships and an invitation to areas eveywhere to take part. There is no real provision at present for publicising and supporting the launch nor for providing anything other than the most rudimentary structures for offering areas ongoing support and encouragement. The involvement of a bigger player could transform the WCP from an ambitious pipedream that may struggle to expand into a worldwide movement for bottom up change and development that would in turn change the climate of opinion towards development aid in general, requiring governments to deliver on their promises of topdown aid too

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

Five year friendships would be established between rich and poor areas creating pools of about a million people in each partnership area. By using the joint resources available to such a large number of people, almost any uplifting project could be realised. With financial backing friom Google, the profile of the project could be raised to the point where in might be incorporated into the everyday thinking of millions of people around the world - the subject of popular television shows and international competitions that showcased the most successful partnerships.

It will be for each individual partnership to work to achieve goals that they set for themselves, not ones that are imposed on them. But we shall at least be able to measure how many of the 2,400 partnerships become active (by acquiring someone in each partneship area willing to serve as correspondent and keep local membership details)

Beyond this, you could also measure the number of existing development projects offered some tangible support by WCP area groups, the number of new collaborations entered upon, and the number of people recruited to each project area.

And I've neglected to acknowledge that it was Nick Bentley who first alerted me to this 10 to the 100th Competition.

If you are reading this, Nick, I hope you realise that I'm thinking to myself how well you are able to mould words to fit their intended purpose.

Any comments you might have on this draft proposal would therefore be espcially welcome!

What one sentence best describes your idea? (maximum 150 characters)

previous version: "We want to share out the world to bring it closer together"

(47 characters)

New version:

Pair up ALL the world's poorest and richest areas for five years and invite each pairing to find bottom-up solutions to their own experience of poverty

(133 characters)

Is this an improvement?

Can I improve it further? (I still have 17 spare characters!)

I would suggest you change poverty to well-being. One, it is more positive and two, it takes the focus off of money and puts it where it belongs.

I like that, Linda. I need to reorganise the whole thing though. Otherwise it will read oddly: who needs to find a solution to well-being?

Mmm ..

Pair up ALL the world's poorest and richest areas for five years and invite each pairing to look at bottom-up means of improving well-being.

Pair up ALL the world's poorest and richest areas for five years and invite each pairing to find bottom-up solutions to their own experience of poverty.

It's even shorter and more to the point!

That's good.

Linda, could you spare the time to write the rest of the submission for me too?

;)

Describe your idea in more depth.

Instead of this:

This is an attempt to complement the current “top-down” approach to meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with a “bottom-up” solution in which two-fifths of the world’s population will be invited to take part.

It is based on the idea that the best way to tackle a problem - even a problem as large as global poverty - is to break it down into manageable bits. For that reason, it has virtually no central administration: apart from providing a template of how this idea might play out and by publishing online a list of all the contact details for the partnerships required, the WCP is to be a totally decentralised operation.

The World Connectory Project has already divided up all the world's poorest and richest countries into areas of a standard size - each containing about half a million people. The project has then paired them up, so that every poorer area now has a richer partner.

Paired areas are given a duty of commitment to connect with each other, share experiences, support the development projects already operating in their partnership area and collaborate on implementing new ones.

The details of how this might work in each partnership area will be down to the members themselves to decide. Within each area, there might be a dozen or so local centres, each choosing to twin with individual places or organisations within the partner area. This might be a link, for example, between two places of worship, two schools or hospitals, two youth organisations or between a local WCP group and projects that focus on an MDG that is of particular interest or concern to the group. Local WCP groups could be organised around existing organisational structures such as colleges, interfaith groups, community associations or bodies such as Rotary, Scouts or the WI.

the new version:

The best way to tackle a problem - even a problem as large as global poverty - is to break it down into manageable bits. The World Connectory Project (WCP) seeks to complement the current top-down approach to meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with a bottom-up approach that will invite two-fifths of the worlds population to take part. But even if only a small number of commited people take part in each area, there could still be impressive results.

