flashback options and strategies

flashback, three and a half years ago…

I also knew, back then, that “aggregators” in the form of spaces where important.
A “cooperative” urban space seemed important to me – it is still on my list 🙂

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson
Date: Fri, Jan 11, 2008 at 3:54 AM
Subject: brainstorming dante options and strategies
To:

I m now thinking about different strategies. I was thinking it would be good to try to stay longer in Brussels and find a way to converge pieces of the puzzle of a more holistic process , and the hub is a good place for the continuation of the creative holistic collaborative approach that I have been working on in the last years – actually , since I left school and left to Asia ( after turning 16 ) , or even before , when I was elected on the school board when I was 14 years old , more then 10 years ago.

In the last years , my strategy ended up being the following : spending much of the time on the move , and live with almost no financial income ( in average 100 euros support – first from my mother , then from a good friend ) , but move city every few days and hitch hike one or more days a week ( a thousand kilometers or more ) – in the last months of these last years , I started to get tired of feeling stuck in the ” in between ” , and have no space to build other then on the internet , and was lucky in the last months before coming back to Brussels to have the opportunity to stay for two and a half months with my Estonian lady friend in Estonia , and one month with my German/Polish friend in Switzerland. They love me inconditionally , and I know they will welcome me , share care and feed me with their care and also with food ( although they themselves live with very little – Kadri earns around 450 euros a month and Sebastian , in Switzerland , lives with about 800 euros a month – and both also pay rent ) , and provide me the moral support so that I could further my research in good circumstances. But somehow I am not sure that these places are the best for me on a longer term to meet other people to build with.

These last years of nomadism on a european scale was a interesting spiritual exerience , going beyond physical and psychological limits ,
yet at the same time having the special kind of ungoing transition energy , having different flows and feeling one with a broad world and a diverse set of realities , through detachment.

The nomadic spirit is in me , and I also feel it could be a interesting strategy and lifestyle to experiment with in a more local approach to nomadism , having time to build networks of friends and build on projects in one geographical region. ( or a few geographical regions , but with a longer time to build ).

I imagined that at one or all of the following bigger Hub related meetings , as I look forward to spend more time investing myself as a volunteer in the development of the hub ( until we can apply for more funds for some other projects and that i could make a living out of such funds )

that I could make a call to offer people to host me for one or two nights , so that I have the opportunity to talk with them , be a mirror for them , and have them as a mirror for me ,
understanding or eventually facilitating the further understanding of their situation and what they would be interested and intrinsically motivated in doing , what intention they might want to pursue ,
and connecting their interests and networks with other individuals and networks I am in touch with , and vice versa , as to serve as a boundary spanner and facilitate the creation of synnergies towards a broader shared intention. I can also serve as a spokesperson for them to other people if they wish , or simply update them about developments at the Hub Brussels and other Hub projects , inspire them with some of my insights , ideas , experiences , … or put them in contact with other friends that could inspire them according to their interests.

My google calendar can then be used as a tool for people to see what days I have a host , or still need a host , and what days they would want to host me.

Although this would also mean that I would not be able to work for money in the evening , and other solutions would need to be found.

The advantage with the nomadic approach is that I would not have to pay for a room , for which I anyway dont have the money for unless I work full time in a job that I dont like ( at least until I have time to find a job I like and goes well with my interests and the broader meaning – but I already know what job that is , I am creating it , but if I work full time I can not create such value as easily )

The advantage of a nomadic approach is that I could stay two or three weeks in Brussels , and then one week in London , one week in Berlin , and then back Brussels , and this would make it possible to serve as a Boundary Spanner beween several Hubs in Several european cities – hitch hiking as I already did in the last years , but having a more dense network of hosts that share some of the projects and revolve around certain cities.

I want to work on multiplying practices that work , creating value by mixing ideas and building on them , and connecting human ressources pools and extending the collaborative commons , or at least , try to increase its effectiveness.

Yet another strategy some people perhaps too easily resort to ,

could be to go to the social services of one of the communes of Brussels , convincing them to grant me support to pay for a room while having the status of a ” trainee ” at the Hub or at some other organizations I know in Brussels and have been involved with at some point or another over the last years – although I m not sure if I can do that if I dont have a domicile fixe ( which is my case ) – or perhaps I just would have to choose one commune and ask them to give me a domicile fixe . But I heard its not good energyto ask social services , and anyway it would limit my flexibility and my freedom , as I would have to stay in Brussels , tied to the conditions they would apply to me.

It is also not easy to convince social services to sponsor me.

I dont have the right to receive unemployment money as I did not work more then one year in my life. ( another way of getting unemployment money is to sit on the benches of a school until you get a piece of paper … although I visited a lot of schools and it seems I would get bored to death before getting such paper )

So anyway , it is a challenge , and as in the last years , when sometimes ending up without money , it is also important that I find some strategy that other young social entrepreneurs can also adopt as to further continue their activities and project building , networking , and learning. – until they get the network , or the prototype , or both , that makes it possible for them to get further access to other sources of financial revenue. The problem today is that it is possible to get some financial support , but mostly for very specific and limited projects – for a ” entredoneur” ( extract ” neologism ‘entredoneur’ refers to a ‘giver’ who works between, or with others’. ” ) , who spends time managing and facilitating convergence , synnergies , and ” synthese “, the picture to define is so broad and complex that no grant really seems to be adapted. A Grant in itself being centralized , it actually promotes most often centralised structures too – with a legal structure , and a hierarchy of individuals with defined positions.

Therefore , I have been thinking in the last years that a good way of support for such kind of value creation would be micro sponsorship. A platform with full transparency where social entredonneurs can have a profile with info about everything they do ( or want to share about their activities ) , and being transparent about everything they need money for , how much money they need ( for example 5 euros a day for food while they are working on a project in a school in eastern europe ) , and with all details everyday about the money that has already been sent to them . so that people can visualise through some kind of video game like life bars that in two weeks there is no more money to feed your “entredoneur” – engaging the microsponsor , allowing him/her to donate one euro or more , and allowing him/her to choose to who to give support , for what specific project , and on what day.

The entredoneur can also engage other people in providing other sources of support – human resources , council , or … hosting…

It seems to be a pretty simple tool to set up , and some of my programmer friends like the idea , but somehow they seem to be too busy working on a million other social projects , next to their other money making projects , that it has not been developed yet – probably I first need to learn programming myself , so that I can set it up.

So anyway , the point is – lets see what happens , midst options.

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