Purpose: To take stock of what has been accomplished and what more can be completed in the next two weeks as well as answer questions about the interview, database and the future of the project.

 

Materials: Questions

 

Paradigm: Time to discuss the big question of how far you can get on this project in the next two workshops and many questions that go along with it.

 

Context: It is time to assess how you are doing with this project. If you are like us, you have some completed interviews that are just being entered on the database. There are more scheduled, but only a small percentage of the organizations nominated have been contacted.

            At this point we asked the participants of our workshops these questions:

• Given where we are, what would give you a sense of satisfaction or completion by the time the last workshop is over?

• What do we have to do to complete the map?

• What will it take to do that?

• How can we get it done?

• What do we do once the map is done?

• At what point do we present it to the public?

• How do we present it to the public?

• How do we distribute it to the people who will find it valuable?

• How do we carry on updating the map in the future?

• What future directions should the mapping project take?

• Should we bring all of the organizations on the map together?

• How can they support each other?

• Should we set it up in StoryMap and make a documentary with it?

• How can we help other communities do a similar mapping project?

• Should we connect with our neighboring regions to establish a regional Solidarity Economy?

• Should we connect the map with the US Solidarity Economy Map?

• Should we have a party with some of the interviewees to discuss the future of the project?
   

Many good discussions come out of these questions. Hopefully, people felt very good about the project. They may not be sure what it meant to complete the project since the project needs to carry on into the future. The project is certainly not until all of the problems identified at the beginning of the workshops are at least being addressed and human life, at least in the area covered by the map, is headed in a stable and equitable direction.

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The more immediate question is — at what point do you present it to the public?  We thought we could make it public once we had several dozen entities interviewed, including the most prominent ones in the community. Then once it was public we could establish a mechanism for organizations that wanted to join — they would fill out a membership request form and we would collect the needed information from them. Most people felt there should be several grand/public openings in different parts of our mapping region complete with media coverage, big displays of the map, and an online tutorial of how it works. In addition, presentations from both the workshop participants and the nominated organizations would give life to the events.

 

Preparations: As usual, facilitators should get together before this workshop to anticipate the questions that will come up and think of ways of deepening the discussion. You could also prepare a big sheet of butcher paper for each question so that one of the facilitators can make notes.  If you are at a point where you have up to a dozen interviews, it would be an excellent idea to prepare a map of the interviewed entities, complete with photos that people have taken or that you download from the organizations’ websites.

 

Activity: Once again, start off with a discussion about the interviewing process. How are people doing with the process? What kind of problems are they having? What was learned?  What difficulties were encountered?  What went well?  Was the survey form useful? How could it be improved? What specific economic, social, environmental or political actions are organizations taking to build an Economy for the Common Good? How was the experience? Have they put it into a digital form?

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Then you can show them the map and discuss with them how that is going. Is the most important information being presented first? Is the right information being presented? Ask the people who have done the completed interviews to go online and check out the pop-up box for the organization they interviewed. They should look for any typos, mistakes and critical information that were edited out. Also have them assess if it gives a fair representation of the organization. Once all of those issues have been taken care of, the interviewers should ask the organization to review the pop-up box and make sure that they are happy about the way the organization is presented and that there are no errors in their pop-up box.

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Once that is done, you can move on to discussing the questions. Take the questions one at a time, with one of the facilitators taking notes on the flip chart paper.  These discussions should give everyone a good understanding about the future of the project. Hopefully the discussions will proceed much like our discussions have proceeded with a decision to hold a party to celebrate your progress during the last workshop.

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If you have extra time at the end of the workshop you can always show a video about the Solidarity Economy or the Economy for the Common Good from our list of videos. A good one for this workshop is one on the Mondragon Cooperatives in Spain at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRV5iU7KPNo

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Before the end of the workshop, make sure you leave time for announcements.

The day after the workshop, email everyone about the thoughts and decisions you came up with in Workshop Seven. If you have decided to have a party, tell everyone about the party and how it is going to work. Also send them the url for your new map if you have created one.

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Then the day before the next workshop, send a reminder email that the workshop is coming up. Remind people, if you have decided to have a party, about the party and how it is going to work.