The World Connectory Project has already divided up all the world's poorest and richest countries into areas of a standard size - each containing about half a million people. These have now been paired up at random, so that every poorer area has been given a richer partner.

Paired areas will be given a duty of commitment to connect with each other, share experiences, support the development projects already operating locally and collaborate on implementing new ones.

The details of how this might work in each partnership area will be down to the members themselves to decide. Within each area, there might be a dozen or more local centres, each choosing to twin with individual places or organisations from the partner area.

This might be a link, for example, between two places of worship, two schools or hospitals, two youth organisations or between a local WCP group and projects that focus on an MDG that is of particular interest or concern to that group. Local WCP groups could be organised around existing organisational structures such as colleges, interfaith groups, community associations or international bodies such as Rotary, Scouts or the WI.

270 words

This is very beautiful writing. I'm sorry that I punked out ans didn't write anything. But I'm very glad to have this. I've printed it out and saved it. The document provides a reference for talking about the WWC with others. It's just a page and a half and seems quite possible to use as a draft for a single page document.

Lovely work and I'm sure it will receive attention.

Thanks for your encouragement, John!

So now the next question: What problem or issue does your idea address? (in 150 words)

My first response was this:

It was intended primarily to focus of issues of poverty in the widest sense. It was designed to overcome the disadvantage of those who always seem to be at the back of the queue by allowing a random allocation of partner areas to establish a level playing field.

This is my revised version: What problem or issue does your idea address?

Currently, the only proposals for achieving all the MDGs involve top-down solutions: they rely on governments fulfilling their financial pledges. Governments realise that overseas aid is sometimes unpopular with voters and sometimes renege on their promises. The effectiveness of top-down aid is also undermined by systemic problems of maladministration and corruption that prevent aid from reaching those who need it most.

The World Connectory Project seeks to address these problems by:

• focusing on support for established grassroots projects
• collaborating in creating new solutions
• empowering people in any area, however remote, by giving them a partner area to connect with
• ensuring equal opportunity through a random allocation of partner areas
• allowing areas to make their own decisions about the way their partnerships develop

And by popularising bottom-up approaches to international development, the less resistance there is likely to be towards approval of large-scale, top-down initiatives

(150 words)

Your comments, please!

On the fly here -

Sen has shown that famine rarely has to do with lack of available food but rather with the "logistics" of getting the food to where it is needed and this depends a lot of connections. One of the things that he points out is that there has never been a famine in a country that is a democracy. One of the things that comes with a democracy is a free press and that is really nothing more than a means of connection.

The world today is disconnected. Even though it is connected more than it ever was, the developments in communications have opened a door that can allow connections at previously unimagined depths. It is the depths of those connections that will create the concern that will develop the projects that lead to the attainment of the MDGs.

It has come up before in discussions here and in the discussions about the WWC project that when the discussion and connection is basically focused on the poverty, the result is at least sometimes a "gimme", I am poor and can not do anything without you who are rich giving me money just because I am poor kind of attitude. When this kind of mentality takes over, I fear that the end of the connection has begun. People do not prefer to interact with strangers on an obligation basis. And often in those situations, I believe, all that is given is money, not care and inspirations and heart.

That is disjointed, but I think you will understand what I am getting at. If you don't understand, please talk with me.

Development is really no different. It requires connections to people who care. With out the knowledge, understanding and care nothing happens.

I think you increase your chances if you focus on the roots of what you offer rather than the end results. The WWC cannot solve the MDGs but it CAN work to set up systems to foster the connections (why else would you be called World Wide Connectory?!!!!) Your project attempts to establish connections so that people can know people in other parts of the world who are different than them and have different life views and problems. With these connections comes knowledge and concern for the people on the other end.

Wow. So I've got the first draft printed out. I know it seems silly but it is easier for me to compare text when the different texts are in two locations--go figure. In any case I read your revisions and thought: Yes! And then thought there's nothing to improve it. But then there was Linda's comment and her point:

it CAN work to set up systems to foster the connections

is really important. Perhaps simply changing the first bullet point from:

focusing on support for established grassroots projects

to:

focusing on developing connections between grassroots projects

is enough to accommodate Linda's point, in any event, her insight is quite important.

