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Forum:Local forum idea for sustainable communities

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[edit] Parental involvement in education

According to a recent BBC news story, E-mail school reports considered, 28 December 2006, the government is considering more use of new technology to increase parental involvement in education.

Options being considered include

  • more frequent progress reports to parents from schools
  • discussion for the local community to engage in how schools are run

The attractions (to government) include

  • seeing if technology can be used to engage the 'harder-to-reach parents'
  • finding new ways of engaging working people in what is happening to their kids during school time.


Comment

2009

  • Great council websites aren’t enough. We need 1% for open data. 13 October 2009 [1]
  • September 2009 32 per cent of respondents were involved (through membership or regular donations) with at least one of 15 selected major third sector organisations concerned with the environment, compared with 42 per cent in 2007. [2] A sizeable decline in a short time. Contrast this decline with the growth of alternatives which tend to be much more participatory, such as Transition towns or Project Dirt for example.
  • 19 ways to make the UK more sustainable. Sustainable Development Commission identifies 19 "Breakthrough ideas", including "Mobilising collective action – scaling up the active networks and organisations for change blossoming around the UK, including the Transition towns network, Green Voice, and South London’s Project Dirt", July 1 [3]
  • Lipservice and localism, June 29 [4]
  • Place Survey - based on more than 500,000 people's views and perceptions about where they live - demonstrates the importance of listening to local people and what they want for their local area, Communities Secretary John Denham, June 23 [5] Less than half of people say they are satisfied with their local council. Only a quarter of people feel they can influence local decisions, as many again would like to be more involved.
  • "Another idea is to take the key themes of Transition towns - communities thinking about the future and taking action to deal with big issues - and apply this to the way central and local government work with communities. The role of government should not be to dictate ("I'm a bureaucrat and I know what's best for you") but to facilitate - to provide communities with resources and support" May 30 [6]. / Sounds like Local Agenda 21 before the government ditched it in favour of bureacrat dominated community planning? Philralph @sca21 17:15, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Please tweet for service, June 2 [8]

2008

  • "The best mechanism to confront the challenge of climate change are not market mechanisms, but conscious, motivated, and well organized human beings endowed with an identity of their own." Evo Morales Ayma, President of Bolivia, November 28, 2008
  • "...his (Obama's) only real hope in dealing with the tremendous challenges the country (world) faces will be to harness the collective ingenuity of citizens on a massive scale. In other words, he must enlist a level of participation in generating and acting on innovative solutions that has no obvious parallel in history." Anthony D. Williams, wikinomics, November 7 2008 / topic, topic
  • A Wiki for the Planet: Clay Shirky on Open Source Environmentalism, wired.com, August 20, 2008
  • "We're going to look at every place that a reader or a listener or a viewer or a user has been locked out, has been served up passive or a fixed or a canned experience, and ask ourselves, "If we carve out a little bit of the cognitive surplus and deploy it here, could we make a good thing happen?" And I'm betting the answer is yes." Clay Shirky at a Web 2.0 conference, April 23, 2008. / Inspiring Quotes 2, topic

2007

  • "Government must do more to help people take green action", FoE, August 24 [11]


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[edit] Community involvement in sustainable communities

But hold on a minute, why isn't anyone promoting these ideas for sustainable (whole) communities?

Why not

  • more frequent progress reports from local decision makers to local communities
  • discussion for the local community to engage in local decision making, sustainable communities and quality of life
  • seeing if technology can be used to engage the 'harder-to-reach' (from across the whole community)
  • finding new ways of engaging working people in what is happening to their local communities (of residence)?

During the late 1990's the government successfully encouraged the vast majority of local communities to get involved in a process called Local Agenda 21. Unfortunately this was seen as a one off and no-one in government appears to have forseen the potential of something like local quality of life forums (being sustained).

With increased awareness of climate change, peak oil, etc,, with the public seemingly sometimes ahead of the politicians on these issues, and the increased use of technology society wide, aren't local quality of life forums and idea who's time has come? And if so, is anyone in government listening? Philralph 12:01, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Draft comment for posting to the 2020 vision

OK here's an actual policy proposal. Support Local quality of life forums in every community. If you're serious about climate change being the greatest threat to humanity, and genuine and widespread community involvement, then you need to connect with what Charles Leadbeater calls 'we-think'. Genuine democracy and genuine sustainability come hand in hand from much more ambitious local community involvement. This comment was first published on the Sustainable Community Action wiki.

Philralph 11:30, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Draft comment for posting to Joint Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill web forum

I agree with much of the previous comment, but believe the real missing link is genuine community involvement. Involvement goes way beyond mere consultation. Genuine community involvement includes all (not just a few) stakeholders, in particular those passionate about sustainabiilty and low carbon futures, to bring about the necessary push factor. It involves ordinary citizens and community groups and networks, not just establishment organisations, or self regarding elites. As Churchill said, "If we are together, nothing is impossible", but it's got to be fully inclusive, encompassing what's been called the wisdom of crowds.

One specific proposal would be local quality of life forums in every community, as long as the government could find a way to ensure that local government and establishment stakeholders treated such forums with proper respect and enabled them to genuinely influence local decision making.

See also - Forum:Local forum idea for sustainable communities at http://sca21.wikia.com/index.php?title=Forum:Local_forum_idea_for_sustainable_communities&t=20070301113056 and Sustainability for all at http://sca21.wikia.com/wiki/Sustainability_for_all on the Sustainable Community Action Wiki - http://sca21.wikia.com This comment was first published on the Sustainable Community Action Wiki - http://sca21.wikia.com

Philralph 19:52, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

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