A
self-sustained network of Neighbourhood Campuses will extend wherever a demand exists.
We will offer educational opportunities for mutual fulfillment – “What you need,
near where you live.”
People have asked me -
HOW DO WE
BECOME SELF-SUSTAINING BY OFFERING COURSES?
How could offering
courses make enough money to pay people and still generate sufficient funds for
introducing more ambitious changes to the neighbourhood?
The courses
are there purely to promote the spread of creativity, self-awareness, mutual
fulfillment and fun - while course facilitators and school directors share the marketing
costs incurred when promoting what they offer.
Even a plant starts by sending
down roots to sustain itself. Similarly
the courses are dedicated to intake of participants from the neighbourhoods. You don’t make money out of the nutrition that sustains you, so why would we expect the initial stage of offering courses to
make money?
However, the second developmental stage includes academies and guilds.
These are where people learn marketable skills, develop plans, and find
collaborators. Academies and guilds are
places for the executives and entrepreneurs amongst us to explore how to adapt
and transition to become more fun-loving, creative, and self-sustainable people.
At one academy we learn
about disruptive technologies, like CleanTech, that exhibit exponential business
growth and change our old ways of thinking.
We explore where, as individuals, we experience discomfort with change
and movement forward. We discover who we
want to collaborate with, and form powerful business alliances.
These are benefits that make
Neighbourhood Campuses different from universities and business schools.
We’ll make
money, especially by reaching out to executives. Again we’ll share the marketing costs
incurred.
Production
departments linking across neighbourhoods are the third developmental stage. Production departments exist for entrepreneurs
and activists to make money as subcontractors on bigger, more complex projects than
a single entrepreneur could take on by working alone.
Production
departments have existed to supply film companies for decades. Departments known as wardrobe, script
writing, props, cameras, lighting, etc. come together to meet a film producer’s
needs. Then, after a production ‘wraps,’
the production department framework quickly dissolves only to reconfigure
again to fulfill the needs of the next film producer.
Production
departments will engage students and entrepreneurs in solving real corporate challenges
for short amounts of their time during the day. The
rest of the student’s day is devoted to reconfiguring departments for media or
creative event production such as activist projects and joint actions.
Making money while still a student makes us very different from a university or school. This not only provides part-time income, and experience. It also provides 'light at the end of the tunnel' in terms of education. How many people graduate from university with a large debt load only to find there is no employment in their field?
Our QUEEN
EAST Agency (see sidebar to right) offers our corporate clients what's called 'crowdsourcing' or outsourcing of services to
a network of lifelong students.
Crowdsourcing service companies already offer access to networks of
engineers. No-one has effectively offered access to
networks of arts-based professionals - artists, entrepreneurs and activists, while helping their network learn and advance.
The
production departments will handle customization of executive visits to
Toronto, and enrichment courses on cruise ships.
OMNI-DIMENSIONAL ALLIANCE, (OA)
The Agency
and production departments also save our clients time and resources by facilitating how corporations collaborate as an alliance. We are starting with outreach to
- hospitality and tourism,
- learning institutions,
- hospitals,
- condominium developers, and
- film producers.
In order to stay in business members within these industry sectors have already grasped the importance of human values (abundance, sharing, a healthy and life supporting ecology,) compared to corporate values (scarcity, optimized return for investors, minimum responsibility for clean-up when accessing natural resources.)
Coordination
of companies and entrepreneurs by neighbourhood is the final development stage
of the Neighbourhood Campus. We start to
bring entrepreneurs and companies together across a neighbourhood so as to benefit
from bulk purchasing discounts.
Toronto
hospitals are corporations that already coordinate their activities so as to buy specific supplies on
the same day. Charging a minor service fee for coordination services allows
us to make huge amounts of money.
Bulk
purchasing across a neighbourhood becomes possible because people will use on-line
software to register within the alliance. They will specify what they want to buy, when they want to buy, and who to
contact in the company regarding each type of purchase.
The sense of
prosperity we proactively generate as shared enterprises for mutual fulfillment within a neighbourhood must increase
our strength to act as an enterprise of neighbourhoods (coordination.) Prosperity also requires respect for freedom
of expression (diversity.)
So we create a space for corporations to benefit enormously, and for communities to flourish in ways unlimited by corporate values.
WHO WE ARE…
The Neighbourhood Campus movement is currently a volunteer-run group of local
residents and others who take action for change - committed to preserving and
strengthening the distinctive vitality and quality of life in the Toronto-Centre
area.
Our community partners will provide courses as well as income to local
entrepreneurs through securing outsourced services needed by corporations locally.
We aim to make lifelong learning, starting a business, and activism more
self-sustainable.
WHAT’S
HAPPENED SO FAR?
The Neighbourhood Campus
sprang to life in March 2012. It is a way
to face the educational challenge of learning how to organize to benefit
everyone.
For example, we face an
educational challenge if neighbours don’t already know how to best fulfill the
local neighbourhood’s mission and vision as in the case of the Bay Cloverhill
Community Association, BCCA.
BCCA’s Mission:
To build a great urban neighbourhood
in active partnership with those who live and work here.
BCCA’s Vision:
A green and clean community
recognized for its exceptional quality of life.
Values that inform
BCCA’s Actions:8
Balance -- we strive to balance sustainable
urban growth with respect for the natural and human environment.
Collaboration -- we seek to collaborate with
community partners for positive and meaningful change.
Commitment -- we are committed to being
responsive, transparent, and accountable to our members.
Advocacy -- we advocate for our community
with passion and perseverance.
WHY DO THIS?
Ontario is no longer the economic engine of Canada. The manufacturing era finished in the nineteen
nineties. It is crucial that the
education we have available builds on what we learn in school and helps cities
to transfer out of a past reliance on manufacturing.
Education must be relevant to today’s economic realities in an international
society where more than ever, moving forward depends on our capacities to
collaborate in departments to get things done, and our individual capacities for
creativity and innovation.
We had moved almost totally out of manufacturing in Ontario by 2003. This was a finding of the Organization for
Economic and Cultural Development, (OECD.)
Governments assure us that we need to learn how to do more with less, while
offering few alternatives for moving forward other than austerity measures.
However we see the importance of collaboration, creativity and
self-awareness to get things done in today’s world. These were not taught in school during the
manufacturing era and are still not taught today.
Another reason for doing this is that we want to work on cruise ships,
and need excuses to hold conferences in the Caribbean. Neighbourhoods have failed to offer us such
opportunities, until now!
CONTRIBUTIONS NEEDED TO MOVE FORWARD
Our goals include having a complete curriculum of courses that tie in
with skills, attitudes and understanding needed to participate fully in the new
economies. We need to hear from facilitators and also gather input from people who want to transition from old-style business to more sustainable economic activity that is based on his or her individual values.
We are putting together an Advisory Counsel to Universe City with representation from each neighbourhood. We need to hear from leaders who have the capacity and commitment to gain from contributing to specific outcomes beneficial to their neighbourhood.
To ‘be the change’ that we desire, (or even be a small part of that
change,) we must look at where we need to go both as a society and in terms of
today’s economies.