Thanks for the comments, Linda.

<when the discussion and connection is basically focused on the poverty, the result is at least sometimes a "gimme", I am poor and can not do anything without you who are rich giving me money just because I am poor kind of attitude. When this kind of mentality takes over, I fear that the end of the connection has begun.>

<I think you increase your chances if you focus on the roots of what you offer rather than the end results. The WWC cannot solve the MDGs but it CAN work to set up systems to foster the connections (why else would you be called World Wide Connectory?!!!!)>

I think I'm largely with you on the perception of [poverty = handouts = a bad thing] that is especially prevalent in the US (though far less so in Canada!)

Perhaps that's why I removed all references to poverty this time. I.e. I've removed the reference to "poverty" in my earlier draft, even though I was intending to use the word in the fuller richer sense of the world that we often discuss here on Ned (poverty of imagination, poverty of spirit etc as well as economic poverty).

Eradicating extreme poverty is only one of the MDGs.

I don't see how I can ignore the MDG agenda though. That is precisely why I embarked on the creation of the WWC. I started out from the slogan Share World Poverty (meaning:

• share in the awareness of what poverty is in the developing world
• divide it up into smaller bits so it can be comprehended as something managable and share out the smaller bits of poverty
• share by experiencing poverty in small measure (by going without a few things) so someone more in need can have a little less poverty

The WCP is not exactly setting up a communication system - it's more to do with providing a framework within which people can explore how they can communicate at all.

And I think I DO WANT partner areas to feel a sense of obligation towards their partner area - not in a patronising kind of helping-them-out-from-a-position-of-superiority kind of a way, but in a responsibility-to-find-out-more-about and help-in-any-way-I-can kind of a way. And that can be a two-way responsibility too.

After all, linking rich areas with poor areas is at the very heart of the WCP. It won't be to everyone's taste, but that's why there are half a million people in each area unit: there's a greater likelihood of finding some people at least who will be interested in the MDGs and international development agenda.

<Your project attempts to establish connections so that people can know people in other parts of the world who are different than them and have different life views and problems. With these connections comes knowledge and concern for the people on the other end.>

That's part of it for sure, but the motivation for connection is about people wanting to do more for other people. And that is central, whether or not people want to misinterpret this simply as perpetuating a gimme, handout culture.

So I think, Linda, I hear what you are saying, but I don't think I agree that WWC is "to set up systems", merely frameworks. "Setting up systems to foster connections" sounds an altogether too concrete description to me; too bold a claim and one I can't substantiate.

And it is about looking at poverty in the broadest sense as far as I am concerned, even if people choose to use the WWC for rather different, perfectly acceptable, ways instead.

But thanks, I'll think on it.

Thanks, John. Just read your comments on Linda's.

Developing connections between grassroots projects is fine and could be a useful by-product when communications systems develop. It just isn't the same thing as focusing on support for established grassroots projects, which I see as the simplest starting p;oint in making any connection at all.

Hmm.

It's your baby David, and I'm just a potential foster parent, but for me the attraction of this child of yours can be summed up in two words - connect and people. Strangers cease to be strange when they become friends, and that's when they help eachother out.

When you (David, John , and Linda) say "grassroots projects" do you mean only grassroots projects in developing areas, or (like me) do you simultaneously think of grassroots projects in the developed world? That seems to me to be where the common ground is, where people understand and work towards their potential to improve the world at the local interface. Seems to me that a big part of the WCP's aims is to make the partner areas seem local to eachother on the global scale by fostering connections on the human scale.

Here in my area the most prominent and well supported charity by far, from my observations, is the Rotary Club. Their secret? They make sure that they are seen to benefit the local community just as much as they as they benefit communities outside of it. Their biggest downside for me personally? Their membership is exclusive, not explicitly but in terms of income and social standing. The WCP must avoid such exclusivity at all costs!

Not sure if I've been any help to this discussion or simply muddied it, in a nutshell what I'm trying to say is that I think the very real involvement of "joe bloggs" is something that should be integral to any description of the WCP. Always remembering, and with greatest respect, that it's David's baby!

