To help start the conversation and keep the focus of this discussion thread, please consider the following questions:
- How are you using these spaces? Share your examples, stories and experiences!
- What impact have you seen as a result of these spaces?
- How do you evaluate your impact? What are your indicators?
- What challenges have you faced?
- What are the risks to doing this work?
Share your experiences, thoughts, ideas and questions by adding a comment below or replying to existing comments! Participants are encouraged to share web images of their spaces!
Besides offering free access to information, Riecken libraries promote a variety of programs aimed to promote citizen participation and the developing of new skills and leadership. For instance, with the support from Rising Voices, we have a project about forming students and community leaders to use technology to access public information, where they are also learning about their legal rights in this matter, and to share their experiences through blogs and social networks. The majority of the participants in this project are young students who didn’t have an email address before, who didn’t know how social networks work or all the benefits that internet can provide. Now they are beginning to interact more through the internet and some youngsters, like Amalia of 14 years of age, are communicating and exchanging pictures with their relatives who work abroad to support their family. As part of this project, they have also sent information requests through the internet to public institutions, like the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Agriculture, regarding issues that affect their community. Many of them have already received the information they requested. One of the main challenges is to keep providing free internet with a strong enough signal to the communities.
This picture was taken during one of our recent workshops about the Right to Access Public Information through Technology.
Thanks for sharing these great examples, Romeo! It's pretty great that these new digital activists can see the fruits of their labor so quickly (receiving responses from public institutions regarding their inquiries)!
You mention the challenge of providing reliable internet:
I'm sure that others in this dialogue have faced the same challenge. It would be great to hear from them about how they were able to address challenges around providing consistent, reliable and free internet!
We also experienced a problem in one of our village libraries. The only possible Internet conneciton was too slow to meet our users' needs. They organized a petition to demand high-speed Internet for the whole village. What amazed us was that they brought the petition to the village library and asked the librarian to contact the town library for further action. What they did meant that they saw the library as an initiator of changes in the community.
The villagers identified a tank of a local factory as a good spot for the antennae but the factory management did not see the point and refused to allow the installation. The director of the library addressed the Management Board of the factory in writing, explaining how important high-speed Internet was for both the village library and the village. She also addressed local government asking them to use their authority and legitimacy to explain to the Management Board of the factory significance of placing the antennae on the tank and possibility that the signal would reach the people in Glavnici and two nearby villages.After these appeals, the Management Board understood the significance of high-speed Internet for rural development. The signal covers a radius of about 20km, for more than 4,500 people. Before the Agrolib project people in these villages did not have intention to use computers and the Internet and now they understand the value of new informaiton technologies for farming etc.
It is great when people join efforts to provide a community service. I read in one of your comments that the local government financed the refurbishing of four libraries and I wonder if they are also financing the monthly expenses, such as the internet or the librarian’s salaries, or how does it work?
Yes, local government is financing the Internet fee, the salaries of the four village librarians, purchase of books and maintenace. Of course, before they agreed to support us financially, we had to demonstrate that we provided economic and development values to the community and that our project was applicable.
Seeing the hand-written signatures is so powerful. What a great victory.
That's brilliant Jelenar, thanks very much for sharing. How do you think impact of providing your village with high-speed internet has been? Did it result in establishing of tech-workshops on using online tools for social projects? We would love to hear more how the village is utilizing its connection to high-speed intenet.
What is the role of public spaces in becoming neutral places where people can come together to co-create a common intention and start the connective growth pattern, both in place-based and online spaces?
Community Voices - Case Study
The project, Community Voices - 2009 (in partnership with local NGO Assabil) , draws on the experiences of communities from five regions in Lebanon offering them an opportunity for voicing their clear intentions and stories through an open dialogue-context hosted in public libraries. The aim of Community Voices is to facilitate community belonging, relatedness and integrated action, through designing collaborative shared spaces (both face to face and online). Through an integrated design process, the participants became active contributors speaking, drawing and doodling together their inherent assumptions, learning about their own individual potentials, inquiring with each other, and exploring possibilities for a viable future in ways that are meaningful to them.
Public libraries were the entry point for the place-based meetings.
