Knowledge Collection

Making Sense Using science to make sense of our lived experiences as Edgeryders! The Edgeryders distributed think tank is entering a new phase: that of building on top of a great amount of data that’s been generated since the launch of our platform. The stories we’ve shared and our interactions - social, peer-to-peer and rewarding learning experiences as they feel - are part of an overriding research goal: to enable us to better inform policy initiatives around youth transition. We’d like to try to make sense of it all, as a community and with the help of a small research team; the team has been reading, analysing and placing Edgeryders material in contexts that the policy world, including institutions, can make sense of - i.e in the form of policy research papers, each addressing a specific theme. Through this mission we aim to make sense of the material together! If we use the papers as a starting point for an open and collaborative writing process, as a community we can produce something much better than anything 10 experts in a room can put together. After the validation process is done, Rebecca will then synthesize the main points from the papers, and the community discussions around them into a first version of the transition handbook. The transition handbook aims to leverage Edgeryders’ wisdom to the point where it makes an impact in the policy community, by speaking to individuals in institutions charged with addressing specific issues. The document should also speak directly to young people and other Edgeryders, using key terminology as used by Edgeryders themselves. For a detailed overview of background, process and your role in building the handbook, as well as tentative structure and production timeline go to this doc. Want to help make sense of Edgeryders experiences? Completing this mission basically means reviewing and reacting to the research papers, so mainly commenting on them as they are posted here as mission reports… Start by checking out the summary of Rebecca's and Valentina's ethnographic analysis: Edgeryders transition: Getting the big picture Do you recognise yourself in the description? Are there questions or issues you feel should be included? Any questions of your own you would like help in getting answered? Leave comments either in the post or directly on to the full report available in google docs. Second report out: research policy paper on innovative ways to make a living that Edgeryders have, their search for meaning and finally, a new policymaking that is evidence based: citizens experts like Edgeryders become subjects of policy Summary of “Making a living reloaded” Full report available in google doc and open to comments! Third report out: looking back 30 years at education policy in Europe, where it is broken and list of recommendations for improvement. From Edgeryders with love :) Summary of “Learning reloaded” Full report available in google doc and open to comments! Fourth report out: Social inclusion has been on the European Commission and Council of Europe's agenda for the last 10 years, and its promise is that of fairer and more equal societies. Edgeryders have their own strategies to build healthy relationships with other people and with themselves. How can we increase their applicability? Summary of “Living together reloaded” Full report available in google doc and open to comments! Final report out: Political participation and how it very often is perceived by young people as something different than what is intended by institutions. New cultures of participation and collaboration are being prototyped by Edgeryders, institutions still have a way to go to support small scale grassroots initiatives. Magnus’s full paper : We the people, Reloaded Nadia’s reflections and summary HANDBOOK DRAFT OUT: A final synthesis of all the discussions and research set against the contemporary political context and what they mean for policymakers and designers of online policy-oriented communities: FULL DRAFT HERE. Networks and Allies Finding work – especially meaningful and interesting work – can be difficult. It requires skill, resources, information. Many people find it hard to make this journey alone; having someone to help with advice, information, financial or moral support can make a lot of difference. Use this mission to tell your fellow Egeryders about the people who help and support you: Who are your allies? Is anything or anyone playing a positive role? Maybe your family, an institution or a venture capitalist? A mentor? Your peers, maybe? How are they supporting you? Is anyone encouraging you to take some risks towards more fulfilling, interesting, better paid work? Or are people around you recommending that you take the safest route? Tips As always, tell your fellow Edgeryders the facts (who is helping you by doing what) as well as your interpretation. You can write as much as you want; about 400 words should be enough. You can write in any language. If you are comfortable with it, try writing in English: most people on Edgeryders can read and write it at least a little. Better Money We have several innovative approaches for better markets, monetary systems and economies. For sure, trade and exchange is not as fair and empowering as it could be … Care Stories Share your experiences of giving and receiving care – we are collecting stories of care here! We hope to get to a shared view of what people are doing to cope when official systems fail. What