CfC Projects
Here we provide information on CfC projects, past and present. We are always open to new project ideas so if there’s something you’d like to tell us about, please get in touch.
Fossil Free Campaign
CfC partnered with Fossil Free NI to create the Fossil Free campaign. The campaign unites nearly 30 grassroots groups under a common purpose: to lobby for the local government pension fund to divest of fossil fuels and invest in socially and environmentally beneficial projects.
Sign up to the Declaration for the Common Good
We have co-designed a Declaration that expresses shared purpose and aspirations between progressive initiatives across the island of Ireland. Read the Declaration and if you can get behind it, sign up to it. The Declaration is also underpinned by action. Add your priorities and ideas for action that will bring the Declaration to life.Your Priorities Platform
We have set up a CfC-dedicated space in the Your Priorities platform.The purpose of the platform is to allow activists to highlight projects and generate ideas that will enable us to achieve the Declaration for the Common Good.
Have a look at the projects and ideas on the platform or add your own.
Help Us Build The Community Economies Map
Collaboration for Change is a partner along with the Eden Project Community and others in the Community Economies Mapping Project led by the An Áit Eile Cooperative, Galway.We are building an open source mapping tool that everyone participating can use for their locality, community of interest or network which then creates an island-wide picture of our collective progressive landscape.
We all want to make the world of progressive movements more visible and connected and mapping can help us do that on a local level and island-wide. At the same time, it supports more collaborative working in communities of place and interest.
The first iteration of this involves Collaboration for Change offering to help others develop their own map using a simple approach with the open source tool uMap and through sharing appropriate data (with strict adherence to GDPR) help create the island-wide map.
Showcases
We have ongoing showcases mostly on a monthly basis with a break during the summer months.
The showcases are information and discussion sessions highlighting local progressive activism.
Our showcases are all online. Look out on our site and @cfc_together for details about upcoming showcases.
Linking Networks
The ultimate aim of CfC is the facilitation of a network of networks sharing resources, supporting each other’s work and collaborating on shared initiatives.The first step has been taken with the recent COP 26 Coalition on the Rights of Nature bringing together environmental activists from across the island of Ireland to coordinate rallies in Derry, Belfast and Dublin and to facilitate an online discussion.
The connections made are continuing with the possibility of the next focus being the link between divestment from fossil fuels and Community Wealth Building.
Governance
CfC operates as a flat, decentralised and participatory decision-making organisation – which is the opposite of most organisations who have hierarchies and central control.
After much discussion exploring models of democratic participatory governance, where we hosted three conversations (one on the Cecosesola network of cooperatives in Venezuela from which we learned that it is possible to organise without hierarchies; another on Sociocracy which is a model based on interconnecting autonomous circles all feeding into the governance circle, and which was presented by Joanna McMinn; and a third where where heard from Patricia Swann who talked about the ways the intentional community she founded and lived in used pause reflect and reconnect times).
We decided to use a combination of these approaches and now hold monthly Pause, Reflect and Reconnect meetings.
There is an open invitation to all CfC members to attend these meetings. Details about the meetings can be found on our site.
Joining the Dots
Joining the Dots is the concept of bringing together local activists for conversations on shared solutions for current real-time problems.
The first session brought together Zero Waste activists, women who were sewing reusable masks and aprons and a vet working in a meat factory to look at alternatives to the production of single-use PPE.
The second JtD session involved a collective of women refugees and asylum seekers, a company making fermented food products, community activists and an immigration lawyer to look at possible solutions for the women being able to benefit from their work without being in danger of serious penalties.
Both sessions were energising and productive and have resulted in follow-up work.
If you have an idea for a Join the Dots session, we’d love to hear from you.
Demystifying and Reimagining Economics
CfC member Tony Weekes facilitated DARE, a series of online sessions during 2021 exploring a range of economic systems and the central role of money creation.
As economist Ha Joon Chang explains – if your only tool is a hammer then you will use a hammer to deal with every problem. Much better to have a Swiss army knife!
We will advertise any future DARE sessions on the site and @cfc_together.
Participatory Budgeting (PB)
CfC delivered a Participatory Budgeting (PB) project in 2021. PB is a way for people to have a direct say in how funds are used to address local needs. CfC worked in partnership with PB Works NI to set up a project team of 12 activists to deliver on our PB project which we called Creating Connections.We raised the money for the project through crowdfunding and through auctioning paintings kindly donated by local artist Brian Ballard.
This was also the first entirely digital PB project where people applied online, made their pitches online, and the public voted online. All of the pitches that were submitted were excellent and we had 8 winners who each received £500.
Using funds secured from the National Lottery Awards for All, we are now making upgrades to the software we used for the digital PB process which we hope to have completed by the end of 2022.
Once ready, the new software will be made available as a service that other groups can use if they wish to run online or hybrid PB projects.
Open Government Project
In 2021, Open Government Network NI (OGN) approached CfC to co-host two conversations on ideas about how government in NI could be more open, transparent and accountable. We set up a space in our Your Priorities Platform to gather views from the public that OGN were able to use.OGN and CfC organised workshops in April of 2021, in addition to space on Your Priorities, to give an additional means of contributing. They compiled the views into a report that was submitted to the Executive in mid-2021.