Open Collective
Open Collective
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Mission, Vision, Aims, 2022-23 Goals, and Funding Plan
Published on June 30, 2022 by Ian Campbell

Mission

To foster little democracies of neighbors throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and connect them to one another and to similar face-to-face mutual support networks in other parts of the world. We do this by providing accessible training, consultation, material support, and convergence spaces for animators of local neighborhood pods and children’s parliaments.

Vision

Neighbor Democracy DFW envisions a world where every voice can be heard, every person can feel empowered and responsible with the people closest to them, and every neighbor can have an effective say in co-creating their neighborhood. In this world, violence, poverty, loneliness, partisanship, and border wars will no longer have a fertile seed bed to take root in. 

Aims

- Training individuals, communities, congregations and organizations to meet their 30 or so most immediate neighbors, build relationships with them, share skills and knowledge, and create face-to-face forums together called neighborhood pods where they can regularly discuss, decide on, and act on their shared concerns, dreams, and projects for the places they share.
- Consulting animators and groups of neighbors who are building their neighborhood pods through the entire process by sitting down with clients, learning their specific contexts, and providing advice and support on their own self-directed ideas for getting to know each other, building deeper relationships, organizing forums, facilitating meetings, sharing responsibility, and enacting projects and decisions. 
- Investing material support in the form of volunteer and time-exchanged labor, zero-interest loans, grants, dollar matching, and supply donations to help these neighborhood pods enact cooperative projects that secure empowering, democratic, and place-based jobs, increase community resilience, and decrease their reliance on outside entities whether government, money, or far-away supply chains.
-  Weaving networks of neighborhood pods and children’s parliaments across each neighborhood, district, city, and the whole metroplex that can exchange best practices and cooperate together in a way that preserves the unique features of each one.
-  Connecting neighborhood democracy projects in Dallas/Fort Worth with those in other parts of the United States, Europe, India, the Middle East, etc through neighborocracy support organizations that will offer outside training, resources, ideas, and policy cooperation. 
- Maintaining an alternative means of economic exchange between neighborhood pods that circumvents money in favor of time-based currency called time banking that will foster the sharing of talents and services across neighbor democratic projects.



2022-2023 SMART goals:
  • Complete training and provide ongoing support for at least 30 animators in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex who are actively building their pods by the end of 2023. 
  • Have the first fully functioning neighborhood parliament- marked by regular and consistent meetings of the residents of a neighborhood pod to discuss, decide, and take action on problems and proactive projects- in the area up and running by Summer 2023.


Funding plan:

Funding source 1 (approximately 75% of budget of TBD total): Grants/recurring contributions from non-profits, churches, small businesses, denominational bodies, local governments, etc that have a vested interest in resilient, connected communities. In addition, any cooperatives and community businesses that we organize and support will give 5% of their profits to us for reinvesting back into other pods and cooperatives.

Funding source 2 (approximately 20% of budget of TBD total): sliding scale fees ($100-$700 a person) for in-depth, 3 week, animator training course from participants who really want to be trained on organizing neighborhood pods from scratch and training others to do the same


Funding source 3 (approximately 5% of budget of TBD total): book sales of our not-yet published book Towards a Democracy of Neighbors.




How will we use these funds?

- Supporting the consulting work (event expenses, travel expenses, etc)
- Training expenses 
- Time bank operational expenses (Community Weaver software fee)
- Cooperative loan fund, dollar matching, community meeting spaces, etc
- Outside resources from organizations doing similar work worldwide
- Trainer salaries