The European Commission is out to promote a more sophisticated awareness of the interdependencies between the EU and the rest of the world. They call this “Development”. When the dance is done, they are worried about ethnic nationalists owning the so-called “migrants-refugees issue”:
Expected outcomes: […] Changing attitudes and improved public understanding of issues and difficulties facing developing countries and their peoples, in particular migration.
We are worried about that too. Plenty worried. The good news is that Edgeryders is quite credible for this work. We are nonprofit; we have global dev experience. So, I’ll tell you what I would like to see.
I would like to see Edgeryders grow a development unit. I would like this to be a hacker culture-permeated, radical thinking, ambitious agent of global prosperity – which does not necessarily mean economic development in the narrow sense. I would like it to embrace dependency reduction, knowledge sharing, peering and open source everything as its guiding principle. I would like to see people like @Natalia_Skoczylas, @Alex_Levene, @Christine_Pu, @Quinn_Conlon and @Yara_Al_Adib step up to the challenge. I would like @johncoate 's wisdom and hands-on experience of bottom-up, peer-to-peer development.
And I would like the Edgeryders board to get in there, knee-deep, and lead. I think @Matthias (a Nepal veteran!) and Nadia would be a natural match. I, of course, am willing to help.
It certainly sounds like a project i would like to have input towards.
Right now my experience of working in this area is limited to the work i have done in Calais giving hands-on support to displaced people in the camp there. It has been truely eye-opening to see the balance between the awfulness of the conitions and the warmth and loving nature of the people. There are plenty of people in the camp i would happily swap for people i know in the UK.
I wonder how it is best to go about leading this type of charge? I feel as though i need a much better understanding of what we would be trying to acheive before i was able to give a firm committment.
I’ve really been impressed with the unique approach of the Edgeryders community, and I would love to explore what we could do in a development space. I would echo Alex’s sentiment - this is a very exciting idea, but I would be interested in learning more about the context, expections and end goal before giving a final commitment. That said, I’m definitely open to starting a conversation!
I think a video call to talk as a group around this idea would be a great idea.
I have been lucky to sit down with Alberto this morning in his house and have a bit more of a talk around his thoughts in this area. I think i start to unerstand how ER community could bring together development ideas through the hacker/open comunities. I also have a possible proposal to put to the wider community that could work as a test of a wider idea, so look out for that in the near future.
Could we schedule a group meeting for Friday 16th April? It would have to be in the evening CET (around 19:00 CET?) to allow people from US/CAN to join in. Would that work for people?
@Alex_Levene, looks like you are doing this part of the work and calling the shots. Please create an event on the platform and be prepared to host. With Natalia, Quinn, John and myself we have already enough brainpower to start the process. If others join, welcome, even better.
That would be thursday morning for me, which works. But that’s just me. Most morning times (where it is late afternoon to evening for you) are ok for me because it is usually before I have to go out to do something.
Good morning @johncoate, @Quinn_Conlon, @Nadia and @Alberto - sorry if I wasn’t too much contributing yesterday, in fact, the quality of the call was pretty bad until the last 15 min for me (downsides of living in the not-even-a-country situation). Anyway, as I am digging into the call and trying to find out the people behind it, I also have an idea about whom to engage - and I think they are just the ideal fit for us - it’s Tvind, the school that Piotr works for. They exist since the 70-ties and they do alternative global education. They have schools in Denmark, and a big center in Mozambique and they basically send their students to travel and do case studies in developing countries instead of just being in school and getting only theoretical knowledge.
Here are the links to the school . There is one thing I am worried about is the article about them on Wikipedia - even though I do think these guys are doing amazing job, there were always some attempts to close the place (they started the renewable energy revolution in Denmark in the 70-ties, leading to closing of the plans to build nuclear plants, etc - so they’re basically a bunch of hippies who don’t like the system). I wonder if EU would be up for funding us in cooperation with them. Just a hint.
Another organisation that I really like and they’re my friends is a small architect atelier/group. They have done some work going to South America and Asia building affordable houses and so on - they’re called Atelier Made, and they work in the north of France (I almost got them to talk on LOTE5 but they were too busy). One of them lives in Brussels.
A couple of ideas then - and will get back to you asap with the information, I hope (the stuff seems to be well hidden on their website:))
Btw, Nadia, you should listen to Thundercat if you love the Internet I really liked them.
I really liked them.