Content
1. Information architecture
2. Copy: Seeding the future campaign
3. Copy: Making a Living campaign
4. Copy: We, the People campaign
5. Copy: Caring for Commons campaign
1. Information architecture
We propose to roll out Spot The Future-related topics as grouped into three broad meta-topics called campaigns, as per the Edgeryders tradition. We would have three campaigns, that reflect the research interests of the Country offices; plus a more generic “Seeding the future” campaign to catch interesting things that don’t fit nicely in the mold. They are rolled out in parallel; the social media team feeds new traffic to the websites by pushing out individual units of content (posts).
Campaigns are project-wide, not country-specific, as we welcome the opportunity to compare notes across different countries.
We work together to write what we call campaign briefs: short, clear instructions to people willing to contribute on how to do so. The brief text is embedded in the body field (Full HTML) of a group node corresponding to each campaign. The brief should:
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Be at most two-three paragraphs long (excluding resources – example).
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Include links to resources where the participant can learn more about the issue at hand.
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Mention specific challenges that people are encouraged to address. For example, within the Making a Living mission, we could include a poverty reduction challenge: there are people that are so poor they simply can’t afford to look beyond their next meal, so we can’t expect them to dream up and execute strategies to lift themselves to more secure condition, no matter how smart they might be. Do you know of any successful experience in addressing this challenge? What are people doing to cope? Explanations and data on challenges should be contained in resources, not the brief itself. We can also make our own resources, of course.
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Emphasize experience for example, a brief on environmental degradation would invite participants to tell us how they, or people in their community, are fighting it while making sure they mitigate the negative impact (if any) on economic activity of doing so.
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Contain a link (“Get started”, “Start this mission” or equivalent) that passes to Drupal the PHP code to create a new post within the Mission group (care of @matthias).
Participants respond to the campaigns authoring what we call missions. These are simply blog posts, nested under the appropriate campaign node. Since they are posts, missions are commentable. We use comments to ask questions and engage participants in conversation about their experiences related to these campaigns and their challenges. Summarizing, here is how the different pieces of this information architecture fit together:
| In the conversation | In the database | Who writes it | Translation? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign | Group node | Team | Yes |
| Challenge | Page or wiki nested in the group | Team | Flexible |
| Mission | Post nested in the group | The community | Normally not |
| Comment | Comment to the posts | Team and community | No |
2. Copy: Seeding the future
The copy for this campaign is already online and translated into Armenian and Georgian. This content will go to the Arrivals group, where STFers have more chances to mingle with their peers in the Edgeryders community.
3. Copy: Making a Living (draft version)
Throughout Europe we are seeing people with high level of qualifications unable to find work according to their expectations, and many have no choice but settle for temporary and underpaid contracts outside their domain of interest. Others are taking up internships, most often unpaid, in the hope that these will land them a paid job.
Over half of young Armenians (18-35) don’t have a job and two thirds of them have never had one. Poor working conditions and generalized mistrust create an even bigger gap since some people stop looking altogether. In Egypt, unemployment has always been a growing concern, especially for youth. In recent times there has been a sharp decline in the economy, consequently causing an increase in the unemployment rate from 8.9% (2010) to 13.4% (2013) (more).
But are jobs really the way forward for all of us? Or the only way to lead meaningful and fulfilled adult lives?
Over time a kind of consensus has emerged amongst some Edgeryders community members that we need to look for other safety nets. That governments ceased being able to fullfill that promise a long time ago. Some even suggest that the idea of a job in itself is obsolete. Several of us have found paths that defy convention, here are some examples from the community:
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The unMonastery is a subsidized hackers’ space where innovators from all over work with a local community to solve challenges on-site, in exchange for housing and meals assured. It happens now in Matera, South Italy!
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@rhithink got fed up with being part of the “generation without a future” and created a platform to support UK co-operatives set up by graduates who are navigating transition to work, all while de-constructing what “young and successful” means nowadays.
What about you? How are you making a living? We’re very interested to compare notes with peers in other parts of the world, young and not so young, especially in the following areas:
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Getting paid work: Where do you and your peers look for opportunities to work? If you’re a young graduate, do the skills you learned in school help?
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Self-managed careers: How are you making room for yourself as an entrepreneur or trail blazer in a field? What supports your work or service?
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Poverty reduction: Do you know of an innovative initiative that helps people living in poverty meet their personal needs and/or provides access to basic services? What started it and how are people coping, physically and psychologically? Tell us about it.
To participate in this conversation simply create a post and tell us about your experience. If you´are not already signed in to the Edgeryders platform you can do it here.
Why join? You will be amazed to discover you’re not alone, and your peers across the world are facing similar challenges! By sharing your story you’re making a first step to connect with a community of support. We are seeing already how giving each other advice makes us stronger and much faster at fixing the Big problems our societies are faced with. If you don’t know where to start, simply read the posts below, they’re inspiring! Looking forward to read you.
