Hello!
Things are cranking here with Mutual Aid Network development and Dane County TimeBank.
Over the last couple weeks we have held several Main MAN work group meetings and a board meeting and have created our road map toward opening for membership by mid-April. The Main MAN is the Mutual Aid Network Cooperative we have incorporated here in Wisconsin (so it’s officially the WI-MAN) to be the global umbrella coop for the various MAN projects and supporters. Stay tuned to learn how you can join this Spring…
The Allied Community Coop, first local Mutual Aid Network prototype (I’m a board member representing DCTB, with 9 neighborhood residents and organization reps) is also cranking up. Our first order of business is to respond to the food access emergency in the neighborhood. The city is awarding $15K for transportation relief and we’re applying for that and other funds. And we are receiving between $15 and $20K from a grant that the Capital Area Regional Plan Commission wrote us into, so we’re getting ready to move a little faster. Today is another of our monthly Town Hall meetings to organize all this work.
And we were graced here in Madison with a visit from the wonderful Michel Bauwens, founder of the P2P Foundation. Michel Bauwens is now the newest esteemed member of the Main MAN Advisory Board! And he also helped us make some excellent new connections with other cooperative economy-builders, including Erik Olin Wright who’s right here at UW (it’s a big school, so although we work closely with a couple faculty there are big parts of the University we tend not to have contact with). One highlight for me was when Michel asked Preston Austin (my founding partner in Time For the World, now helping as a consultant) if he knew about Michel’s work, and Preston said something like “I consider you the curator of Western civilization.” (not sure if I got the quote totally accurate but that was the gist, and it made me smile)
RT @gl33p: At coffee with mbauwens and @stephanierearic at @MotherFools chatting about commons friendly endeavors 🙂 pic.twitter.com/x54QrBVQwE
—
And exciting stuff coming up next week! I’ll make a separate post so you don’t miss any of it…
Thanks for reading