Group items tagged

The problem is that we use these powers in historically/culturally path dependent ways so the tensions become more acute. The rationalism of the nation-state as a system-hierarchy is good when talking to other states (treaty writing as per Kyoto or the Treaty of Rome), or when universal rules are needed (eg tax collection) but bad at the particular (eg helping troubled families). Passion-populism is critical for mobilisation but can also be corrosive as it fails to offer any real solutions (see UKIP et al). Creative-civic power is good at adapting resources, institutions, and policies to particular needs or ambitions but it is bad at universal welfare and justice. It can also be just as failure prone as passion politics and hierarchy (it's hard and complex to confront particular, local and personal challenges).

Democracy made Athens a dynamic, creative force 2500 years ago. Even then, however, democracy was fragile, sometimes stupid, and short-lived. Plato held it in low esteem and Aristotle likened it to "mob rule." Why, then, do we want to create 21st Century Agoras. What we want to create are communities energized by vibrant participative democracy. In our Information Age as old hierarchies prove dysfunctional, it is imperative that human communities have flexible ways to tap their wisdom and power. We do not believe that unstructured discussion on the Athenian model is adequate for dealing with the complexities of the Information Age. It was not adequate even for the simpler (by an order of magnitude as determined by a metric called Situational Complexity Index) situations of that bygone age. The Information Age challenges us to make participative democracy a liberating force in the world today. Research and proven methodology, aided by networked computing, has resolved at least one basic dilemma of democracy:   How can we hear perspectives of all the stakeholders, make collective sense of them, and reach decisions and act on pressing issues? The approach that overcomes this dilemma and multiple other hindrances to dialogic democracy is called the Structured Dialogic Design (SDD). The Agoras Institute convenes these dialogues as Co-Laboratories of Democracy. This process is a fusion of the theory of Generic Design Science and the consultative practice of Interactive Management, both developed over the last 30 years by Dr. John Warfield and our founder, Aleco Christakis.

In Slow Democracy, community leader Susan Clark and democracy scholar Woden Teachout describe how citizens around the country are breathing new life into their communities. Large institutions, centralized governments, and top-down thinking are no longer society's drivers. New decision-making techniques are ensuring that local communities-and the citizens who live there-are uniquely suited to meet today's challenges. In Slow Democracy, readers learn the stories of residents who gain community control of water systems and local forests, parents who find creative solutions to divisive and seemingly irreconcilable school-redistricting issues, and a host of other citizen-led actions that are reinvigorating local democracy and decision making.

Our Vision: When we empower underrepresented populations to effectively tell their stories, we engage communities in dialogue and positive action. This process strengthens community cohesion and provides pathways for increased communication, cooperation, and respect. Our Mission: To challenge, strengthen, and connect our diverse communities through the transformative power of the individual voice. What We Believe: Stories make change possible. Stories open minds and inspire action. Stories create pathways. Since 2003, Hidden Voices has collaborated with underrepresented communities to create award-winning works that combine narrative, mapping, performance, music, digital media, animation, and interactive exhibits to engage audiences and participants in explorations of difficult issues.  Hidden Voices creates venues where stories from those rarely seen and heard by mainstream society take center stage.  These life-changing stories provide insight about identity, place, and access.  They help us understand the unrecognized, the unfamiliar, the displaced and forgotten within and among us.  A Hidden Voices project encourages deep listening; expansive dialogue, and inspired action.  Hidden Voices believes in the power of stories to transform our communities and our policies. Hidden Voices is a registered 501 (c) 3 non-profit, with more than 100 volunteers and contributing professionals developing two to three projects annually.

The Institute for New Economic Thinking was created to broaden and accelerate the development of new economic thinking that can lead to solutions for the great challenges of the 21st century.

Changeologists everywhere: people who are focused on making change happen in their communities, workplaces, and organisations. It's about "what works" in enabling change in fields like sustainability, health, road safety, natural resource management and emergency management. The focus is on ways of thinking that challenge our assumptions, on innovative tools, products, and resources, and on new processes, especially those for facilitating highly diverse groups. It's a rapidly changing field, with plenty to be inspired about, and always something new.

The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) actively promotes learning and collaboration among practitioners, public leaders, scholars and organizations involved in dialogue, deliberation, and other innovative group processes that help people tackle our most challenging problems.

The Creative Learning Exchange was founded as a non-profit in 1991 to encourage the development of systems citizens who use systems thinking and system dynamics to meet the interconnected challenges that face them at personal, community, and global levels.

