It's All My Fault: How I Messed Up the World, and Why I Need Your Help to Fix It

by Jordan Phoenix

  In this first phase of the program, the fellows have already gained valuable knowledge about some of the most essential survival skills that will likely never become obsolete -- how to build and maintain a shelter, how to grow and harvest crops, and how to create, operate, and maintain energy systems. In phase two, the fellows learn skills involving leadership, communication, and personal development. They learn about how to generate great entrepreneurial ideas, and learn about how to view global issues as opportunities to start ventures that use creative business models to produce win-win solutions. Additionally, they learn about how to create optimal habits for health and productivity, and how to face and overcome fears that inhibit them from realizing their full potential.

  Finally, in phase three, the fellows learn about how to identify their passions and highest leverage skill sets, in order to develop the skills necessary to either create their own job, or land one working for someone else. These skills can be related to high demand fields, such as web and mobile app development, web design, and hardware development. There are currently a number of organizations utilizing open source methodologies to design and develop a wide array of industrial machines for a small fraction of the commercial cost. Entire businesses can be created based upon the manufacture and production of these types of machines; from farming equipment such as tractors, to brick presses, to torch tables. After the two-year fellowship is completed, each fellow gets the option to maintain ownership over the home they built, and partial ownership of the community they created. In order to make the program financially sustainable, a pre-determined fixed percentage of each fellow’s income will go back into the program for ten years, allowing it to expand and spread into other regions. It is strongly recommended that a reasonable upper limit be placed upon rates of return, in order to ensure that these ventures remain focused upon empowering fellows while remaining financially sustainable, rather than becoming exploitative. A relatively new San Francisco based organization called Upstart (www.upstart.com) utilizes this same type of funding model to invest in the careers of recent college graduates, for a fixed percentage of their income that can range from 1--7% over five or ten years. To date, they have already offered over $3.3 million, and have received over 2,500 repayments -- with zero defaults.

  The community incubator model scenario just described is only one example of how the Crowdfunding for Cities plan can be utilized. There are many elements that can be adjusted or refined to create the optimal conditions that fit for a particular region. Globally, each city has different real estate prices, different investing laws, different cultures, different zoning and building codes, different climates, different local issues, and different economic development subsidies available. The people who live within any specific region will be able to utilize this information to suit their own needs, and self-organize in a decentralized way to begin implementing them. Though it will be a great thing when local and federal governments begin jumping on board and buying into these ideas; creating additional incentives and tax breaks to execute them, there is simply too much suffering out there for us to just wait around for that to happen before we get started. I’ve designed it in such a way that it minimizes the need to rely upon political change in order to create the social changes we want to see in the world. We cannot afford to wait around any longer for someone else to come along and save us from the very real challenges we are facing as a species. If we want to move forward into a new chapter of our existence, if we truly want the world to change -- we’re going to have to do it ourselves. And now, we have the blueprints to do it. It is completely in our hands.

  11

  Ideas Worth Creating

  When it comes to creating social change, there are so many different kinds of ideas ripe for the picking right now. Some are simply conceptual, waiting to be built upon and brought to life. Others are already making headway, and simply deserve to gain access to a wider audience in order to pick up the pace. Most importantly, though, is our ability to understand the process behind how to recognize potential and opportunities where others only see despair, and how to transform them into win-win solutions.

  In ethically run businesses, profit margins come from the act of bringing together resources in such a way that the resulting output is greater than what was put in. Farmers profit from the act of acquiring land, seeds, and water, and creating a surplus of food. Restaurants profit from the act of purchasing food, and preparing it in a way that is considered to be tasty by the customers. Web developers profit from creating software programs and websites that make people’s lives easier or better in some way. Comedians profit by making people laugh, and temporarily putting them into a better psychological state.

  In each instance, the objective is to find a way to create a product or service that adds value to other people’s lives, and leaves them better off than before. To begin creating grassroots movements for social change, we need to begin shifting our mindsets from those of consumers into those of creators. Over the course of the past few decades, we’ve become overly reliant upon the idea that someone else would come along and create jobs that would take care of us. To prepare for this, our society has encouraged us to focus so much of our time and energy on feats such as achieving high marks in school, writing an effective cover letter and resume, and figuring out the best way to answer interview questions. We’ve focused so much of our time and energy on highly structured, institutionalized learning. Someone else gives us the blueprints of what to do, and then they use their red pen to let us know if we were right or wrong. Even when we’re outside of school and work, we allow the television, radio, and similar means to guide our patterns of thought. Since we’ve become so accustomed to being told what to do, and filling up our entire days with non-stop external noise, it’s no surprise that we have a very hard time generating independent and creative ideas to address the large-scale challenges we face.

