New Community Paradigms

Participedia harnesses the power of collaboration to respond to a recent global phenomenon: the rapid development of experiments in new forms of participatory politics and governance around the world. We live in a world in which citizens of most countries are asking for greater involvement in collective decisions. Many governments, non-governmental organizations, and even some corporations are responding by experimenting with ways to increase public participation. Hundreds of thousands of participatory processes occur each year in almost every country in the world. They are adressing a wide variety of political and policy problems. And they often supplement and sometimes compete with more traditional forms of politics, such as representative democracy. Participedia responds to these developments by providing a low-cost, easy way for hundreds of researchers and practitioners from across the globe to catalogue and compare the performance of participatory political processes.

Participedia's searchable database of democratic innovations is made up of three distinct content types including Cases, Methods and Organizations. Bolstering this knowledge base are added resources, including surveys, teaching tools and external data sets. The initial vision for Participedia was developed by Archon Fung (Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) and Mark E. Warren (Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia), and is guided by a set of standing committees.

Facebook page - Anyone can join the Participedia community and help crowdsource, catalogue and compare participatory political processes around the world. All content on Participedia is collaboratively produced and open-source under a Creative Commons License. Explore: Search, read, download and gain insight from our database of cases, methods, and organizations. Create: Help improve the quality of this knowledge resource by editing existing content or publishing your own. Teach: Use Participedia in the classroom as a tool to engage students and showcase their research.

The Social Progress Index is a new way to define the success of our societies. It is a comprehensive measure of real quality of life, independent of economic indicators. The Social Progress Index is designed to complement, rather than replace, economic measures such as GDP.

I love systems thinking - it's one of the best tools we have to develop a more detailed, dynamic and divergent perspective of the way the world works. I hope that these words and insights from my years of working with and teaching systems, sustainability and design can help you develop a systems mindset as well.

From our homes and smartphones to the electricity running our local grocery stores, clean energy is not only possible - it's already happening. Solutions Project accelerates the transition to 100% clean energy by championing a movement that is more inclusive, more collaborative, and more celebratory. Through storytelling, grantmaking, and capacity building, we honor clean energy leaders, invest in promising solutions, and build relationships between unlikely allies. Together, we can make renewable energy a reality for everyone - 100% for 100%.

P2PU is a grassroots network of individuals who seek to create an equitable, empowering, and liberating alternative to mainstream higher education. We work towards this vision by creating and sustaining learning communities in public spaces around the world. As librarians and community organizers, we bring neighborhoods together to learn with one another. As educators, we train facilitators to organize their own networks and we develop/curate open educational resources. As developers and designers, we build open source software tools that support flourishing learning communities. And as learners, we work together to improve upon and disseminate methods and practices for peer learning to flourish.

The American Library Association (ALA) is the oldest and largest library association in the world. Founded on October 6, 1876 during the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the mission of ALA is "to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all."

ProgrammingLibrarian.org provides the resources, connections and opportunities libraries need to fill their role as centers of cultural and civic life. It is a place for library professionals to share, learn and be inspired to present excellent programming for their communities. Through resources, ideas and professional development opportunities, we seek to help libraries fill their role as cultural and civic hubs in their communities.

Great list of courses, books and videos on complexity science, take a look http://bit.ly/2B69HFJ

Indivisible on Offense: A Practical Guide to the New, Democratic House by Indivisible Project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

"The reality is that leadership through large, complex and politically contested issues can be very tough on the people involved. It challenges our perception as to what is for the best, and how best to achieve it. And it challenges how we can find connection with all those who need to be involved."

Collaboration is appealing in concept but challenging in practice. While extensive resources-including ones from the Community Tool Box, The Intersector Project, and NewNetworkLeader.org-exist online to support collaborative efforts, the fact remains that we human beings are simply not very good at making "we" work. And yet, most changemakers today acknowledge that to address the complex social and environmental challenges we face we must learn how to collaborate-across organizations, sectors, networks, and differences. Effective collaboration must become a reality, not just an aspiration.

Project Drawdown is the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. We did not make or devise the plan-the plan exists and is being implemented worldwide. It has been difficult to envision this possibility because the focus is overwhelmingly on the impacts of climate change. We gathered a qualified and diverse group of researchers from around the world to identify, research, and model the 100 most substantive, existing solutions to address climate change. What was uncovered is a path forward that can roll back global greenhouse gas emissions within thirty years.

"The role of the artist is to make the revolution irresistible."- Toni Cade Bambara "It has become easier for people to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism" -Mark Fisher Meaningful art transforms, alters, and incites. Making art as a form of expression, a practice for truth telling and rooted in assembly is powerful. Art is a realm of dreams, imagination, and possibility. It offers us the majestic consciousness of feeling, the undeniable truth, and a sense of community. Great art encourages us to delve beneath the surface of human consciousness and to make the invisible visible.

Systems Innovation is an online platform for systems thinking and systems innovation - our mission is to make complexity and systems thinking accessible to all through education and enable systems level change through collaboration.

HealthBegins took root in Dr. Manchanda's early work as a doctor in Los Angeles safety-net clinics, where he saw the need to support and strengthen the work of frontline clinicians and community partners who wanted to treat disease and the conditions that made people sick in the first place. That's how HealthBegins was born: as a professional home for Upstreamists. 

ArtsFwd is an online community of arts and culture leaders committed to doing things differently in their organizations in order to stay relevant and vital in a changing world. We engage this community by sharing stories, providing tools, and fostering dialogue that celebrates the challenges, discoveries, and achievements of those who boldly experiment in pursuit of truly adaptive strategies.

The new practice connects researchers and practitioners in a loop that allows problem solvers to broadcast, receive, refine, and adapt solutions on an ongoing basis.

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.