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Guest blogger: Hannah Candassamy, The British Youth Council
Along with two other people, I was given the opportunity to take the on the role of social reporter and represent the British Youth Council at this year’s chain reaction event. After last year’s success and the excitement that it generated, especially from BYC interns who attended the event, I was looking forward to participating in a day that is all about social change and effective ideas.
“Connect, Collaborate, Commit” was the slogan of the event and these actions were encouraged throughout the day, making it a beneficial and rewarding experience. Usually networking at big events, means slyly squeezing in a few minutes to cheekily talk to an important person and indeed this quick form of networking was celebrated during ‘speed networking’, but the light hearted approach to this activity meant that attendees were able to meet lots of different people and casually talk about their interests, projects they were involved in and the support that they needed. I was able to talk to lots of different people throughout the day who I wouldn’t normally come into contact with and this is part of the success of Chain Reaction.
I attended the ‘Campaigning for Social Change’ session and was really impressed with the variety of knowledge and experience in the room. Young people played a big part in this session in both contributing to discussion and with two of the speakers on the panel, being young campaigners. The way that they had put together their campaigns and were actively orchestrating change in their community was hugely impressive. Certain people in the general public who have a wholly negative attitude towards youth, should attend Chain Reaction and see how these young people are inspiring adults with their energy and clarity, especially on issues such as gang culture and gun & knife crime.
In the main room of the impressive venue at Canary Wharf, I was able to sit in on numerous sessions with a wide variety of speakers and each one presented a different avenue for social change. The one unifying point mentioned throughout, was the importance of community and the need to strengthen the ties that we have with people and to establish new connections. I am pursuing a career in international development and Chain Reaction has reminded me that no matter where your campaign or project is taking place, you should always be aware of what is going on around you and to also notice the highs & lows of people who are a bit closer to home.
Connect with Hannah on the Chain Reaction Network >>>
Got a Chain Reaction Experience to share? Sign up to the Chain Reaction network (its quick and free) and tell us about it >>>
A new post today over at our sister blog, LinksUK, reports on the impact of the recession on child poverty. Depressing reading, but illustrated with a really insightful film made in east London by young people on Community Links young reporters programme, working in collaboration with Save The Children. The London film formed one part of a national campaigning video Wee Shots and the young people ably demonstrate what needs to change.
Over the summer the Chain Reaction team worked with Community Links youth workers to set up a project enabling young people to tell their own stories and to report on events and activities that affect them. In the video below the young reporters talk about the making of the film (with professionals from Urban Croft ) and what they learned in the process. Several of these film makers in the video below will be at Chain Reaction 2009 as part of our social reporting team.
Just as we did at Chain Reaction 2008, this year we we plan to involve yong people in making a film of the event – to be shown at the end of the day- its an ambitious task but we are connecting with the vnspired Big V Bus who are going to work with our young reporters ont the day to shoot, edit and present their film.
Tools to make and share stories online are increasingly easy to access and simple to use in support of a project or campaign. Throughout the day at Chain Reaction we will be running Social Media Surgeries to demonstrate how online tools can be used to promote your work. Come along and join us – and look out for our young reporters… they just might want to interview you!
There have been plenty of ideas for how to tackle climate change. In fact campaigns, business ideas, debates, and literature on climate change have sprung up everywhere over the last couple of years, which is reassuring – presumably there are some good ones in there somewhere. People far more informed than me can judge which those are.
Innumerable technological solutions – from the sensible to the bizarre – have been suggested. Others have looked at what government can do, and again proposals vary widely: carbon taxes, global trading schemes, more regulation. Others focus on the individual, trying various ingenious ways to nudge or browbeat people towards consuming less carbon. Yet others focus on business, and the role they can play in both implementing and promoting low carbon alternatives. I’m sure that on Blog Action Day today, you’ll be able to read about all of them.
So I’m not going to propose yet another solution, I’m just going to suggest that solutions will only be successful if they carry everyone – government, business, the public – along with them. A brand new technology won’t achieve anything unless someone (government, or consumer) pays for it. Governments probably won’t introduce new measures unless there’s public support for them – particularly if they’re likely to make people worse off. In the UK, I think it’s desperately important to remember that most people aren’t really behind the climate change argument, and charities are vital in persuading people and government why it’s important. And a great way to engage business is through a bit of public pressure – the 10:10 campaign, for example, has done a great job of making business realise what’s in it for them.