is care? Who gives it? “The state is the main care provider”, say many Europeans. And sure, the welfare state is a major safety net in their societies. “Business is the main care provider”, reply many Americans. They have a point too: their insurance companies, hospitals and clinic – most of these are businesses. And yet, that’s not the whole story. Care models are failing: per capita health care expenditure grows faster than GDP. We need to spend an ever-greater part of our resources just to stay well. Under pressure to get care, the edges of society (the young, the nomads and migrants, the precariat) respond by getting creative. There are many ongoing experiments, large and very small. A hackerspace in England provides a safe space and a sense of identity to the members, many of whom are unemployed, or disabled, or homeless. Hundreds of enterprising Greeks spawn a whole network of "shadow" clinics. Three expat adult couples in Belgium decide to live under the same roof and be each other's support network. Along this journey, they (and we all) face deep questions about what care really is. Is it services? Is it human attention and warmth? Is it trying to fix what’s wrong with people in need of care? Is it accepting everybody for what they are, with their strengths and weaknesses? On October 19-21 at #openvillage, we bring these experiences and initiatives together into a demo of a new health and social care system. Do you have a story of care? Please, share it with us. If you do not have anything to share, but are interested, please help others reflect on their own journeys by commenting on the experiences shared by others. Good for you: When you post a story you get a ticket to the MEET THE OPENCARERS track of OpenVillage Festival 2017. You also become eligible for an OpenCare Fellowship. How to participate: Click on the “Add my story” button below and write a little about yourself and your own experiences around giving and receiving care. Just let it flow freely, don’t worry about getting it “right” in any way - this is a no judgment space. Alternatively, choose a story from the ones below and leave a thoughtful comment. Need help getting started? Some questions others have been answering as a starting point for their reflections. How are people on the move caring and being cared for? Do you know examples where people are hacking or making their own solutions to meet care needs for themselves or others? Have you heard about initiatives that help members of communities to boost one another's mental and spiritual resilience? Social Innovation Social innovations - and their proponents, social innovators - aren’t exactly something new. The wheel, the printing press, the computer: all these can be described as social innovations, because they have radically changed the way we live. In some ways, in fact, all innovation is social! Yet, since the 1960s the term ‘social innovation’ has taken root in its own right as something quite different from innovation. It refers to innovations in those fields - education, healthcare, mobility, poverty, social exclusion, environmental sustainability, and other public goods - which are usually the responsibility of governments (the Public Sector) or the Third Sector (such as charity organisations), but which increasingly are being tackled by young (and less young) individuals with unprecedented creativity, skill and entrepreneurship. From micro-credit to Wikipedia, from time-banks to bike-sharing, social innovations are popping up all around us, and are changing the way we live, work, learn, travel, socialize and - most importantly - tackle some of today’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. With this in mind, here is your fourth mission within the ‘make a living’ campaign: Find and describe a socially innovative company, initiative or project near you (if possible, interview the social innovator who made it possible) that you find inspiring. Do you think it has a chance to actually make the world a little better? Why? See a list of links below, divided by country. Would you work there? Why? Why do you think the founder ended up doing what they are doing instead of just taking a day job somewhere? If you are a social innovator, just tell us about your project! This mission is done in collaboration with The Hub Network, a global network of physical spaces where social innovators work together to make their projects come true. If you are near a Hub, feel free to visit it. You will be greeted by the local host: tell them you are from Edgeryders and you would like to interview one of their members (they are mostly young), they will be happy to help! Here is a map of the Hubs. Tips: Social innovators are everywhere in Europe, and in most of the world. Here is a list of resources by country: if you need extra assistance, write to edgeryders@gmail.com. Social Innovation Europe (with a breakdown of organisations across Europe) map of the Hubs Imagination for the people - a list of projects from all around the works. Use the filter menu on the bottom to select projects in your country. Coworking Mental Health Many individuals and groups are figuring out how to grow emotional, psychosocial and mental health support. They are difficult topics, especially since some of us are coping with one or more of the issues, and have ourselves been at odds with systemic care. This conversation is meant to develop how we think about the responses needed, what daring community