Organisations all over the world are holding governments to account, challenging corruption, and demanding the right to transparency, and they are using digital technologies to do so. Why should every organisation have to write their software from scratch? By sharing code, we can make things quicker and easier, freeing up time for the important things. More about Poplus

OuiShare is a global community and think and do-tank. Our mission is to build and nurture a collaborative society by connecting people, organizations and ideas around fairness, openness and trust. We believe that economic, political and social systems based on these values can solve many of the complex challenges the world faces, and enable everyone to access to the resources and opportunities they need to thrive. OuiShare activities consist of building community, producing knowledge and incubating projects around the topics of communities and the collaborative economy, as well as offering support to individuals and organizations through professional services and education. Started in January 2012 in Paris, OuiShare is now an international leader in the collaborative economy field. A non-profit organization which has rapidly evolved from a handful of enthusiasts to a global movement in dozens of countries in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, our network of expert Connectors engage hundreds of members and contributors worldwide.

Founded in 2001, Tamarack is a charity that develops and supports learning communities to help people collaborate and to co-generate knowledge that solves complex community challenges. Our deep hope is to end poverty in Canada.

THE GOVLAB'S MISSION IS  TO IMPROVE PEOPLE'S LIVES BY CHANGING THE WAY WE GOVERN. Our goal is to strengthen the ability of institutions - including but not limited to governments - and people to work more openly, collaboratively, effectively and legitimately to make better decisions and solve public problems. We believe that increased availability and use of data, new ways to leverage the capacity, intelligence, and expertise of people in the problem-solving process, combined with new advances in technology and science can transform governance. We approach each challenge and opportunity in an interdisciplinary, collaborative way, irrespective of the problem, sector, geography and level of government.

Resilience.org aims to support building community resilience in a world of multiple emerging challenges: the decline of cheap energy, the depletion of critical resources like water, complex environmental crises like climate change and biodiversity loss, and the social and economic issues which are linked to these. We like to think of the site as a community library with space to read and think, but also as a vibrant café in which to meet people, discuss ideas and projects, and pick up and share tips on how to build the resilience of your community, your household, or yourself.

Strategic Doing teaches people how to form collaborations quickly, move them toward measurable outcomes and make adjustments along the way. In today's world, collaboration is essential to meet the complex challenges we face.

This Hamilton Project policy paper provides a dozen facts on struggling lower-middle-class families focusing on two key challenges: food insecurity, and the low return to work for struggling lower-middle-class families who lose tax and transfer benefits as their earnings increase. These facts highlight the critical role of federal tax and transfer programs in providing income support to families struggling to remain out of poverty.

The Guide shows how to get your school working with Participatory Budgeting (PB). The PB process creates an experiential learning environment for community engagement at a local level. Students are challenged to think about community needs and issues, exploring their environment. They are then empowered to design and implement a solution, taking shared ownership of their school community. They will gain a new attachment to their community; a sense of pride that comes with civic contribution. And they will build a stronger, more collaborative relationship with school administration, one another, and the community at large.

Equal Citizens has one simple but incredibly important mission: to fix democracy by establishing truly equal citizenship. Once we, as a nation, have done that, we may then take on all the other challenges facing us. The good news is, since Congress created this problem, Congress can fix this problem. The legislation to do so has already been written. Now it's simply a matter of making sure Congress hears our voices and acts to make us truly equal citizens.

ABCD stands for Asset-Based Community Development and it refers to a type of community development based on the work of Professors Jody Kretzmann and John McKnight. ABCD challenges the traditional deficit-based approach that tries to solve urban and rural development problems by focusing on the needs and deficiencies of individuals, neighbourhoods, towns, villages, etc.

There is an emerging knowledge movement that is slowly building all over the world, though it often goes unnoticed by the media and most formal education systems. A part of this movement can be described as a network of 'eco-versities'-people, organizations and communities who are reclaiming knowledge systems and a cultural imaginary to restore and re-envision learning processes that are meaningful and relevant to the challenges of our times.

"As Americans, we have only one institution with the resources and the public mandate to address our nation's most important and difficult challenges: the federal government. As government struggles to recruit new talent, keep up with ever-increasing innovation and contend with a wave of retirements, we need federal leadership that endures beyond appointment terms, administrations and the headlines of the day. In response to this urgent need, The Partnership for Public Service developed the Public Service Leadership Model as the standard for effective federal leadership.  "