Five public libraries were selected, in Beirut the capital, Beit Mery in Mount Lebanon, Barouka/Baakline in Chouf region, Hermil in the Bekaa plain and Srifa in the South. Each library was transformed to a creative place, while maintaining the spirit of learning, sharing and contributing.
A design flow moved the gatherings through a process of co-generating ideas, identifying local community initiatives that have social and or/business objectives, connecting patterns across regions aiming to specifiy collective programs of cooperation, guiding on project delivery, and the co-creation of a collective blog.
What if Physical Places provide the right environment for sensory connection setting context and opening space for Virtual connections of expansion ?
When the physical place provides the human relational connection (eye contact, listening to each other with all our senses, feeling our presence and contribution, sharing a up of coffee) a new dynamics is formed and the whole place becomes vibrant with the personal exchange. This opens up the space for Collaboration and Connection thus becoming a safe trusted place which catalyze productive and meaningful participation and engagement.
In our experience, we were inviting people into what truly matters to them (eg. possibilities to improve their neighborhoods, creative women contributions, various modalities of exchange - charging/appreciation-based/gifting, what are the strengths in their neighborhoods ...) , and each theme would then attract those who are moved by the call and then we enter a creative process that changes depending on the nature of the gathering.
Digital expansion is then enabled to maintain and grow the connections until the next face to face gathering.
Thank you for sharing this approach, Hala! I would love to read about a specific example in which you engaged people on a particular theme/issue and then empowered them to work towards change. It would also be great to know what kind of impact you have seen come from this approach. Is the impact that citizens/communities are able to successfully make changes, or is the impact that communities feel for connected and empowered (or both)? And it would also be helpful to learn about how you use "digital expansion" to maintain the connections (facebook? twitter? listserv?). Thanks, Hala!
Hello Kristin,
You will find a specific example here where you can follow a link to a paper that describes the case study including the lessons learned, and a link to a powerpoint presentation which has photos that reflect the process and the outcomes.
This prose reflects how the group moved from ideas to action-planning using a "community blog".
A representation of faces from their land
eager to listen to understand.
Sharing goals, dreams, hopes and passions
of the seeds soon to become action.
A day for planning achievable steps ahead
to bring their ideas to life instead.
Turning goals into measurable strategies
voicing ah-ha moments with "I'm finding clarity!"
Creating links and discovering shared interests
leading to participatory collective blogging
(http://www.ni7ki-nesma3.blogspot.com/)
Together, near or far
a virtual space now holds them in a place
to communicate, interact and expand
without forgetting that laughter and fun is a working demand!
Impact:
The main impact was empowerment and community connection. This was reflected in the personal commitment to be present, the strong feeling of being heard, the open communication amongst intergenerational individuals also in the co-designing process of the generated ideas and their self-reliance to write the project briefs, as well as in the connection amongst regions which opened cultural exchange visits, amongst others.
Shortcomings:
The issue that showed up with this project, was the commitment of the public libraries in holding the continuation of the process.
n community creativity's role is to empower, connect and create generative spaces for bringing ownership, belonging, participative leadership and relational exchanges which provide the healthy context for crystallizing action.
our partner in the project the NGO Assabil, friend of public libraries held the gateway role into the public libraries, and moving the project through bringing the project initiators with potential funding partners (this did not happen); the public libraries held the role of providing the place, the enrollment of community members , and having someone maintain the blog and keep the link with their local community (this did not happen efficiently).
This specific project was a prototype at the early stages of our work and many lessons were learned - both positive and to be improved - which we carried into future work. One area is the alignment of partnerships and the clarity of roles and responsibilities.
Hope this answers some of your questions, Kristin.
The main idea we had when renovating the four rural libraries was to make them information, communication and cultural centers of their local communities. In order to achieve that, we had to abandon the old way of providing library services and introduce the new ones, in other words, to modernize our rural libraries. We managed to meet the four conditions according to the Danish strategy of library development- our rural libraries became spaces for learning, inspiration, meetings and manifestations.
Most rural residents are engaged in agriculture; therefore we purchased books and encyclopedias on agriculture and a variety of agricultural magazines. Farmers realized that the libraries in their villages are not spaces with useless books. On the contrary, they started coming to the libraries in order to read something useful and interesting for their production.