And where could these kind of collaborations – between government, business, charity, young people – happen? Yes, that’s right, at Chain Reaction. So I suggest you come along. You can meet up with Mary Rhead-Corr, Executive Director of the United Bank of Carbon, Guy Watson, the founder of Riverford Organics, and a load of people from all sorts of places committed to social and environmental change. They know, and we know, that tackling climate change in a socially just way is one of the most important challenges we face.
Village SOS is an exciting new initiative from the Big Lottery Fund, the BBC and Make Your Mark – applications close at noon on Friday 14 August 2009!
Village SOS is searching for six UK villages with a great business idea and six enterprising individuals to act as Village Champions to help them achieve their ambitions. Together they will create a brand new venture that will bring new life and energy to the village with funding of between £100,000 and £400,000 from BIG.
The journey of the six successful villages and their Village Champions will be filmed for a major prime time BBC One series in winter 2010.
Villages are invited to apply to BIG with ideas for successful enterprises that will help revive their communities, create jobs and improve the quality of life for local people. If you live in a village with fewer than 3,000 people and have an idea for a business that could bring energy and life back to your community, then Village SOS could be for you.
Village Champions will work and live full-time in the village to get the enterprise up and running. These individuals will need vision and a “can do” attitude, with a track record of running a successful enterprise or project. The champions will bring their expertise and add to, not replace the existing skills of people in the villages. They will receive a £30,000 salary, and may also invest their own money into the project.
To find out more or to apply visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/villagesos. Alternatively please call 0844 88 88 677.
“Together, we hope to be the change we wish to see in the world”
(Ghandi)
Yesterday, David Robinson, Geraldine Blake, Richard McKeever and myself met with the inspirational ‘generosity entrepreneur’ Nipun Mehta – one of the founders of the not for profit organisation CharityFocus.
Nipun Mehta at Community Links
It was wonderful to finally meet Nipun – as you may remember – he was due to participate in the Chain Reaction event in 2008, but due to over-zealous border controls he was denied access to the UK at the last moment. “I have a visa now!” Nipun says as we meet.
CharityFocus was started in 1999, in the Silicon Valley, by four friends who offered to help a homeless shelter by building them a website. From that starting point, the organisation grew rapidly – but organically – and now thousands of volunteers give their time and skills to develop web solutions, websites, and web portals which touch tens of thousands of lives on a daily basis. CharityFocus is an experiment in the joy of giving -no money changes hands – the organisation operates with a true gift economy, which is something that Nipun advocates
“Let’s serve without any strings attached, just for the sake of giving,”
Nipun Mehta, on starting CharityFocus
So what is the gift economy?
Nipun explains, “A gift economy is an economic system in which goods and services are given freely, rather than traded. In a market economy, one can hoard one’s goods without losing wealth; indeed, wealth is increased by hoarding— although we generally call it ‘saving’. In contrast, in a gift economy, wealth is decreased by hoarding, for it is the circulation of the gifts within the community that leads to increase— increase in connections, increase in relationship strength”
So a gift economy is an economic system where actions are made without expectation of financial reward (the act of giving selflessly has personal rewards of its own) – no strings attached.
It’s not a new system – indigenous tribes for centuries have been living this way – but how does this work in today’s society where very often ownership and wealth are used as measurements of happiness and success?
The simple answer from Nipun is that it just does. People understand the values of CharityFocus and of the gift economy and can apply them.
So when asked “so how do you pay your bills?” Nipun just smiles. “Somehow I am able to. I am not a rich man in the material sense, but my life is rich”
Something else that is fundamental to the success and growth of CharityFocus is trust. “If you trust people they will respond positively” Nipun says – not a frivolous statement when you consider that CharityFocus is now a worldwide organisation with 221,235 volunteers.
But it is only when you stop and think about it that you realize that everyday we put an enormous amount of trust in others to deliver on promises and to act positively. Nipun uses the term “patterns of positive deviance” to describe the radical impact of trusting people.
A great example of an exercise in trust is the Make Your Mark with a Tenner initiative – where young people in the UK are loaned £10 and challenged to make as much profit and social impact as they can in one month
Oli Barrett, Entrepreneur and co-creator of Make Your Mark with a Tenner remarks on the Make Your Mark site;
When we first announced the idea, it was met with much scepticism. People couldn’t believe that we were handing out £10 notes to young people, and questioned their ability to be trusted with the money – never mind to make a profit and reinvest it. But, underestimate the younger generation at your peril… The largest profit was a massive 4100% and over half the young people gave money to a social or environmental cause
The idea of no money changing hands, unconditionally trusting your volunteers and decentralized governance within an organisation, goes against everything that business schools and the open market teaches us about “how to do business”.