  Have you ever heard the cliché that the best ideas happen in the shower? As part of the fast paced lives we lead in this day and age, with so many distractions seemingly being tossed our way at every moment, the shower is one of the few places where we get a few minutes of personal time to take a break from the circus going on outside. For the brief time that we are in there, there are no radio hosts, television shows, commercials, billboards, electronics, phone calls, paperwork, or any other things to consume our mental energy. In a completely relaxed, non-oppressive environment without any distractions, our minds become free to wander off and begin to think creatively. But how many of us actually set aside time to expand upon this, rather than just letting the insights and ideas slip away? By prioritizing and actually scheduling in more time for solitude in our lives, we can begin to build up our brain capacity to gain clarity, and generate better ideas.

  After spending several years living without a television, I noticed a remarkable change in my ability to think independently, and become proactive about shaping the vision for my own life, rather than always becoming reactive to external stimuli. Since then, anytime I’ve ever been in a situation where someone I’m staying with has left the television on overnight, I’ve noticed that having it on from the moment I wake up becomes so distracting that it drowns out my ability to think for myself, self-reflect, and see the big picture. Sometimes, we will stumble into deep conversations with others about life, or gain clarity from a major life event that rattles us to the core. But most of the time, the conversations we have with others can easily veer towards surface level matters. We discuss errands we have to run, surface level problems and drama we are having, and gossip that is happening in our lives or on television. At times, we can focus so much of our energy on being angry at our problems that we don’t even stop to recognize our potential to create solutions for ourselves and our societies. It’s important to become hyperaware of these tendencies if we are to rise above them.

  In order to create the best win-win solutions that leave multiple parties better off, we need to first understand what each
side wants, and what each side has to offer. We need to identify ways to make it so that each group is receiving some form of value. Adding value can be somewhat of a tricky concept to define for these purposes, since it can be very subjective, and depends largely on what the recipient deems valuable. The world’s greatest steak would not be considered valuable if served to a vegetarian. A good way to begin thinking about different methods of identifying value is to consider the people we’ve formed relationships with through the course of our lives. Every single one of the people we’ve bonded with has added value to our lives in some way or another.

  Think of life as if it were a picnic. What does each person bring to the table? Some people are great listeners, and support us in what we do. Some are very generous and kind, and are always looking out for others. Some stick up for us when others try to treat us unfairly. Some are good at connecting with people, some are good at teaching us new things, and some are good at making us laugh. Everyone is capable of bringing something of value to the table that emerges as a natural extension of their true personality. And if those individuals are interested in maintaining friendships with us, it means that we must be bringing something to the table that adds value to their lives as well. In social terms, these are win-win partnerships that leave everyone better off. On the other hand, there are some people who come to the picnic empty handed. They don’t respect our personal boundaries; they don’t do the things they say they are going to do, and they’d rather spend time dragging others down than lifting themselves up. We can sense right away when someone’s presence leaves us feeling drained, rather than energized. This is an instance where the person is attempting to create a win-lose situation, and so we respond by being repulsed and closing down.

  When it comes to creating new types of jobs, new types of industries, and new types of business models, we must examine what types of value can be created by different groups and derived from different elements. We must also focus on what other people deem to be valuable. Since more and more people are becoming connected to the internet, and spending large amounts of time online, it is only natural to assume that adding value through the technology industry in some form is a very popular way to create jobs right now. By building a website or mobile app that large numbers of people want to use, there is a way to generate large sums of revenue, and create thousands of new jobs in the process. We must begin to think in terms of what people like, what they want, and what they need; and through this process, we can determine new and creative ways to create value and create jobs. In chapter ten, we began discussing some of the fundamental basic ways of creating value that will likely be in style for a long time to come -- the ability to build and repair a shelter, the ability to grow and harvest food, and the ability to create, install, and operate renewable energy systems. Moving into the paradigm of the future, these are the types of skills that can be of value to virtually every person. In fact, these skills could potentially have a much more practical impact in modern society than many of the skills being taught in traditional schools today.

  In terms of creating innovative business models for social good, a little bit of creativity can go a long way in unlocking solutions that previously seemed unfeasible. In the book Building Social Business, Muhammad Yunus discusses the challenges he faced when launching a social enterprise geared towards finding a way to serve malnourished children in Bangladesh. The goal was to sell a vitamin-rich yogurt at a cost low enough to become affordable for the local population, while also doubling as a job creation mechanism for the locals as well. A major issue was that the cost of distributing the product into the rural areas meant that it would actually lose money, and therefore become financially unsustainable. To fix this problem, the solution entailed slightly increasing the prices of the yogurt in the urban areas -- where people were able to afford it -- in order to cover the losses in the rural areas; allowing the whole system to succeed. This subsidization tactic is just one creative way to fix a seemingly insurmountable problem.