Since almost all farmers in these four villages could not use computers, we organized ICT trainings for them. They learned how to use search engines, social networks, e-mails; how to visit the websites referring to agricultural production etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJUQBQwBr7U&list=UURpCaVT7RS18jZcS5H21zCg&index=10&feature=plcp
TV report which was broadcast on the national television RTS in two programs: in Jutarnji program in the prime time, which is on the First Channel of RTS and in Srbija danas which is on the Second Channel of RTS. After the broadcasting of this report on national television, a man from Vrnjacka Banja got in touch with the librarian from Bagrdan and he was interested in the possibility to get the literature about nuts. This example shows how people want to acquire knowledge, it is just that you need to reach them and enable them knowledge in the right way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvQaVE4RNZU&feature=BFa&list=UURpCaVT7RS18jZcS5H21zCg
Agricultural lectures and forums are another form of education where farmers in conversations with eminent Serbian experts in different areas of agriculture have the possibility to learn firsthand about innovations in agricultural production, about examples of good practice of farmers and agricultural associations in the country and abroad. Also, after the lectures they have the possibility to ask for advice or to present their own problems in agricultural production, and get advice or expert opinion at the highest level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLxhLHWZlRg&list=UURpCaVT7RS18jZcS5H21zCg&index=7&feature=plcp
For farmers, craftsmen and village tourism, we set up a website http://www.agrolib.rs/. The site contains weather forecast, digitized magazines and books and Agrolib market where farmers advertise their products, buy and sell, exchange their experiences and share their ideas.
http://www.agrolib.rs/pijaca/
Are the farmers able to contribute their own experiences to the pool of knowledge? If so, how are they able to do that? I am sure that many have valuable techniques that they can share with other farmers and the library can be a place to contribute this information, instead of just consuming. I would love to hear about this possibility.
Of course, one of our aims was to have farmers share their experiences with others and give advice and support. We have a lot of interesting examples of how our users, i.e. farmers unexpectedly became key figures in providing information for other farmers.
For instance, Mr Zoran Milosevic registered on our website agrolib.rs/pijaca , an online farm produce market we developed for farmers and published an article on quince production. The result was that he actually sold 1,500kg of quince after publishing his article on the Internet. He got in touch with us, thanked us for a wonderful opportunity and we came up with the idea to hire him to hold lectures on fruit growing and alternative fruit species, since he has been growing quince for a few decades. Farmers loved his lectures because a lot of them had some doubts about planting fruit trees, especially quince. Mr Rade Damljanovic, attended one of Mr Zoran's lectures and decided to plant quince on 5 hectares of land.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWbGt54pXTw&list=UURpCaVT7RS18jZcS5H21zCg&index=5&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uczb-yC4OWc&list=UURpCaVT7RS18jZcS5H21zCg&index=6&feature=plcp
Members of a beekeepers association Bagrdan started attending the lectures about beekeeping. When they realized how useful the lectures were, they invited other beekeepers associations from nearby villages and towns, so they had lively discussions in the library. They interpreted the regulations on beekeeping, gave advice about protection from diseases, etc.
The AgroLib project achieved measurable results after a year’s implementation. These are a long-term results because the project affected people’s minds and gave them the model how their lives in a local community can be changed. The project highlighted the importance of obtaining and providing information and offered people a way to achieve it. ICT literate farmers interconnected and were encouraged to act collectively, and they are now more willing to tackle the challenges of modern society.
Our key achievements:
Public Library Radislav Nikcevic has revitalized four village libraries and won farmers' trust and changing attitudes to the libraries and ICT.
We trained librarians and farmers to use computers and the Internet.
We launched a website http://www.agrolib.rs/ provides automatic weather updates, news for farmers and digitized books and magazines as well as online produce market http://www.agrolib.rs/pijaca/
We host lectures for farmers, publicized our activities through mass media, make films and distrubute business cards to farmers.
We won a grant from the Ministry of Culture to extend Agrolib service.
The number of visitors to the village libraries rose from 16 a week before Agrolib service to 176 a week at the end of the first year of the project.
Average computer use rose from 36.5% to 59.3% towards the end of the first year of the project.
According to the surveys made by the libraries :
85% of farmers said they found information significant for their farming on the Internet.