projects are looking into this and where we can join efforts. Some critical points topping our conversations over the last months: Those working in creative, artistic professions can be especially vulnerable to domain pressure for success and self-realization. Goodread: On The Relationship Between Creativity and Mental Health Solutions to elderly care and isolation can be found at the intersections of public and private care, or young and old(er), by matching youth vitality with idle experience and skillsets.. or others. Goodread: Caring for Life - a dream of fixing the care home crisis in the UK Dealing with trauma is a skill each of us needs to learn for self-reliance and empowerment. Goodread: A Bus Tour for a Trauma Informed World Sometimes you can heal yourself by healing others. Goodread: Losing Hope and Gaining Hope Facilitating forgiveness for trauma recovery can be the hardest job there is, and needs creative responses for healing in community. Goodread: Vital Networks - the work of transforming experience into understanding As part of our preparations for the OpenVillage Festival we aim to shine light, learn from and support under-the-radar, community based projects around mental health and wellbeing. By October 19-21 we aim to: Engage existing initiatives in telling us about the challenges they are facing Validate them through open discussion, both online and offline, and understand how mental health solutions deployed in various parts of the world can be streamlined to support more people Demonstrate/ Exhibit projects and concepts in a format immediately useful to patients, practitioners, policymakers and other relevant parties. How you can contribute: Explore the stories that others have shared and leave thoughtful comments. Tell us about your own care-related experience. Where are some things you have tried to do in the past, what are you doing now. Build a proposal for a demo session/ exhibition at OpenVillage Festival. You will deliver a practical, hands-on showcase of a project connected to mental wellbeing. Tell us what support do you need to make it happen? Open a new document and write down what you are doing or have learned as a result of asking around. Just let it flow freely, don’t worry about getting it “right” in any way - this is a no judgement space. When you feel “done”, login to edgeryders.eu and upload your contribution through the “add my story” button below Good for you: When you post you will get a ticket to OpenVillage: Meet the OpenCarers. Good for everyone: Your input goes into the OpenCare research project - the findings are shared in the form of a report which we hope will be useful for everyone interested in care for the 21st century. Making a Living 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, the wave of increasing violence that followed the 2011 Revolution caused tourism and foreign business activity to decline, with the general unemployment rate increasing from 8.9% (2010) to 13.4% (2013), and disproportionately affecting youth (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: 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 happened in Matera, South Italy. Rhiannon 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: 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? 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? Poverty reduction: Do you know of an initiative that helps people living in poverty make it to the next day? What started it and how are people coping, physically and psychologically? Tell us about it. To participate in this conversation simply create a new topic (click + New Topic) and tell us about your experience. If you´re not already signed in to the Edgeryders platform you can sign up 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. Culture [premises] As we are increasingly connected by data, as creativity is bursting and the boundaries of ownership become blurred, we see people striving to build societies where the public is free to add, change, influence, and interact with their culture through new ways of expression: see folklore, graffiti, sampling, culture jamming, stereotypophobes (people who fear being stereotyped), or performative memes on the Internet. Even family constellations appear to move towards mixed ones: in some European countries 15-20% of marriages in 2009 and 2010 were cross-border unions, the percentage having grown since the 90s [details here]. This bears on how we accommodate mixed cultures in our private lives as well. How are we learning from each other, how do we express ourselves freely, what are the existing constraints? and who supports us in that? Tell us about a project you know or have started that looks into cultural blends. What statement does it make? How are people reacting to its manifestation? Is there change involved? Good for you: If it’s your project, you make it visible and have Edgeryders give you ideas on how to improve it or replicate it and become an inspiration. If not, you get to showcase an initiative from your own community that you are proud of. Good for everyone: By telling Edgeryders about it you help us understand better the cultural life in our immediate surroundings and open doors for similar contributions. Count me in! How do I participate? It’s easy! submit your contribution by clicking on the “DO THIS MISSION NOW” button look up to your right on this page.This will open a WYSIWYG editor where you can write about your experiences. If you´re not already