Yet CharityFocus operates to all of these principles, and has gone from strength to strength – from 4 volunteers in 1999 the CharityFocus network now has 221,235 members all working on wide range of inspiring programmes. There are too many programmes to do them all justice here on this blog but you can read about all of them here. However, I did just want to mention a few of my favourites;
Karma Kitchen Opened in Berkley (USA) in 2007, and staffed entirely by volunteers, the Karma Kitchen is a place where there are no prices on the menu and where the check always reads $0.00 with only this footnote: “Your meal was a gift from someone who came before you. We hope you will pay-it-forward however you wish.”
Smile Cards Kindness is contagious! These cards encourage anonymous acts of kindness – do a selfless act for someone, and leave behind a card telling them to pay it forward.
The Daily Good A newsletter that features a bit of good news – direct to your inbox – everyday
CharityFocus grew organically from the motivation of its volunteers, and despite its unexpected success, has never wavered from its three major organizing principles;
- To be volunteer run
- To serve without asking for anything
- To focus on small acts – it kept us simple and human, raw and authentic
These are values that are important to us here at Community Links too, where we believe that everyone has something to give, but sometimes need a little support along the way.
And at Chain Reaction, via events and our online network, we explore how we are connected, how we can use those connections in positive ways and how we can maximise our collective power to change the world. Everyone has the power of their own actions, but together we can achieve so much more than we can if we acted alone.
The spirit of collaboration and the sharing of ideas resonates with Nipun as well. In his blog post How to Survive in a Gift EconomyNipun says;
“In today’s world, anyone can stand up for an idea, be-the-change, share stories of the process, attract like-hearted people and create a collective voice to start a movement”
And these “be the change” ideas are spread via online connections and portals such as HelpOthers.org. Nipun uses the rather lovely phrase “Ghandi 2.0” to explain this.
At the end of our meeting, Nipun gave us each a little gift – a peace chain made by a friend of his, Joe Murphy, an artist intent on spreading the message of peace throughout the world. Each peace chain has a unique design on one side and an inscription of the word “peace” in one of 75 languages on the other side. Joe has not only made 431,204 wonderful peace chains in the last 18 years, he has given each and every one of them away – and in the spirit of the gift economy, Joe has been able to carve out living expenses from donations received from others. Read more about Joe’s story here
Meeting Nipun was inspiring, challenging, though-provoking and above all, very enjoyable. The philosophy of CharityFocus is simple: be the change.
Find out more about the work of CharityFocus and how you can get involved here >>>
You can also follow Nipun on Twitter @CharityFocus
In celebration of National Volunteers’ Week this week, we are bringing you another tale from one of our volunteers.
Katie Whitehouse of Accenture volunteered her time on the Connect, Collaborate and Commit desks at the Chain Reaction event 2008. These desks were designed to allow attendees to share ideas, meet new people and create their own meetings. Learn more about how this worked here
Here’s what Katie has to say about her experience:
Katie & colleague work the Connect desk at CR08
There is a certain mantra within Accenture that champions the power of networking and Chain Reaction was a wonderful way in which to utilize my networking skills.
So frequently, concerns over social, environmental and economic injustice are mirrored by a number of charities, organizations and individuals, all of whom have ideas in how to tackle these issues individually, but never talk amongst themselves to develop a solution to the problem.
Chain Reaction gave me the opportunity to really get to know people, their concerns, their ideas and their needs and to then ‘connect’ them with other similar individuals/charities we had talked to. It was a great feeling to help pull together people who had never met or even heard of each other and tell them that this was what they needed to find a solution to their problem or work on developing a new idea.
Too many times good ideas fall apart because people don’t have the time, money or manpower to make them happen. It was brilliant to show how reducing duplication of work and building working relationships could actually mean that an idea could be made a reality.
If you want to get involved in volunteering at Chain Reaction in 2009 please click here for more information
We are delighted to announce that planning is now underway for the national Chain Reaction event 2009
In 2008, the Chain Reaction event brought together social leaders, community activists, policy makers, business leaders, and young people from around the globe to share learning and to generate new ideas for social change, locally, nationally and globally
Attendees at included over 1,000 people from 16 countries, at least 200 of which were aged under 21; community organisations from up and down the country and beyond; artists from Brazil, the Philippines, Croatia, Canada Iceland and Kenya; Social Entrepreneurs, bloggers and techies with new tools to try out; business leaders (among others, CEOs from Royal Mail, BBC, IBM, CBI, BITC, Accenture); and a roll call of Ministers – including a 45 minute visit from the Prime Minister, who made Chain Reaction his next stop after the Economic Summit in Washington.