:)

While the rights of the natural parent need to be respected, it's the welfare of the child that really counts. Often it's the foster parents who have their fingers on the pulse. And imitation is the sincerest form of flattery... ;)

So..perhaps you prefer plagiarised version #3 (thanks for all your helpful ideas!):

What problem or issue does your idea address? (in 150 words)

The World Connectory Project cannot solve the MDGs, but it CAN foster the local connections without which they never will be solved.

The WCP is designed to make it easier FOR EVERYONE to connect with their real or virtual neighbours. The internet has reduced the size of the world. Everything we do has implications for every other global villager. We have the means to connect across the rich-poor divide, but we seem to lack "permission" to introduce ourselves. By dividing the world into standard size portions and pairing them at random to create Five Year Friendships, everyone now has an equal chance to get to know each another better.

This is about making partner areas seem local to each other on the global scale, by fostering connections on the human scale. The more we get know each other, the more peaceful and prosperous our global village will become.

(148 words)

Time to put it all together as it stands at present.

Things I'm asking myself:

• Does it flow as one coherent and consistent idea?
• The last three sections haven't been revised yet: what needs to be done (1) re. content (2) re. word count
• Is everything included that's necessary to an understanding of the WWC?
• Is it punchy and compelling?

I'd welcome others' perspectives too.

What one sentence best describes your idea? (in 150 characters)

Pair up ALL the world's poorest and richest areas for five years and invite each pairing to look at bottom-up means of improving well-being.

(115 characters)

Alternative version: "We will pair up ALL the world's poorest and richest areas for five years and invite each pairing to look at bottom-up means of improving their mutual well-being".

(132 characters)

Describe your idea in more depth. (in 300 words)

The best way to tackle a problem - even a problem as large as global poverty - is to break it down into manageable bits. The World Connectory Project (WCP) seeks to complement the current top-down approach to meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with a bottom-up approach that will invite two-fifths of the worlds population to take part. But even if only a small number of commited people take part in each area, there could still be impressive results.

The World Connectory Project has already divided up all the world's poorest and richest countries into areas of a standard size - each containing about half a million people. These have now been paired up at random, so that every poorer area has been given a richer partner.

Paired areas will be given a duty of commitment to connect with each other, share experiences, support the development projects already operating locally and collaborate on implementing new ones.

The details of how this might work in each partnership area will be down to the members themselves to decide. Within each area, there might be a dozen or more local centres, each choosing to twin with individual places or organisations from the partner area.

This might be a link, for example, between two places of worship, two schools or hospitals, two youth organisations or between a local WCP group and projects that focus on an MDG that is of particular interest or concern to that group. Local WCP groups could be organised around existing organisational structures such as colleges, interfaith groups, community associations or international bodies such as Rotary, Scouts or the WI.

(270 words)

WI (last line) not an international organisation, so substitute YMCA/YWCA and one of two others if anyone can think of any others that are suitable. So the last line might then read: "Local WCP groups could be organised around existing organisational structures such as colleges, interfaith groups, community associations or the local branches of international bodies such as Rotary, Scouts or the YMCA/YWCA.

(275 words, but still room to add some more organisations)

What problem or issue does your idea address? (in 150 words)

The World Connectory Project cannot solve the MDGs, but it CAN foster the local connections without which they never will be solved.

The WCP is designed to make it easier FOR EVERYONE to connect with their real or virtual neighbours. The internet has reduced the size of the world. Everything we do has implications for every other global villager. We have the means to connect across the rich-poor divide, but we seem to lack "permission" to introduce ourselves. By dividing the world into standard size portions and pairing them at random to create Five Year Friendships, everyone now has an equal chance to get to know each another better.

This is about making partner areas seem local to each other on the global scale, by fostering connections on the human scale. The more we get know each other, the more peaceful and prosperous our global village will become.

