A multitude of individual skills and time are highly undervalued, excluded from the labour market in times of layoffs or government inability to provide (at least temporary) support. Yet in various parts of Europe, at hyper local scales, innovative doers are prototyping groundbreaking ways that combine community spirit, peer to peer learning and economic value, while increasing resilience. Initiatives such as Incredible Edible Todmorden, the Stroud Open Gardens and Community Supported Agriculture projects in the UK or the Prinzessinnengarten in Berlin are all based on a community volunteering model: some are using donated public land as they grow (organic) food; connect with vendors to generate revenues and become self-sustainable; or campaign for the learning of food-growing in schools; A house project in Leipzig or the Edgeryders unmonastery currently being developed gather international residents living rent-free, having complementary skills that they put at work in a variety of projects to meet community needs.
Such collectivities are learning communities because they promote exchanges of competencies and nurture feelings of belonging. The benefits for the health of our communities are manifold, because developing strong ties contributes to leveling down depression and preventing tentative self-harm, especially in young people on the verge of exclusion and isolation. Whether it’s growing food, housing, soup kitchens, health facilities, urban planning, bartering, experimenting with alternative currencies (eg. time banking) etc, such initiatives are increasing the ability to provide for ourselves, acting as social security surrogates, but they are not able to stand alone and often need refinement, further investment and institutional legitimacy. Following the model of common pooling of resources successfully implemented in Terre De Liens in France, let’s explore whether this could be pursued at a hyperlocal and European level! This actionable starts with a conversation around how to improve resilience and sustainability of a number of promising initiatives, followed by process design to unlock local resources by connecting existing initiatives and their protagonists with local and transnational stakeholders.
What policies to target with this?
Such self-help communities are about a new, post-industrial and post-capitalist lifestyle: yep, they “promote exchanges of competencies and nurture feelings of belonging”, all of which is scarce in current capitalist societies, where family and neighborhood ties have been disassembled for decades now. (In my view: to make them commercially exploitable – with the climax being corporate social networks, monetizing on our friendships …)
So, self-help communities are not simply a solution to unemployment and economic exclusion, they happen to imply that solution by abandoning the “life as an employee” model. But current employment policies are still centered around the employment model, trying to squeeze as many people into the capitalist market economy even when it does no longer “grow”. Adverse side effects include unpaid internships and precarious work conditions.
So I question if a policy proposal for this should actually target employment policy at all at this time: it needs a paradigm change there first, and we pretty probably won’t be the trigger to effect this. Maybe better find policies that are about supporting new sustainable lifestyles, and position the proposal in that area. The only way to position it in the employment policy area that I see is to make self-help communities attractive to governments as ways to “square away” unemployable people with very limited state support means (just donating some empty houses, unused areas for agriculture, and a kind of health care).
It’s exaptation, baby
I completely agree, neodynos. But does it matter? It so happens that some people (including, to a certain extent, yourself) are feeling their way out the job paradigm. Contextually, it so happens that government has a certain duty toat least look like it’s trying to make sure nobody falls too much off the cracks. Self-help communities are a step into the future for the former, and a remedial measure for the latter. Also, remember that institution have no idea how to instate one, so they are willing to cut you a lot of slack if you go ou and ameliorate some of the social exclusion problems. So everyone wins, right? Or am I being too optimistic?
For historical reasons, employment and social policies are bundled under the same roof in some institutions, but everybody understands the difference.
Ah yes, social policy!
First, I learned a new word: exaptation. Nice.
Then: Yes, social policy, that’s where this proposal belongs to have the best chance for success. Above, I was just discussing (with my usual wandering style 
) what would be the most promising area to propose this idea, as I understand that it is actually a policy proposal that we want to make it into the real world. So I ruled out employment policy as unfitting for now, but did not get on the social policy one.
(In retrospect I did not get on the “social policy” idea because here in Germany, we had some reforms 10 years ago (“Harts” laws) that merged social benefits into unemployment benefits, with the effect that this system now tries to push every individual in need back into an employee position and uses a lot of force (sanctioning) for that. So it was too easy to forget for a moment that a state has or should have an interest to care for people “not falling too much off the cracks” even without respect to the employment paradigm.)
Something else: I remember that I made two policy / project proposals related to this self-help community idea in a recent crowd-sourcing effort for policy proposals, done by Angela Merkel. But as usual with such first attempts of politicians into crowd-sourcing and civic collaboration, that “Dialog about Germany” project did not help the slightest in making these proposals reality. Anyway, here they are (text is in German, but I can translate it if somebody is interested):
Restarbeit = remaining work
Oh, you read it! Restarbeit means here, remaining work in the sense of work left to do for humans after all the automation equipment has done its part.