  In the book Out of Poverty, Paul Polak discusses his philosophy for utilizing business principles to alleviate poverty. His method involves a minimalist approach to product development, in order to design simple tools for an extremely low-cost that create big differences in the lives of the users. To elaborate: many products that go on sale in developed countries are often expected to contain some extraneous features, in order to meet the standards expected within Western consumer markets. However, in developing countries, where expensive investments can be extremely risky for the consumer, and become a matter of life and death, it is much more feasible to focus on affordability and basic functionality than on excessive features. For example, Polak speaks of having designed drip irrigation systems made out of simple materials that water a plant directly at its roots, which reduces water usage by over three-quarters. This significantly increases poor farmers’ abilities to maximize the usage of stored water on hand during a drought to continue producing crops. His methodology was born out of his previous work as a psychiatrist, in which he spent lots of time listening and looking to understand the mindsets, conditions and lifestyles of the people he was looking to help. Through this empathy-centered approach, it makes it much easier to work alongside people to empower them rather than suggesting solutions that seem too unfamiliar and forced, and are consequently rejected. Rich or poor, no one likes being told what to do, or that their knowledge and opinions are not valuable. On the other hand, everyone likes to be heard, to feel understood, and to feel that others are working alongside them in a friendly manner, rather than looking down on them in an arrogant manner.

  Another innovative model that has been created involves developing computer-based jobs that pay a living wage to women and youth in developing nations. A San Francisco based organization called Samasource utilizes this model in countries such as Ghana, Haiti, India, Kenya, and Uganda. Essentially, Samasource partners with large companies in the technology industry, and helps break down some of their projects into smaller pieces. They then train the women and youth in basic computer literacy skills in order to be able to complete tasks such as SEO analysis, social media monitoring, transcription, online research, and more. Samasource has also launched SamaUSA, a pilot program in California that utilizes a similar model to help low-income college students in the United States find online work and move out poverty. The value add in this situation involves the knowledge that while projects run by large tech companies can require large amounts of training and expertise to execute, there are many smaller aspects within the overall projects that could be completed after only a short training period. This opens up opportunities for people who had never even used a computer before to get up to speed in a matter of weeks, providing them with a realistic route out of poverty.

  Previously in chapter nine, we discussed an organization called LivelyHoods that created a financially sustainable way to create jobs for youth in urban slums. The way this model works is through the process of partnering with companies that produce environmentally friendly products that are in demand in the region where they operate; such as solar lamps and clean cook stoves. LivelyHoods then recruits interested youth, and trains them in skills such as sales and marketing. The youth are then given an opportunity to sell these products without having to pay anything out-of-pocket upfront; which represents a very low-risk, high-reward spin off of traditional microfinance. When products are sold, the youth earn a commission, and can even recruit their friends to come and join their sales teams as well. In this scenario, the youth gain employment, the companies that manufacture the products gain access to new markets, the consumers gain products that improve their quality of life, and LivelyHoods orchestrates it all. This is a great example of how to bring together several different groups and resources in a creative way that leaves everyone better off in the end, while primarily serving the core mission of alleviating poverty for those who need it most.

  In Indonesia, social entrepreneur Nadya Saib recognized that t
he women rose farmers in the region were heavily dependent upon middlemen, and thus had limited bargaining power. As a result, they often had a hard time making ends meet financially, and their children were not able to receive a full education. In this industry, the middlemen batch the roses into different groups, based upon the sizes of their stems. While the largest ones were often in demand, the smaller groups were often discarded. Saib and her co-founders recognized an opportunity where others had overlooked it, realizing that the petals from the smaller roses could be used to create natural soaps. Their organization, Wangsa Jelita, empowers these women by teaching them not only about how to produce the soap, but also about distribution channels and financial literacy. Through this training, the rose farmers are put into a position to create their own social enterprises, and further amplify the positive ripple effects of this initiative.

  When we look closely enough at the problems that lie in front of us, opportunities for social innovation initiatives to arise can come from the simplest of ideas. In Uganda and Peru, an organization called Krochet Kids International uses simple hooks and yarn as powerful tools to alleviate poverty. The idea came about when one of the founders, Stewart Ramsey, spent time volunteering in northern Uganda, and was shocked to learn about how armed conflicts had left groups of refugees confined to government camps for over two decades. The people were hungry for opportunities to provide for themselves, and no longer wanted to have to be reliant upon handouts from aid organizations. Several years earlier, Ramsey and a few friends had picked up the hobby of crocheting to make their own unique hats to use during winter sports, and it dawned upon them that this simple skill could be used to empower the people in the refugee camps. Ramsey returned to Uganda with his friends, and several bags full of yarn -- and watched in tears as the women mastered crotcheting right in front of their eyes. Krochet Kids International sells and distributes the products that these women produce in developed markets via the internet, and pop-up shops in the United States. They’ve since expanded to Peru, and hope to continue their expansion into other regions internationally as well.