Plus, Chain Reaction featured the launch of Global Entrepreneurship Week in the UK, and concluded with a celebration of inspiring people and projects with the Beacon Fellowship Awards.
For the full 2008 event summary click here
Shaping Chain Reaction 2009
We are in a very different economic climate than we were in this time in 2008, and we need to reflect these changes in how we plan this years event
We have some ideas on how this can work, but we want to engage the wider Chain Reaction community in discussions on what you want to see happen at Chain Reaction 2009, and share any ideas you may have.
Everyone is invited to participate in these discussions – click here to get involved
Supporting Chain Reaction 2009
We are also inviting orgnisations to get involved in Chain Reaction 2009 as a partner or supporter. Supporting the event can benefit your organisation in a number of ways. Click here to download full details of our Partnership Opportunities or email us at info@chain-reaction.org and we will send you a copy
One of the key findings from the recent Stronger Communities, Stronger Economy discussions is that there is a real need for collaboration between organisations, individuals and communities particularly now in this period of recession.
Whether those collaborations be in the form of shared resources between organisations, as identified in the shared backroom idea, or individuals sharing shop space to inject life into the high street, or even building capacity for self organising within communities, the message is clear: none of us can create change on our own – we need to work together.
And so I read with interest yesterday’s Washington Post blog post about how to create effective partnerships and successful alliances.
The author, Susan Jackon, suggests that when forming new collaborations or alliances, you must bear in mind eight specific bullet points – identified as the “Eight I’s That Make We” concept, which I thought was worth sharing here:
1. Individual excellence. Both parties must have strengths on their own, because weak players cannot prop each other up.
2. Importance. The relationship must have strategic significance. If it is just casual, don’t bother.
3. Interdependence. The strongest and most enduring alliances occur when the parties are different in some respects and need each other to carry out an activity they would not otherwise do.
4. Investment. One sign of commitment is a willingness to invest something in the partner’s success, such as equities or personnel swaps (business “hostages for peace”).
5. Information. Transparency aids relationship formation. If you don’t want a partner to know too much about you, why are you in the alliance?
6. Integration. There must be many points of contact that tie the organizations together in joint activities.
7. Institutionalization. A formal structure and governing board ensures objectivity, and that alliance interests are considered, not just each company’s interests.
8. Integrity. Trust is essential. Alliances fall apart in conflict and lawsuits when partners do not act ethically toward one another nor strive to contribute to the other’s success
Why not share your thoughts on what makes a successful collaboration on the Chain Reaction network >>>
Read the full Washington Post article here >>>
Read more about Stronger Communities, Stronger Economy here >>>
By Julian Dobson, Editor of New Start Magazine
One thing always strikes me when I meet local people who want to change their communities. It’s their passion and determination to make a difference, often against all the odds. Community reps, local activists, residents, ordinary people: call them what you will, they’re the people who work, often without pay, to improve the lives of their friends and neighbours.
I’m thinking of people like Emma Jenson at Liverpool’s Rotunda College, who made delegates to last year’s British Urban Regeneration Association conference sit up and listen when she described her community’s fight to improve a small strip of land.
People like Diane Cocker, whose drive and determination turned a neglected set of allotments in north Sheffield into a practical learning centre on horticulture and healthy eating.
Or Pam Stewart, who battled ill health to become a volunteer director of a women’s refuge in Leigh, Lancashire, and chairs Urban Forum, a network of voluntary organisations.
People like that are the reason why New Start is supporting Stronger Communities, Stronger Economy – a series of events that are feeding ideas into the prime minister’s Council on Social Action. The events have been set up to help inform the government about how communities can help each other and build their own resilience through the recession and beyond. As David Robinson, vice chair of the Council on Social Action, says, it’s ‘a chance to do things differently and create a different future for our country’.
We think that future has to start with the ideas of the people most directly affected by poverty, unemployment and disadvantage. Not because that’s a nice thing to do if you happen to have a social conscience, but because the evidence consistently shows that regeneration that’s rooted in the aspirations and involvement of local people stands a far better chance of success than schemes and programmes imposed from on high.
We’re holding a discussion in Sheffield on 26 March – if you’d like to take part, you can register your interest here. There are other discussion groups in Liverpool, Stoke on Trent and Birmingham, all feeding into the same national debate. There’s more information about this campaign on the Chain Reaction website, hosted by Community Links.
(The Sheffield “Stronger Communities, Stronger Economy” discussion group will take place on 26 March 2009, 5-7pm, and will be hosted by New Start magazine, St Mary’s conference centre, Bramall Lane, Sheffield S2 4QZ Click here for more information)
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