UPDATE: This call is outdated. Deadline was 14th of JUNE, we recruited 2 Polish local connectors, and we are still looking for the other languages. For latest info, follow the recent Topics in Wellbeing in Europe.
What
Wellbeing in Europe is a global community, project and event about how each and every citizen in Europe is finding ways to be healthy and prosper.
Help us to build, and activate a network of active contributors to our online platform for the research project we are running in (Poland/Czech Republic/Serbia). The collaborator will organize and drive participation in an event in their city, during which participants will discuss matters important to their wellbeing and the state of their city, country, neighborhood, family, themselves. The tasks related to the event are the following:
- Convene circa 40-50 participants in the event (they do not have to be the same as the ones who will tell you stories in the months before)
- Ensure participation of individuals from different socio-economic groups, educational levels, professions, ages, geographic locations
- Ensure each participant submit their personal stories containing thoughtful responses after the events.
The Measure of success for each event:
- Convene 40-50 participants per event
- Secure minimum. 1 first-hand story, and 3 comments per participant and ensure participants create their article and start participating on the platform within one week of the event ending.
- Write texts for invitations to the events
- Collaborate with the social media manager to do online promotion of the physical event.
- Follow the process defined by the Outreach Director for regular dissemination of participant-submitted stories and discussions happening on the platform.
- Participate in the online discussions on the online form, starting by sharing their own answers to the questions, and reading and commenting on what others write.
We invite you to set up a local event in your town that will take place in November 2019. This event is part of a global festival that brings together the members of Edgeryders, a network of 5000 individuals and organizations who do inspiring work to tack social, economic, environmental and political problems in over 80 countries.
Connectors take a set of actions as detailed below:
BEFORE THE EVENT:
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Participate in a Local Connectors training in Brussels in June/July 2019 where you will meet the rest of the team. You will work and learn with people from Serbia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Romania, Iceland, Germany, Italy and beyond. The cost of your travel and accommodations will be covered by us.
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Host a series of Virtual Cafes calls in your own language where more people from other parts of your country and from abroad can meet and discuss together what they have learned from the stories that have been posted on the online community forum.
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Engage 50 people from different backgrounds in your village, town, city, country to share their stories around these three topics and help them to post these stories on the online community forum: Healthcare and Social care services, Work and Prosperity, Spirituality and Moral Wellbeing.
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Together with the people who you have brought into the online community and virtual cafes, produce the program for the local event in the festival.
DURING THE EVENT
- Ensure that the event is documented in writing and with video following the method and format we will teach you at the training in June/July.
- Make sure you collect all the documentation material in one place and structure it well so that it is easy for those who could not come in person still can participate in the discussion.
AFTER THE EVENT:
- Engage the participants to share their experiences of the event on the online platform
- Write one article to summarise what happened, what was learned and your own thoughts on the next steps based on your experience during the fellowship.
How to apply
- Create an account on edgeryders.eu
- Introduce yourself to the community by writing a post about yourself in [the Wellbeing category](Wellbeing in Europe - Edgeryders) (you can do it in English, Polish, Czech or Serbian) = ADD A NEW TOPIC
- Pick one of our thematic topics, click on it and follow the instructions you find there: Health and social care services, Work and Prosperity or Spirituality and Moral wellbeing.
- Then find one other person, ideally someone who is not used to using internet forums. Interview them so that you get “deeper” answers to the same questions you answered. Make sure to record or transcribe the interview.
- Help them to produce a good article presenting what they said during your interview with them. A good way to do this is to give them the transcript of the conversation so that they can edit it till they are happy with its contents._
- Guide them through the process of creating an account and posting their article in the right place.and have the interviewee post it here.
- Leave a comment on their article, sharing your own thoughts on the conversation you had so that we know you were the one who brought in the new person.
Deadline: 14th of June 2019, midnight CET
How we will select connectors
We are looking for 3 people who speak one or more of these three languages: Polish, Serbian, Croatian or Czech. It is easier for us if you also speak some English.
We will consider individuals who demonstrate an interest in Wellbeing in Europe and alignment with our intentions in the following ways (each item will receive a score from 0 the minimum, to 5 the maximum, which will be summed to define the final score used to choose the winners):
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are registered on edgeryders.eu and have introduced themselves in the Wellbeing in Europe online community forum.