signed in to the Edgeryders platform you can do it here. Like all missions, this one is worth 250 reputation, but extra points are awarded for great content. Start now! Or get the bigger picture on Living together. Making Projects Happen This group is for creating a Guide to Making Meaningful Projects happen. We want to create a beautiful and interesting content, in a beautiful and interesting form. How do we do it? Lets get creative and use great online tools to include our contributions. We’ll be sharing the tools we find ( for creating graphics, editing, and making the content of the cookbook ) Migration Let’s figure out together how to run relief services and improve coordination at donors-grassroots-policy levels. “What if a sudden disaster left millions of Greeks or other Europeans homeless and helpless?” Is what Aravella was thinking as she started to assemble Backpacks for refugees . All the way from the Kos Island to Thessaloniki and to the Idomeni border, Hundreds of enterprising Greeks spawn a whole network of “shadow” clinics . YBE, another community member and psychoterapist, went on to Trauma Tour from Belgium To provide mental health assistance to anyone in need. Meanwhile, young programmers or design students in Berlin are offering free programming courses at RefugeesWork , or developing a Newcomer app, or build furniture to foster new skills and creativity. In our conversations over the past year, several inconsistencies and roadblocks came up Which make it more difficult to continue the work: how public authorities has or well meaning donors can add to the difficulty of coordinated grassroots relief efforts (Aravella's example of More than 1/5 of all donations being unsuitable!) who cares for the carers? how volunteers Preventing burnout needs to be on top of the list (Alex wrote a great post ) different projects seldom build on each other to meet different needs of Those on the move , from access to basic security, to nurturing social life, to empowering technology? (Luisa makes a case for public spaces as substitutes for home ) few to none solutions are there to deal with the "chaos in the system" brought` about a politicized, stigmatizing debate on one side, and unfit welfare infrastructures on the other: "How does a clinic in Brixton cope with a situation in cui you have five hundred people who have just walked to Calais and have broken feet ... In addition to the epidemiological situation? "(also see Woodbine's view on health autonomy alternatives as) As part of our preparations for the Openvillage Festival we are discovering how under-the-radar projects could be better supported in an ecosystem. By October 19-21 we aim to: Engage existing Initiatives in telling about the practical challenges they are facing Validate them through open discussion, both online and offline, to understand the full scope of how alternative care systems are coping with the needs of people on the move Demonstrate / Exhibit projects and concepts in a format immediately useful to practitioners, economists, policymakers and any interested parties working on similar grounds. How you can contribute: Explore the stories others have shared and leave thoughtful comments. Tell us about your own care-related experiences and projects. Where are some things you have tried to do in the past, what are you doing now. Build a proposal for a demo session / exhibition at Openvillage. You will deliver a practical, hands-on showcase of a project connected to migrant care. Tell us what support do you need to make it happen? Open a new document and write down what you are doing or have learned. Do not worry about getting it “right” in any way - this is a no judgment space. When ready, upload your contribution through the “add new topic”. Good for you: When you post you will get a ticket to Openvillage: Meet the OpenCarers . Good for everyone: Your input goes into the OpenCare research project - the findings are shared in the form of a report Which we hope will be useful for everyone interested in care for the 21st century. DIY Life Sciences How are you using DIY and open source solutions to improve care? Can we bring projects to learn from each other, demonstrate how they work, what is possible in the field? Can we identify all stakeholders involved in Open Source and DIY solutions to health- and social care, with their capacities and obstacles? Marie is inviting hackers to break her heart. She is on a mission to ensure that life-critical devices, like her own pacemaker, are technically safe. Her work draws our attention to the Importance of building a social contract for the software that runs in our bodies. Like the son of John behind the Diabetes Pump, Anthony has Diabetes type 1. He is working to make insulin more affordable through networked collaboration. His project OpenInsulin is on its way to decentralising the science, engineering and production of a vital medical treatment. Olivier went from industrial company to work being passionate about the humanitarian field. His team is using open hardware to build empowering technology: echOpen, the affordable ‘smartphone’ for ultrasound scanning (echo-stethoscopes). You have a motor impairment and want to make or customise your own assistive devices. Because you can not afford commercial alternatives, or they may just do not work well for you. Rune and Alexander are dreaming up WeHandU at makerspace medical researchers can practically cater to patients by enlisting tech communities