Roving Community Innovation Lab

What is it?

Instead of just those who are already involved in their communities and socially motivated, this seeks to encourage regular residents--neighbourhood kids, 'uncles' and 'aunties', local business owners and workers--to start ground-up initiatives through a roving lab to heartlands that feature already actionable ideas complete with playbooks. The lab will also collect local ideas and share with other neighbourhoods as it moves from place to place.

• To promote mutual aid and build supportive communities, the Roving Community Innovation Lab will set up a pop-up exhibition at different neighbourhoods featuring ideas for peer-driven projects or ground up initiatives. Residents can browse these ready-to-run ideas and indicate interest to participate in or organise such activities.
• Those interested will be equipped with playbooks that acts as a 'Do-It-Yourself manual' so that residents can self-organise these initiatives. There will be a half-day workshop where a facilitator helps run through the mechanics of each concept.
• The half day workshop also includes an ideation session where residents can propose solutions to address local issues. Good ideas will then be added to the list of curated solutions that can be shared with other communities as the Lab moves from place to place.

Why do this?

If you decide to do something tomorrow with your friend or neighbour that helps your community, that is a 'ground up initiative'. The Roving Lab hopes to encourage people who may not ordinarily think of themselves as 'social innovators' or people mobilisers to start such local initiatives. By curating ideas and then sharing them on posters exhibited in a community space, we hope to reduce the barriers to getting involved. Our theory is that people do not participate in the life of their local community because they do not consider themselves to be the 'sociable' type and find most current community gatherings awkward or boring. If asked to join the grassroots, or to 'volunteer' for some social cause, many people might not want to step forward.

However, if people become aware of an interesting and doable idea--a meaningful way to get involved and contribute--they may be more likely to come forward not just to participate, but even to organise. What if we simply offered parents the opportunity to organise their kids in peer-to-peer learning circles, or play host in a neighbourhood orientation tour, or to join a group to share energy savings or sustainability tips?

Strategy

Local partners who have experienced the lab have the option to join the central organising circle that provides governance, resources and organising support for the Roving Lab.This central circle will operate democratically, possibly based on principles of consent for decision-making.

Contact Justin Lee at justin.lee@nus.edu.sg if you are keen to support the initiative in any form or manner, or want to bring it to your neighbourhood.

Locations and Dates

Jurong: (May - Jul 2023)

Local Partner: Tasek Jurong

Venue: Taman Jurong Community Centre / Tasek Jurong Youth Drop-in Centre

Address: 1 Yung Sheng Road, #03-06 S(618495)

Dates & Programme

Purpose	Programme	Date
1-Identify and equip Tasek staff/local volunteers keen to directly organise, support or facilitate some initiatives (Helps to identify ready organisers for initiatives in case residents only indicate they are interested to participate)	Preliminary engagement with Tasek	__May 2023
2-Get youths from Tasek to surface ideas to address local community issues/ activate local community	Design Thinking Workshop / Asset Mapping Session	__May 2023
3-Showcase curated ideas and solicit for interest from residents to participate or organise	Week-long Pop-up Exhibition	__ to __ July 2023
4-Get residents to come up with their own ideas for local initiatives	Half-day Community Ideathon Run through playbooks, link up or sharing with experienced organisers (1 hour) Tea break (15 mins) Identify local issues + problem framing (30mins) Ideation (45 mins) Reflections and Share back (15 mins)	__July 2023

Yishun: (Sep - Oct 2023)

Local Partner: Tzu Chi Singapore

Venue: Tzu Chi Humanistic Youth Centre

Address: 30A Yishun Central 1, Singapore 768796

Dates & Programme

Purpose	Programme	Date
1-Identify and equip Tzu Chi volunteers/grassroots keen to directly organise, support or facilitate some initiatives (Helps to identify ready organisers for initiatives in case residents only indicate they are interested to participate)	Preliminary engagement with Tzu Chi volunteers/grassroots	__Sep 2023
2-Get youths from Tzu Chi to surface ideas to address local community issues/ activate local community	Design Thinking Workshop / Asset Mapping Session	__Sep 2023
3-Showcase curated ideas and solicit for interest from residents to participate or organise	Week-long Pop-up Exhibition	__ to __ Oct 2023
4-Get residents to come up with their own ideas for local initiatives	Half-day Community Ideathon Run through playbooks, link up or sharing with experienced organisers (1 hour) Tea break (15 mins) Identify local issues + problem framing (30mins) Ideation (45 mins) Reflections and Share back (15 mins)	__Oct 2023

Ideas

The solutions we have curated here those that can already be run by a community without the need for any professionals, philanthropy or permission.