(148 words)

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (in 150 words)

Both rich and poor areas would give and would receive. They may not give the same kind of things; they may not receive the same kind of things. Rich areas may donate from their surplus of resources and receive new understandings and new horizons. Poor areas might give of their unquenchable hopes, powerful aspirations and undiscovered talents and receive in return recognition, encouragement and opportunity. Who get most out of it: is it Father Christmas or the young person with the wonderful new present? It's hard to say.

But the really big beneficiaries would be the remote, unfashionable areas, largely untouched at present by development aid, who once every five years would now get an opportunity of being paired up with affluent communities, able for the first time to find out about their neglected needs and primed and committed to respond to them.

(143 words)

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (in 150 words)

The project will launch in January 2010 with the online publication of all 2,400 partnerships and an invitation to areas everywhere to take part. There is no real provision at present for publicising and supporting the launch nor for providing anything other than the most rudimentary structures for offering areas ongoing support and encouragement. The involvement of a bigger player could transform the WCP from an ambitious pipedream that may struggle to expand, into a worldwide movement for bottom-up change and development that would in turn change the climate of opinion towards development aid in general, requiring governments to deliver on their promises of top-down aid too

(108 words)

*6 words can be saved by re-writing the second sentence so that it reads as follows: "Currently, there is little provision for publicising and supporting the launch nor for providing anything other than rudimentary structures for ongoing support and encouragement".

In addition to the comma I've added to clarify the meaning at one point, we might consider inserting an additional paragraph before the one we have at present:

"Pilots just started (the first linking parts of Kampala with parts of Houston) will provide ideas of how best to mobilise support for the WCP in all partner areas. We'll put replicable ideas in an online advice manual accessible to anyone trying to get new partnerships started"

(an additional 48 words, making 150 word in total)

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

Five year friendships would be established between rich and poor areas creating pools of about a million people in each partnership area. By using the joint resources available to such a large number of people, almost any uplifting project could be realised. With financial backing from Google, the profile of the project could be raised to the point where in might be incorporated into the everyday thinking of millions of people around the world - the subject of popular television shows and international competitions that showcased the most successful partnerships.

It will be for each individual partnership to work to achieve goals that they set for themselves, not ones that are imposed on them. But we shall at least be able to measure how many of the 2,400 partnerships become active (by acquiring someone in each partnership area willing to serve as correspondent and keep local membership details)

Beyond this, you could also measure the number of existing development projects offered some tangible support by WCP area groups, the number of new collaborations entered upon, and the number of people recruited to each project area.

(185 words)

Still to be consensed into 150 words

What one sentence best describes your idea? (in 150 characters)

Pair up ALL the world's poorest and richest areas for five years and invite each pairing to look at bottom-up means of improving well-being. This version

Describe your idea in more depth. Excellent!

What problem or issue does your idea address? Ditto, as above

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? Ditto, with the additional paragraph

Sorry I don't have more time right now, I'm off to check out printing costs to see if reproducing artwork from my facebook group could be a feasible fundraiser for the KJT!

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? Ditto

Thanks for the feedback, Ceris!

I'll re-post (in bold) the version that I think you've endorsed and then I'll tackle the final paragraph.

What one sentence best describes your idea? (in 150 characters)

Pair up ALL the world's poorest and richest areas for five years and invite each pairing to look at bottom-up means of improving well-being. (115 characters)

Describe your idea in more depth. (in 300 words)

The best way to tackle a problem - even a problem as large as global poverty - is to break it down into manageable bits. The World Connectory Project (WCP) seeks to complement the current top-down approach to meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) with a bottom-up approach that will invite two-fifths of the worlds population to take part. But even if only a small number of commited people take part in each area, there could still be impressive results.

The World Connectory Project has already divided up all the world's poorest and richest countries into areas of a standard size - each containing about half a million people. These have now been paired up at random, so that every poorer area has been given a richer partner.

Paired areas will be given a duty of commitment to connect with each other, share experiences, support the development projects already operating locally and collaborate on implementing new ones.

The details of how this might work in each partnership area will be down to the members themselves to decide. Within each area, there might be a dozen or more local centres, each choosing to twin with individual places or organisations from the partner area.

