Hello!
As I mentioned in my last post, this is a big week jam-packed with events to take advantage of the presence of the fabulous Kathy Perlow, founder of the Neighbor-to-Neighbor Care Team model of timebanking that we’re starting to adopt here.
So my reports for each event might be a little bit cursory, because I’m trying to get them all done before I take a much-needed mini-vacation (Sat to Wed, so leave me alone! 😉
This is the report from the meeting I was most excited about, a brainstorm about how we could MAN up in a very cool way right in my own neighborhood!
We met at the Social Justice Center (SJC), the collaboratively-run home of several non-profits (including Dane County Timebank). It’s two blocks from my house, and the former site of the great Willy Street Coop (which moved across the street when they needed to expand).
The building has been undergoing some turnover and there are a few vacancies that make it a great time to revisit how we use the space.
Could be a great opportunity to MAN up in some interesting ways…
We began a few threads of discussion, including:
How we can change the space (even without any changes in ownership structure) to make it more publicly used
How we could create a MAN cooperative with savings/investment pools that can be used for collective reserves, admin costs, etc for the partner organizations of SJC
How we could engage the community in the development of new visions for the space
How we might partner with other Madison neighborhoods (Allied Community Coop as an obvious choice if they want to, possibly Darbo neighborhood which is nearby and looking into similar organizing efforts)..
The room was full of very interesting people – you can read the notes here to see who was represented and more detail about what we discussed.
Also, I’m attaching a picture of the whiteboard where I took notes (a mess as usual) – the green items are assets at our disposal, the red are needs. Like I said, a mess.
Today I’ll speak with the rest of the SJC Board to see what our next steps will be as an organization.
And right now is the lovely golden hour when all possibilities are open…
More on the rest of the week’s events in other posts.
Thanks for reading!