for faster prototyping. Everywhere we look we are seeing a lot of radical experimentation. Which raises some questions … As part of our preparations for the Openvillage Festival we are working with under-the-radar projects. By October 19-21 we aim to: collect experiences of open source and DIY solutions for health and social care validate them through open discussion, both online and offline. combine everything we learn into the design, exhibition and prototype next generation of community-driven care services. Ways in which you can contribute: Explore the stories others have shared below and leave thoughtful comments. Tell us about your own care-related experiences and projects. Where are some things you have tried to do in the past, what are you doing now. Build a proposal for a demo session / exhibition at Openvillage. You will deliver a practical, hands-on showcase of your project. What support do you need to make it happen? GOOD FOR YOU: When you post you will get a ticket to Openvillage: Meet the OpenCarers. Living Together Exploring the dos and don’ts of co-living and co-working setups. The Internet till 2018 The Internet as the largest repository of knowledge can be thought of as a common in itself, as it hosts spaces for collaboration, free open-source technologies, digital art or photography to share or remix under Creative Commons and so on. With 400 million visitors monthly and roughly 4 million articles, Wikipedia is outclassing Britannica as the largest encyclopedia. Another example is Linux, the no. 1 operating system used by animation companies in the movie industry. Who here hasn’t once downloaded something from file sharing sites, participated in a forum discussion or joined a social network? Each of us has put something personal on the internet to share it with others, and didn’t think it might be taken away or turned against us. The boundaries of legality and property rights on-line are fuzzier than ever. In its privacy policy, Facebook specifically states they have the right to give away information to third parties for purposes deemed relevant. The SOPA and PIPA acts proposed by US congressmen have stirred debates because they are intended to reduce illegal operations by means drastically infringing upon user freedom; worried about their ability to keep sharing online, many people and organizations have joined the largest online protest ever: the SOPA strike on January 18th. This mission aims to make us reconsider the meaning Internet has in our lives. Many of us grew up taking it for granted, but nowadays things may change, for good or for bad. How do you use the Internet as a common resource? Is it a given, a basic need, a commodity? What are your rights and responsibilities in online environments?Do policies like Facebook’s or SOPA–like affect your life? Why yes? Why no? Count me in! How do I participate? It’s easy! submit your contribution by clicking on the “DO THIS MISSION NOW” button look up to your right on this page.This will open a WYSIWYG editor where you can write about your experiences. If you´re not already signed in to the Edgeryders platform you can do it here. Like all missions, this one is worth 250 reputation, but extra points are awarded for great content. Start now! Or get the bigger picture on Caring for commons. Political Innovation “Policy Hero Challenge” was a session at the LOTE2 conference. You’ll find preparations and outcomes here. The relationship between citizens and institutions is all too often made of cycles of unrealistic expectations and disillusionment, that leave both sides embittered and estranged from each other. The policy hero challenge attempts to bridge this gap. Involves citizens in participatory exercises to design realistic, ready-to-roll policy measures. Mobilizes the knowledge of the European legal/financial framework to avoid the pitfalls connected with transforming participation in “writing a book of dreams”, that have zero chance of happening in real life. Mobilizes the creativity of citizens to route around roadblocks currently preventing public policies to be the tool for collective changemaking Europe wants – and deserves. Tackles the complexities of policy making full-on: vested interests, inertia, leads and lags in political processes all need to be taken on board and hacked in search of solutions. Promotes a narrative of result-oriented collaboration between citizens and institutions, where the former are not merely “listened to” but are enlisted as active collaborators – and the latter are acknowledged as powerful tools for collective action and not dismissed as irrelevant or worse. News: Matera has agreed to host the first unMonastery! You can follow the work in progress here. New collaboration with Swedish think tank Global Challenge! You can follow the project here. Social Capital for Social Ventures submitted to the European Social Innovation Competition! Follow the work in progress here. Older links: Policy Hero Challenge information on the old Edgeryders site What others have to say about it: #LOTE2 gearing up: can citizens do actual policy design… Our policy publications: The Edgeryders Guide to the Future: A handbook for policymakers and managers of policy-oriented online communities Open Government Data Open government is a citizen-centric philosophy and strategy that believes the best results are usually driven by partnerships between citizens and government, at all levels. It is focused entirely on achieving goals