95% said they believed that the Internet was a good way of connecting people.
100% said that the Internet was good place for marketing and selling agricultural produce
100% said they wanted the Agrolib service to continue.
In the beginning, we planned identical project activities for all four rural libraries, but we realized that each village is different. The challenge was to adapt to the cultural patterns and customs of each village.
Our plan was to use the library spaces for lectures in the evenings after farmers finished their work in the fileds. Soon we realized that after a long day in the field and evening livestock feeding, they would not be able to come to the library no matter what we were offering to them. Therefore, we had to postpone some activities to months when there was not so much work in the fields and farmers were not so exhausted and had more free time.
Also, we had to pay attention to when each of the villages celebrated a religious patron day and other religious holidays. During big sports events when most men were at home watching TV, we avoided organizing lectures.
In the beginning, working hours in all four libraries were four hours a day and librarians' shifts varied. We realized that if we wanted to adjust to meet farmers needs, we had to make sure to be open in the morninigs and on market days. Also, in order to meet school children needs, the libraries were open after school hours.
With Agrolib service, we proved that it is possible to overcome the traditional role of libraries as spaces where people come and borrow books. Libraries are much more than that; they are spaces with a variety of activities.
During the project implementation we have recorded a lot of interesting stories about how people's lives changed for better thanks to the rural libraries.
Mr Dejan Stankovic was one of the first users of Agrolib service. He uderstood what possibilities he would have if he offered cheese on the Internet. He registered on the Agrolib market and learned how to use the search engine. Soon, he started visiting agricultural forums and found a lot of customers online. Being motivated by the success he achieved thanks to the project, he took an active part in the project and assisted in the computer trainings for farmers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44MZ-cNN6xI
One more example of the results we have had:
There is a lady, LJiljana Vulic, who was made redundant due to economic crisis. She decided to take incentives from the state and start an old hand-made craft business, but it was not very successful.
She registered on our webiste www.agrolib.rs/pijaca and her business improved. A local TV station has recently made a story about her and a local newspaper Novi Put published an article about Ljiljana's business.
Mrs Ljiljana is very grateful to Jagodina Public Library and the project Agrolib for helping her find her place in the Serbian market. Some time ago, Jagodina library celebrated 103rd anniversary. As a sign of her gratefulness, she baked a cake with a logo of the Agrolib project and brought it to the library as a gift. Everyone was pleasantly surprised.
You all have shared so many great examples from Guatemala, to Serbia, to Lebanon of how you've utilized physical spaces as catalysts for greater citizen participation - thank you! It is an inspiring and useful exchange!
I invite you to share your thoughts and experiences about the potential risks that come with this kind of work. Have you or your colleagues faced any intimidation or threats because of the work that you've done with these physical spaces? What are the biggest risks that need to be considered before someone creates a space like the ones you have described? Thanks!
“Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan” Human Rights Documentary Film Festival which is a sister festival of “Eden Svet” Festival in Prague has united more than 45 000 people for the last five years. This festival raises the human rights issues all over the world through documentary films, which are selected annually by the Selection Jury in National, International and an out of competition programs. Filmmakers from all over the world shoot films about the human rights issues of children, women, vulnerable groups, youth, convicts, etc …
This festival is held at the old cinemas of Kyrgyzstan, thus creating a space for all parts of the society to discuss the most pressing human rights issues both in Kyrgyzstan and in the world.
All of these groups were covered through this festival, because this festival is a nomad festival and is held not only in the capital of Kyrgyzstan but in the regions and in Tajikistan as well. This festival is a perfect instrument in increasing legal awareness of people. The school program, under this festival project continuously works with schoolchildren and students of universities, holding screenings at educational institutions of Kyrgyzstan and discussing human rights issues, thus drawing the attention of children to these problems.
Also, these films are regularly screened at the closed penitentiary institutions of Kyrgyzstan.
Of course, this work is very dangerous, but our members go on working despite this for the sake of justice and protection of human rights.Below is some information about "Bir Duino Kyrgyzstan" Human Rights Documentary Film Festival.
We are working on establishing a new nonprofit social enterprise in Chicago - the CivicLab - http://www.civiclab.us - a store front space where activists, educators, designers and technologists will collaborate to do research, teach and build tools to accelerate civic engagement and community improvement efforts.