This might be a link, for example, between two places of worship, two schools or hospitals, two youth organisations or between a local WCP group and projects that focus on an MDG that is of particular interest or concern to that group. Local WCP groups could be organised around existing organisational structures such as colleges, interfaith groups, community associations or the local branches of international bodies such as Rotary, Scouts or the YMCA/YWCA. (275 words)

What problem or issue does your idea address? (in 150 words)

The World Connectory Project cannot solve the MDGs, but it CAN foster the local connections without which they never will be solved.

The WCP is designed to make it easier FOR EVERYONE to connect with their real or virtual neighbours. The internet has reduced the size of the world. Everything we do has implications for every other global villager. We have the means to connect across the rich-poor divide, but we seem to lack "permission" to introduce ourselves. By dividing the world into standard size portions and pairing them at random to create Five Year Friendships, everyone now has an equal chance to get to know each another better.

This is about making partner areas seem local to each other on the global scale, by fostering connections on the human scale. The more we get know each other, the more peaceful and prosperous our global village will become. (148 words)

If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how? (in 150 words)

Both rich and poor areas would give and would receive. They may not give the same kind of things; they may not receive the same kind of things. Rich areas may donate from their surplus of resources and receive new understandings and new horizons. Poor areas might give of their unquenchable hopes, powerful aspirations and undiscovered talents and receive in return recognition, encouragement and opportunity. Who get most out of it: is it Father Christmas or the young person with the wonderful new present? It's hard to say.

But the really big beneficiaries would be the remote, unfashionable areas, largely untouched at present by development aid, who once every five years would now get an opportunity of being paired up with affluent communities, able for the first time to find out about their neglected needs and primed and committed to respond to them. (143 words)

What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground? (in 150 words)

Pilots just started (the first, linking parts of Kampala with parts of Houston) will provide ideas of how best to mobilise support for the WCP in all partner areas. We'll put replicable ideas in an online advice manual accessible to anyone trying to get new partnerships started"

The project will launch in January 2010 with the online publication of all 2,400 partnerships and an invitation to areas everywhere to take part. Currently, there is little provision for publicising and supporting the launch nor for providing anything other than rudimentary structures for ongoing support and encouragement. The involvement of a bigger player could transform the WCP from an ambitious pipedream that may struggle to expand, into a worldwide movement for bottom-up change and development that would in turn change the climate of opinion towards development aid in general, requiring governments to deliver on their promises of top-down aid too (148 words)

TO BE REWORKED:

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

Five year friendships would be established between rich and poor areas creating pools of about a million people in each partnership area. By using the joint resources available to such a large number of people, almost any uplifting project could be realised. With financial backing from Google, the profile of the project could be raised to the point where in might be incorporated into the everyday thinking of millions of people around the world - the subject of popular television shows and international competitions that showcased the most successful partnerships.

It will be for each individual partnership to work to achieve goals that they set for themselves, not ones that are imposed on them. But we shall at least be able to measure how many of the 2,400 partnerships become active (by acquiring someone in each partnership area willing to serve as correspondent and keep local membership details)

Beyond this, you could also measure the number of existing development projects offered some tangible support by WCP area groups, the number of new collaborations entered upon, and the number of people recruited to each project area.

(185 words)

What do you think of the following section?

All feedback (positive or negative, with or without suggested alternatives) is very welcome!

Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

The project will activate partnerships from 157 countries across six continents. By using the joint resources available within each partnership, a range of uplifting projects will be established and supported.

With financial backing from Google, the profile of the World Connectory project could be raised to the point where it becomes incorporated into the everyday thinking of countless people around the world - the subject of much media coverage and competitions showcasing the most successful partnerships.

Since each partnership follows its own agenda, it may be easier to make quantitative rather than qualitative assessments. We can measure how many partnerships become active (i.e. someone in each partnership area is willing to serve as correspondent and keep local membership details); the number of existing development projects offered support by WCP area groups, the number of new collaborations entered upon, or the number of people recruited to each project area.

I think it all looks good David. Congratulations. It's been a long haul.

:)

It does all look great David, fantastic work. Congrats on getting this done. Now...fingers crossed of course.