*A small number of selected stories will be published and paid for.
4. Copy: We the People (draft version)
It used to be that youth policy around participation was focused on bringing youth into the institutional forms of participation, is this still the case?
According to respondents in the Post2015 Development survey civic participation from their part means engaging in a secure and empowering environment, the ability and possibility to speak and to be heard, an agreed vision with the government of where to go and how, and being provided at least medium living standards. An honest and responsive government was perceived as a precondition for creating such an enabling environment. (source: Georgian preliminary Post2015 consultations report provided by UNDP)
In Edgeryders we are seeing how citizens – especially the younger ones – are active in creating their own initiatives and spaces that work with different kinds of procedures and practices than institutional politics. And that civic and political participation is not some activity or engagement separated from the rest of their lives: people can be involved as thoughtful consumers or boycotters; adopters of alternative currencies (sharing as opposed to buy-sell practices); users of particular digital tools (e.g. the free software movement) etc. These choices are in themselves political, yet they lie outside formalized, institutional spaces. That, too is civic participation (source).
We would like to know how you, your families, friends and acquaintances are We try to address the following challenges:
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Responsive government. When the government is deeply engaged in a many-to-many dialogue with the citizenry, good things happen. Decision makers have access to high-quality information about what goes on; citizens and businesses can help prevent crises by giving government officials early warning. However, many government agencies are focused on their internal process, and find it difficult to change course quickly when citizens bring new information to the table. How are you making your government (national or local) more responsive? Do you know of any initiative or project that is helping public sector agencies engage in open dialogue with citizens?
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Citizen-institution interaction. In many democracies, traditional forms of participation are in deep crisis. Elections turnout is decreasing, especially among younger citizens [need data to support this]. Meanwhile, committed individuals are inventing new forms of participation, from critical consumption to interrogating government data to make sense of what is going on (open data).How are you making your voice heard? Do you know of groups or initiatives that are exploring new way to be the citizen of a modern state?
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Others…?
To participate in this conversation simply create a post and tell us about your experience.
Why join? You will be amazed to discover you’re not alone, and your peers across the world are facing similar challenges! By sharing your story you’re making a first step to connect with a community of support. We are seeing already how giving each other advice makes us stronger and much faster at fixing the Big problems our societies are faced with. If you don’t know where to start, simply read the posts below, they’re inspiring! Looking forward to read you.
*A small number of selected stories will be published and paid for.
5. Copy: Caring for commons (draft version)
Commons are resources such as land, water, food, as well as digital assets that belong to everyone, but deteriorate through excessive use when we hit their renewability limits. What can we do to enhance them, so that they can better sustain social production and healthy social relationships? Spot the Future sets out to capture inspiring green shots and see what issues - economic, social and legal - need to be addressed if we are to build and inhabit a world of green commons.
Many of the initiatives displayed on Edgeryders are about creating new infrastructures based on commoning and sharing as creative responses to ecological, economic and political crises. They are trying anything and everything all at the same time, engaging in radical innovation and working often outside any formal spaces:
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Let’s Do it World: a movement where masses of individuals get together to clean up waste in response to government’s failure to do so (@auli and Henri Laupmaa in Estonia)
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Prinzessinengarten in Berlin is an outstanding example of citizen mobilization for creating an urban agriculture amounting to a whole new social infrastructure (@caroline in Berlin)
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Building intentional communities like the Freelab in rural Poland that serves the local community by offering social and technical support and education (@petros_at_freelab).
Also at the borders of Europe and beyond we see many grassroots groups massively organizing to reclaim the green spaces that surround them: "We are the owners of this city” in Yerevan, “Saving Vake Park” in Tbilisi or cycling mobs promoting alternative lifestyles – “Tie and Wind”. These groundbreaking ways combine community spirit, peer to peer learning and economic value, while increasing resilience.
Help us discover more good doers, creative activists and projects caring for their environments! Identify an initiative to raise awareness on environmental damages in your city and tell us about it. Is there collaboration involved? What value does it bring to the community?
Why join? You will be amazed to discover you’re not alone, and your peers across the world are facing similar challenges! By sharing your story you’re making a first step to connect with a community of support. We are seeing already how giving each other advice makes us stronger and much faster at fixing the Big problems our societies are faced with. If you don’t know where to start, simply read the posts below, they’re inspiring! Looking forward to read you.
*A small number of selected stories will be published and paid for.
For the community and general engagement, literally any story is relevant, beyond themes or ontologies.
It’s a lot of fun for everyone involved, even though it requires a little preparation. If you are upp for it, we will put together a nice…step by step guide for how we do it. Let me know!