Not-for-profit community organisation Stir To Action has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support a national programme of workshops to help communities build a “new economy that works for everyone”.
The organisation, which also publishes quarterly magazine STIR, runs technology accelerators, and supports community economic development, wants to raise £12,000 to cover the costs of the new programme.
The year-long scheme will include practical workshops, three-day residentials, mentoring, and live crowdfunding. Participants will discover new economic tools and models and receive training from facilitators with decades of experience.
The workshops will look at worker co-operatives and explore how community wealth building approaches could benefit local economies. They will loounderstanding of racial justice and economic history, see the economy from a gender perspective, and enable you to develop your communication strategy for a new project, campaign, or organisation.
Stir to Action says: “We talk about making ‘communities stronger’ and creating a ‘fairer economy.’ But these approaches are still struggling to significantly impact our society and economy – 80% of the UK’s freelancers are living in poverty, black African women earn 19.6% less than white British men, 27 pubs are closing every week as part of a wider decline in community assets, and local authority cuts are disproportionately affecting women and black and minority ethnic communities across the UK.”
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It hopes the new programme will continue its work to help build an alternative economy. Pledges to the campaign over the next five weeks will support subsidised workshop places, local workshop venues, programme design, a mentoring network, and provide resources to engage new communities.
If it hits the target, its programme will train a 1,000 people in three cities — Bristol, Oxford, and London — and build a community of change-makers.
There are also rewards to thank supporters – who can book an advance place on a workshop, or be an ‘enabler’ and pledge to create subsidised places.
And there is the chance to have dinner with Carne Ross, a former British diplomat who resigned over the Iraq War, and whose film The Accidental Anarchist aired on BBC Storyville.
Or you could join the Financial Heretic, Brett Scott, for pizza and to talk about activist hedge funds, blockchain technology, mutual credit, and the world of alternative finance.
