Peer to Peer

by

Catalytic Communities recently celebrated their successful fund-raising drive through the peer to peer network activity of Pledgebank by drawing a lucky winner for a trip for two to Rio. A doctor, Jason Yax, won the trip, and he says he will be taking his brother Justin. Both Jason and Justin focus their attention on infectious disease and international work. Look for future updates from Catalytic Communities on their new blog.

Peer to Peer network activity seems to fit strongly with my values. And there is something in the network analysis information I have read from Valdis Krebs which makes me think there is a clear argument about how peer to peer networks have great strength as opposed to top-down networks which restrict information flow and dis-empower people at all levels. I will be reading more about network analysis, and let you know. For now, check out the network analysis papers Valdis has listed on his site, orgnet.com.

Boston — Uplift Academy

by

I was there. I witnessed it. I will attest. What happened? Well, many wonderful and good-hearted people joined together in strings of conversation about uplift. What is uplift? Let’s jump on the elevator headed for good.

Jeffe Ashe and his co-worker Vinod from Oxfam explained savings-led microfinance. Fascinating stuff. To me it:

    encourages self-sufficiency
    rejects foreign aid dependencies
    leverages community capital and social capital
    contains community profits (rather than leaching them outside)
    builds capacity and skills for entrepreneurship
    spreads virally and independent of specific NGOs…

Sounds like the values we picked up in the theoretical portions of our discussions. Straight from the mouths of pale white men to the ears of this pale white woman, we have the academic analysis of how complex systems need to work in the global environment–late-binding, core/periphery networks, Reed’s law…

We came across our disciplines to develop a common language and a common vision. We might not have crossed as many boundaries (national, ethnic, “otherness”) as I might have liked, but we held the world in our hearts and spoke of love, healing, strength, connectness, community, and understanding.

I will be watching, listening, questioning, inquiring, probing, delving, weaving.

People I will be paying attention to?