Richard Otieno sent me the following draft by Andrius Kulikauskas of "a proposal to to promote UK innovations in Africa":

Andrius prefaced the proposal by saying:

I will sleep for several hours and then I hope to finish my draft of my proposal so that you can write letters of support! Meanwhile, here is what I have so far. I am thinking of calling my proposal "Orchard of thoughts" because that is what Minciu Sodas means and perhaps there is a subconscious connection with gardens and orchards throughout our work. I appreciate our thoughts! Andrius

Orchard of Thoughts

Minciu Sodas is a worldwide community for independent thinkers. Minciu Sodas means "orchard of thoughts" in Lithuanian. We would like small gardens to be the concrete way that we come together around the world.

Small gardens are revolutionary. Gardens flourish as activity centers in the "food desert" of Chicago ghettoes; commitments to sustainability in Silicon Valley; "nutritional resistance" in summer and winter for Soviet-occupied Lithuania; a first income for alternative farmers in Missouri; a monastic refuge in Austria; a laboratory where women are free to experiment to heal HIV/AIDS victims in Africa.

Samwel Kongere, a Kenyan fisherman, led our Kenyan team for My Food Story. He organized a Minciu Sodas regional network in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. We collected 500 stories on-the-ground with the help of participants in Serbia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Israeli-occupied Palestine, India, the United States and the European Union. We learned that our world's food supply chain makes for concrete stories that link innovations and human values. Our friendships moved us to respond to the post-election turmoil in Kenya with our Pyramid of Peace of 100 online activists and 100 peacemakers, 1,000 volunteers on-the-ground engaging gangs, opening roads and saving lives. The Public Broadcasting System championed our innovative use of cellphone minutes for emergency barter. Our creativity embraces differences with human pyramids, community theater and peace caravans with camels.

Samwel now leads a center teaching ICT and entrepreneurial skills to 3,000 women. We appreciate the challenge of including African women.

Villages crush independent thinkers, but four or five of them can transform their village. We come together locally as informal hubs of projects and guests, working towards "global villages". We want to establish our global network of rural and urban hubs by cultivating our gardens.

How will clients benefit?

We are building human bridges that link us around the world with African women with small gardens who help us reach out further.

And the men and women who champion them.

Investigators gain education as if they were attending college. They gain relationships and along with them, computers, video cameras, travel to conferences in Africa and Europe, paid work. Contacts.

Our efforts are meaningful if they allow for others who think independently, if they reach out further to include other points of view. We are motivated to lift ourselves out of poverty, material and spiritual, when we are able to expand our context, which is to discover the significance of our actions for ever more sisters and brothers, so that in our work and play we love and are loved.

We want social networkers to motivate African women to think of themselves as included in this global context and to provide their leadership.

How many people will benefit?

We will grant 1,875 microloans of 50 GBP to at least 1,000 women for their projects for participating in our culture. 2,000 men will be taught enough ICT so that they can each contribute a "food story" about a woman in their family. They will all become active champions of our culture. We expect 20,000 people in their families to benefit from their projects and from the principles that they espouse. We expect 200,000 people to benefit directly from the nutritious produce and 2,000,000 people to take inspiration from the stories and ideas. We likewise expect 2,000 active and 20,000 supportive participants online.

Benefits in six months and in two or three years.

Impact and monitoring

375 investigators will receive 100 GBP stipends and 100 GBP microloans for their projects. Each investigator will coach and monitor a team of five women and they will be rewarded for each other's success to keep the default rate low.

Local coordinators. Microloans and microresearch projects

Food stories network of

Overcoming obstacles

We enjoy success in Africa because we engage our participants as equals. We expect them to have a deepest value, an investigatory question, and to work for free in the Public Domain on what they wish to achieve. We thereby repel the selfish and attract those who care. We are then confident to provide them with 50 GBP of paid work even never having met them.

We are able to share energy with each other as independent thinkers. Our care for their activity motivates them much more than any earnings, gains in productivity, or local opinions. Samwel notes that our "knowledge-based approach" transforms our minds so that we seek to learn in everything we do.

We should reach out to the hard-to-reach, both the very rich and the very poor, so that we are all one human chain. We then value every person who reaches out further, but also those who hold us together. We plan to always have at least one "ambassador" from Africa work from our bases in the West, and from the West work in Africa, so that we discover a global context for each other's food stories, weave relationships and impress upon us our global relevance.

Indicate risks

Medium risk: Women often suffer domestic violence when they try to improve their conditions. We will ask men in their families to stand up for them and present their accomplishments with food stories that help us all engage them.

Medium risk: Women may default on the microloans more often than we expect. We will reward each team that completes its projects and repays its loans with 50 GBP for their own fund to loan to each other.

Low risk: We may get leaders who care about money and not our culture. We will therefore recruit as leaders those who have their own research interests. We will promote RNRRS innovations as catalysts for further African innovations.

Low risk: We may have trouble moving content back and forth between local languages and English. We will make sure that our local coordinators have a good understanding of our investigatory culture and work with them to structure our activities so that we can share globally what is most relevant.

Low risk: Our centers may not find work to sustain themselves. Yet we are tenacious, creative and thoughtful investors. We value the human capital that our centers and gardens yield.

Exit strategy

Our goal is a growing worldwide network of self-reliant rural and urban bases for independent thinkers. We will start with Kenya and Lithuania and within three years we expect to have rural and urban bases in Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana and Missouri, Chicago, California and Austria. Each base will be led by a team and evolve into a physical center for co-working, which means a space for working-for-free on one's own projects such as education, arts, sports and also working-for-pay on projects such as ecotourism, knowledge work, agricultural sales to make a living and provide revenue for the center. Each center will provide Internet access, Skype and video bridge services. Our local network of gardens and thinkers will affordably accomodate those traveling from the countryside to the city or vice versa and those visiting from other countries. Our worldwide community will encourage research projects at each base and foster a culture of leadership through investigations. We will encourage individuals from the West to support microresearch and microloan projects with a website much like Kiva except that we share our food stories, we work in the Public Domain, and we invite all to engage our participants.