We've held a number of planning events attanded by civic engagement practitioners, activists, educators, designers and coders. View images from the June 16, 2012 session in this Flickr album. We were given an overview of the maker space movement by James Carlson, founder of The Bucketworks, Milwaukee and the School Factory. Watch his amazing and beautifully designed presentation on Vimeo (24:27)
So now we are working on three start-up initiatives:
(1) Apps for Activists - Tools to solve persistent problems of organizing and community improvement efforts. First up on the lab workbench – “Sign Me Up/I’m Here!” tool to let attendees at rallies and public meetings connect with the organizers of the event.
(2) Activist Speed Dating Night - Social change agents need some help hooking up with resources and allies – so let’s cook up a great evening of meeting, networking and music where people involved in community organizing and issue work can meet people and solve problems.
(3) The Tax Increment Finance (TIF) Report - In Chicago TIF’s sucked up $510 MILLION in Chicago property taxes in 2010. WHERE did that money go and who got helped and who got hurt? Let’s find out. Calling all data hounds, civic coders, map makers, forensic accountants, fiscal policy wonks, good government geeks and neighborhood advocates – We will pick one ward for a deep dive and really tell the whole TIF story for that community. More about TIFs here.We have no funding at this point and we are researching forms of governance including co-ops and collectives. There are a number of civic hacking spaces and programs that we are taking inspiration from. You can see some examples here.
As I write my last contribution before the dialogue closes today, I came to this thread and went through all the contributions and harvested what caught my attention in each into one collective frame - using the words of the authors themselves. THANK YOU ALL for an inspiring virtual online dialogue.
Very cool! Thanks, Hala! And thank you for all of your fantastic contributions! You and the other participants have made this a special conversation. Thank you!
Looks like I ran out of time for that in-depth post on leveraging existing places for digital citizen participation.
We build online neighbors forums - a mix of community life exchange and public issues. The more local, the more a local elected official can be influenced because "these are my voters." We started with the city-wide online townhall which as an all political space attracts 1% of households while broading to community life, in my neighborhood for example we have 25% of households or 1,000 people connecting more days.'=
Below is an image on how it works conceptually. While we pre-date Facebook Pages by decade, conceptually it is like have an interactive multi-topic, shared community information "Wall" or bulletin board about a place. (We have serious concerns about Facebook limitations for intensive civic engagement.) We also work to launch these spaces in lower income, highly diverse, high immigrant neighborhoods. We have a sixty page evaluation and webinar on how to do that.
Since the middle of 2011, we started a period of deep reflection about our time, our work, and the results. This community called ConVerGentes became an autonomous and independent community, comprised of young people (and not-so-young people) characterized by continued learning and collaborative teaching. We continue to work in the process of Social Appropriation of Science and Technology (ASCyT) and since 2007 we have been developing blogs, digital photographs, amateur videos, the creation of podcasts about daily life in La Loma. We have also been working with social mapping and the implementation of networks that allow for conversation, exchange, and the diffusion of information. The aim of all of these activities is to empower our members and help them contribute to the solutions to local problems. This experience has demonstrated that we have a great social responsibility, but it also has allowed us to defend the idea that the most important thing is that "if it is not fun, then we don't do it." We need to continue to learn so that we can share with other communities in other libraries that seek to find their own answers to their own local realities.
Since the middle of 2011, we started a period of deep reflection about our time, our work, and the results. This community called ConVerGentes became an autonomous and independent community, comprised of young people (and not-so-young people) characterized by continued learning and collaborative teaching. We continue to work in the process of Social Appropriation of Science and Technology (ASCyT) and since 2007 we have been developing blogs, digital photographs, amateur videos, the creation of podcasts about daily life in La Loma. We have also been working with social mapping and the implementation of networks that allow for conversation, exchange, and the diffusion of information. The aim of all of these activities is to empower our members and help them contribute to the solutions to local problems. This experience has demonstrated that we have a great social responsibility, but it also has allowed us to defend the idea that the most important thing is that "if it is not fun, then we don't do it." We need to continue to learn so that we can share with other communities in other libraries that seek to find their own answers to their own local realities.