Working "Hyperlocal"

At The Foundation, we are wrapping up a year-long strategic planning process. We find ourselves in an interesting time when our endowment is at its lowest (growing but still low) and our pledges for big projects high. This gives us an opportunity to look at the work we have been doing that has yielded the highest impact while also engaging the community and the family members. Projects where we have been deeply engaged and have built networks in the region seem to fit this the best—be it in education and youth services or nonprofit capacity-building. Much of this network-building has meant identifying and engaging the local “connectors” in planning efforts and then them activating their local network around the cause or project.

As most of you know, I have provided the staff leadership to the development, launch and now nurturing of the online nonprofit community www.goodWORKSconnect.org. I have spent the past two weeks meeting with our key partners across the 17-county region that have worked VERY hard over the past year to make this effort a reality. The strategy for 2010 is very in line with Naess’s tenet for local autonomy and control—which in online community terms is “hyperlocal.” We have split the region into four areas based on the population centers and will have action teams working in their own backyard’s promoting the site, it’s in-person trainings that the local team is planning, and providing content. We know that for the effort to be a success in the overall region…we must reach the subregion “tipping points” (Malcolm Gladwell). What I have enjoyed most about my recent conversation is that each subregion is planning to address the given task list for their region in a different way—the way they think will be most effective for the area that they know! I am anxious to see the results and what works!

In the 2010 strategic plan I referenced earlier, we have identified two new areas, the arts and the environment, in which to begin networking building and project development. The environmental aspect is quite promising as our county anticipates Future Gen (http://www.futuregenalliance.org/), Eastern Illinois University’s Renewable Energy Center, Biomass and other green job training at Lake Land Community College, and more. With these large institutions committed to making a difference, there is a prime opportunity to ask the community how they want to be involved as well. Part of this is as simple as providing viable recycling options and energy conservation tactics. My experience has been that everyone wants to feel like they have a voice and can pitch-in to make their world a better place…they just have to be asked for their opinion and help.

THE PROMPT:

This week's stimulus comes from the Deep Ecology movement. And I think it is a very interesting moment of synchronicity that the second week of the Copenhagen meetings on climate change begin tomorrow. The Deep Ecology people give a great deal of attention to what they refer to as "the union of theory and practice." One of the founders of the movement is Arne Naess. This week's stimulus is from Naess' statement about what he refers to as "norms, tendencies, and tenets" of the Deep Ecology Movement. There are seven of these tenets described in the chapter I'm quoting:

"(7) Local autonomy and decentralization. The vulnerability of a form of life is roughly proportional to the weight of influences from afar, from outside the local region in which that form has obtained all ecological equilibrium. This lends support to our efforts to strengthen local self-government and material and mental self-sufficiency. But these efforts presuppose an impetus towards decentralization. Pollution problems, including those of thermal pollution and recirculation of materials, also lead us in the direction, because increased local autonomy, if we are able to keep other factors constant, reduces energy consumption. (Compare an approximately self-sufficient locality with one requiring the importation of feedstuff, materials for house construction, fuel and skilled labor from other continents. The former may use only five percent of the energy used by the latter.) Local autonomy is strengthened by a reduction in the number of links in the hierarchical chains of decision. (For example, a chain consisting of local board, municipal council, highest sub-national decision-maker, a state-wide institution in a state federation, a federal national government institution, a coalition of nations, and of institutions, e.g., EEC top levels, and a global institution, can be reduced to one made up of local board, nation-wide institution, and global institution). Even if a decision follows majority rules at each step, many local inerests may be dropped along the line, if it is too long. (6/7)"

Arne Naess (1995). The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary. In A. Drengson & Y. Inoue, The deep ecology movement: An introductory anthology. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.