through increased efficiency, better management, information transparency, and citizen engagement and most often leverages newer technologies to achieve the desired outcomes. This is bringing business approaches, business technologies, to government. Citizens throughout Europe, throughout the world, are engaging with government leaders to build solutions to problems that impact citizens in their home towns. The motivation is to improve the lives of citizens, the efficiencies of government, locally, where the impact can be most strongly felt. Is your community already leveraging open government practices or technologies? If so, tell us how this began, what the goals are for these efforts, what results you are currently seeing. Examples of such practices are publishing public sector information (budgets, salaries, environmental data etc.) to their web sites, especially if this is done in reusable formats such as XML (open data); encouraging ciizens to use these data to build solutions and apps; deploying free software solution, like Fixmystreet or Ushahidi, to allow citizens to report upon anything from job opportunities to potholes on city streets; using Internet technologies for leveraging high quality citizen participation to public decision-making. Some websites with useful information to get started: Govinthelab Personal Democracy Forum Europe Goberno Abierto y Datos Publicos (Spanish) http://www.gov20.de/ (German) Open Knowledge Foundation Spaghetti Open Data (Italian) If you need additional help with this mission, don’t hesitate to contact the team by leaving a message on the Edgeryders profile of the person you want to address. We might even speak your language! Count me in! How do I participate? It’s easy! submit your contribution by clicking on the “DO THIS MISSION NOW” button look up to your right on this page.This will open a WYSIWYG editor where you can write about your experiences. If you´re not already signed in to the Edgeryders platform you can do it here. Like all missions, this one is worth 250 reputation, but extra points are awarded for great content. Start now! Or get the bigger picture on We, the people. Big big thanks to John F. Moore for his invaluable help with this mission! Amelia's Smart Cities project Hi everyone! This is my dissertation project, titled “Making Space for the Future: Imagining the Smart Nation in Singapore.” My project tag is ethno-amelia-smart cities, you can see all the qualitative data (my own and others’) I use here: https://edgeryders.eu/tag/ethno-amelia-smartcities I’m writing this project as a PhD student at the University of Oxford. I’m co-supervised at the Oxford Internet Institute and the School of Geography and the Environment. I’m an anthropologist by training, but I also consider myself an urban geographer because I read deeply in the field and my research questions revolve around space and place. I love to talk about my research so please comment if you want to have a conversation! Learning We explore the role of learning environments here: school, university, but also other social and cultural settings, like the family or even self-teaching. It can also include experiences of studying abroad. What to contribute? Without thinking about it much, brainstorm a list of skills that you can name. Which skills do you especially need to have to be able to manage your life and work? How, where, and with the help of whom are you learning them? Are you happy with what you have learned so far? Has it helped you to get on with your life? Good for you. Reflecting on this can bring to the surface new questions that you need to ask in order to better connect your learning journey with your personal aspirations. For example, knowing that specific work requires specific competencies will push you towards redesigning your learning experience. Good for everyone. Your contribution can help others improve their transition from education to work: if they know what skills are needed and valued in the working spaces, they will know where to look for and how to grow those skills. Personal Relationships The young generation is typically portrayed in the public space through a set of characteristics that differentiate them from previous generations. In Egderyders, we look at innovation and adaptation to modern life as differentiating forces: the young are not intrinsically different from anyone else, we behave differently from our parents because we live in a different world from the one they inhabited at our age. What about the private sphere? Have family constellations changed? In your search for making a living and advancing in your work, you probably are not alone or also look to share your accomplishments with a significant other; maybe pass your knowledge on to your children. In this journey, how are you building a family of your own? what are you looking for in a rewarding family life? What, if anything, has changed compared to how you yourself were brought up, and how? Good for you: We know this is a rather intimate subject, but see it as an opportunity to share your views with people that are confronting their own aspirations with other models, different pressures, and you’ll learn we may be very much alike when it comes to values underpinning our private lives. Good for everyone: Some of us are anxious about creating our own families before we fully stand on our feet. We’d be happy to read what works for you and what doesn’t, and learn from that! Count me in! How do I