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are empathetic, curious and able to engage people from different walks of life in an authentic, constructive and respectful discussion about important topics.
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demonstrate a willingness to collaborate with others and use online tools such as video chats for communication, engagement, documentation of work.
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Live in either Poland, The Czech Republic or Serbia.
What happens if I am selected?
You will be working closely with the Edgeryders team to build the Wellbeing in Europe community conversation and together with its members, put together the program for this year’s edition of the annual Edgeryders Festival which gathers our global community. These festivals are much appreciated and we think you will find this experience rewarding and enjoyable.
What happens if I am not selected?
You could get a 200 Eur reward for the article that you have contributed as part of the application process. More information about this here: Show us stories that matter, become an expert in a topic and get paid 200 € - International - Edgeryders
For more information
Come to an Online Gathering in your country’s language or (if not available) in English.
Additional:
The event follows a specific methodology that we have designed to generate opportunities for learning, skill development and paid work both for the organisers as well as the participants. Each event involves a preparatory phase in which people from diverse backgrounds share and discuss their experiences on our online forum.
We use this methodology for two reasons.
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In a polarised social and political environment, the dialogue is seldom happening between people who have different perspectives. We feel it is important to overcome these barriers.
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The second is to ensure that our findings from the academic research project which is financing this fellowship program is based on the lived reality and perspectives of people from many different walks of life.
What does the local connector do?
Local Connectors are the highly active members that put our mission into action day by day: building a pan European movement of citizens who share ways to be healthy and prosper in Europe. They are community leaders who engage other people to join Wellbeing in Europe. They participate in the co-creation of the Festival and take part in decision-making processes. Local connectors mostly engage on one or several of the following:
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Organise a local event as part of a global festival : host a number of online virtual cafes and one physical event to reach new people who will become participants in the conversation.
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Actively mobilize their network and local community (in a city, region or country) to come to the virtual cafes and the physical event in order to involve them in sharing their stories with peers in different parts of the country and Europe.
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Provide documentation: ensure sessions and discussions are thoroughly reported back on the platform and feed into the global conversation
Why
Europe is not well.
Current data on demographics shows that every year we are 1 million more, we live longer, but the years added to our lifespan are not healthy years. All of Europe’s unemployment rates are on the rise since 2008, but nowadays as many as 2 out of 5 young people are unemployed in some countries.
Being university trained is no longer seen as competitive, manual professions and crafts are looked down upon, physical labor is brought down to minimum wage or the grey economy.
At the same time, the digital economy is growing 7 times as fast as the rest of the economy, but education and skills reconversion are lagging. Who is going to keep up the fight, when our kids are asking what is the point of an education if our planet has no future?
Environmental disasters, terrorist attacks, the breakdown of solidarity and social cohesion… are just some of the contours of a long-term social crisis, of which we all are protagonists. The big contradiction is: how come entire populations are not able to benefit from humanity’s progress and live in stability and prosperity?
Edgeryders is a company living in symbiosis with an online community of thousands of hackers, activists, radical thinkers and doers, and just normal people that want to make a difference. We believe that a smart community outperforms any of its members; this is the result of people working together, improving on each other’s work.
We want to come together and help one another find the right ways to navigate the changes that are happening in different parts of the world.
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How can we build good lives against a backdrop of massive social, economic, political challenges?
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How can we create opportunities for ourselves and where can we support one another better? In work, health, family, community life.
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How can we build the evolution of the Internet and our technologies so that they support these efforts?
We believe there are alternatives, but they are hidden and not central enough to be able to propel change on a massive scale.
In response, we are building a global Festival to share and collect snapshots of solutions which are being tried at the very level of our everyday lives, and use smart social networks to accelerate the spread reliable information and tested approaches.
Good for you: You join a pan European movement of researchers, citizen experts, funders etc. Individuals and organizations who are building a new narrative about where we are going and how problems can be solved at the local, and European level. By growing your network, you can access opportunities for your personal and professional development.
Good for everyone: We learn who others are, what they are doing to solve problems, and how we can support one another more effectively. By putting together the different perspectives of people from different walks of like and parts of Europe in the same conversation, we can see the bigger picture. By putting together the lived experiences “on the ground” of different people, we can and identify credible strategies and contributions make an impact on messy problems that impact everyone and that no one can solve by themselves.