participate? It’s easy! submit your contribution by clicking on the “DO THIS MISSION NOW” button look up to your right on this page.This will open a WYSIWYG editor where you can write about your experiences. If you´re not already signed in to the Edgeryders platform you can do it here. Like all missions, this one is worth 250 reputation, but extra points are awarded for great content. Start now! Or get the bigger picture on Living together. People & Projects Tell us a story about yourself. It can be the story of your life’s journey, or the story of a day when you discovered something important about yourself or the world. It can be about achieving something or about coming up against an obstacle that prevented you from achieving it. When you write, tell us the facts (what you are doing, what you did) as well as the opinions (why you think it is important to do it). If you need some inspiration, you can look at the stories Edgeryders have already contributed, like those by Jay, Ode, Dorin, Ginevra, Ola, Jonathan and many more. Or write about a fellow Edgeryder. You could also look through the stories posted here, find one that inspires you, then add a topic explaining how it teaches you a concrete lesson that you are going to use for your own journey. You may discover new ways for dealing with something you have been struggling with. Or you may come across someone who is trying to realise something you are interested in and be inspired to collaborate with them. Good for you. Sharing your story increases the likelihood that you will meet other Edgeryders who might be interested in what you do, have helpful advice or even want to collaborate with you on your projects. You can write in any language you like. Good for everyone. The purpose of this mission is to enable Edgeryders to learn from each other’s strategies, successes and mistakes. By sharing yours, you are making everyone a little wiser. Commons & Sharing When commons are endangered is when we realize their value. With natural resources growing scarce and the remaining ones growing expensive, we are living on our own skin the effects of poor management of both commons and our private goods; so new approaches are needed, not just to protect the social-ecological ecosystem, but to make our lives and our communities’ easier. In this group we exchange notes on how we are organising to protect and re-create commons, and be efficient in collectively using them. Let’s help one another to discover promising initiatives, and learn from them. Maybe even support them if we can. We see many grassroots initiatives in Armenia, Egypt and Georgia organizing on Facebook groups, under indicative names such as: "We are the owners of this city. How did these initiatives get started? What has been the best way to mobilize action around the initiatives so far? Which channels have been most successful? What other initiatives should we learn about and maybe collaborate with? How you can participate Identify an initiative to build a commons in your city and tell us about it. Is there collaboration involved? What value does it bring to the community? How is it sustainable? If you don’t know of any, ask your friends or social media contacts. Create a post below telling us what you have found. When you’re done, use #futurespotters to share it on social accounts. What others are doing In the new sharing economy, the focus is not so much on ownership, but on access to resources. Here is what others are already doing to raise awareness or actively enable commons, generally in a collective manner: www.shareable.net - Online magazine promoting an economy based on the value of sharing http://meshing.it – Online inventory that connects users with businesses, enabling access to cheap goods and services at any given moment Car sharing – A form of collaborative consumption helping to save money from ownership and reduce greenhouse gas emissions Co-housing initiative in Milan – A 32 apartment building hosting 12 families practically living together at lower costs Couch surfing – Travel community and multicultural network of people offering hospitality to one another for free http://www.bagborroworsteal.com –Online shop that makes it possible to rent designer accessories at very low rates Practical Resilience Do something to make yourself or your community more resilient, and then tell us about it! Things you might want to try: Learn a resilience skill – take a first aid course, or learn to repair a bicycle Make something in your life more resilient – solar-charge your cellphone, get involved in a local resilience initiative Learn about local risks – find and read the local emergency management plans for your area, and describe how you’d respond in those scenarios Make a 72 hour kit – lots of agencies recommend that people be ready to stand on their own feet for a few days after an earthquake or similar disruption Be sure to write up why the activity you chose was right for you, and how you selected it from the other choices you had. Tell us a bit about what you learned, who you learned from, and your thinking processes. You might take a while to do this mission, so make notes as you go so you’ll remember everything that happened at the end! Good for you: This is the step that really prepares you to understand break downs or worst case scenarios. Good for others: You inspire other people to do the same. The more resilient we act, the many we are, the more resilient our communities will act!.