Peer-to-Peer Learning

Peer Learning Circles - Study groups that use self-directed, collaborative and peer-to-peer learning as an alternative to private tuition to achieve learning goals or educational outcomes for youths. Adult learning circles focused on technical, academic or even hobbyist areas also possible.

Giving Circles

Giving Circles - Mobilize small groups of 5-7 families to give directly and top up the income of a family with lesser means to a minimum level required to provide stability, coupled with a circle of support to meet ad hoc needs and even longer term aspirations.

See Guide on how to start and facilitate Giving Circles

Interest-Free Community Fund

Interest-Free Community Lending is an initiative designed to meet the short-term credit needs of residents in low-income neighbourhoods, strengthen community ties within these neighbourhoods, and possibly deter residents from going to unlicensed moneylenders.

Inclusive Neighbourhood Groups | Neighbourhood Orientation Tours

Inclusive Neighbourhood Groups - A small community-led organising group that leads activities (e.g. neighbourhood orientation tours) with the purpose of integrating typically excluded groups such as seniors, single mothers, low-income families or people with disabilities organically.

Community Support Circles

Community Support Circles - The formation of a small circle of support of about 5-7 people from diverse backgrounds around for a person (e.g. frail seniors, people with disabilities, single mothers etc) instead of single person befrienders or peer support. This group shows up for an hour-long meet-up only once a month, and a facilitator helps distribute tasks. It makes social support less intimidating and onerous, and people can calibrate their level of involvement to their comfort level.

Timebanks

[to include asset mapping through block IC, floor IC structure?]

Use Photovoice for Community Building

Read a report on how it was done by AMKFSC or watch a seminar about this project

Open Collaboration to Map Social Needs & Community Assets

Contribute to the wiki.socialcollab.sg platform itself, or organise a wikithon.

See the range of roles you can play in this draft of our Landing Page

Curator of Solutions for the Roving Lab

You might also volunteer to be a knowledge broker and curate ideas and solutions for the Roving Community Innovation Lab to feature. This involves environmental scans, cataloguing of solutions hubs, reviewing ideas and selecting those that can be best driven by a peer-to-peer basis without the need for professionals, permission or philanthropy.

See Idea Bank for the beginnings of such a knowledge base.

Other Ideas

[These might be ideas that your local grassroots may already be doing]

• Toy Swops / Toy Libraries
• Estate clean up
• Setup our own Repair Kopitiam

Dancing in Pitch Darkness

Come and dance like nobody is watching—because nobody can in almost total darkness.

Dancing used to be a natural way of expressing joy at hearing music. Professionals have stylised these movements, created standards and  determined what kinds of bodies can dance. Now dancing is mostly performance and posturing. There are norms on who should be doing what kind of dance, and how they should look, dress and move while participating.

What if we took that judgment away? What if we could participate in collective joy again?

Come for a one hour dancing in the dark social experiment.

Come dressed in comfortable clothes. Bring the young, the old and the awkward.

(Inspired by the No Lights No Lycra movement from Melbourne. )

General Guidelines for Setting up a Community-led Group or Network

Setting up a Community Group using Democratic Decision-Making and Decentralised Structures.

Rationale

• All key aspects of the initiative, including its vision, the way decisions are made and concrete plans can and should be constantly reviewed through a democratic decision making process.
• We will constantly experiment with various forms of de-centralised or possibly even leaderless organisational designs and democratic decision-making processes. This is because this is currently not a funded initiative and therefore it is both a necessity as well as an opportunity to experiment with alternative governance models.
• A centrally-driven initiative can be successful when there is adequate resources and manpower, but when such resources are not available, then the convener quickly becomes the bottleneck. Driven solely based on the energy of volunteers who may only be able to spare some time aside from their work, school or family commitments, a non-remunerated project should allow maximum freedom for people to customise a level of participation they are comfortable with and constantly modified as their lives change.
• Besides such constraints, decentralised organisation can actually be quite powerful because it unleashes untapped potential and capacities across the whole network of volunteers. Without central supervision, group effort can still accumulate coherently if the knowledge architecture as well as the social infrastructure is well-designed. Trying this out can also equip us and counter the dominant administrative logic of hierarchical command-and-control that has colonised our consciousness of what kind of organising is possible. We want to explore the logic of community that emphasises mutual support, peer-to-peer relationships and solidarity.

Co-Design the Features of your Group or Network

Name of Network

·

Scope and Focus of Network

Membership Criteria and Policy

• [Who can participate, how do they enter the network?]
• Core Team members will indicate commitment of a year / 6 months and renew their commitment on that routine basis? Can meet at least once a month.
• Circles can recruit and onboard their own members without need for approval from the core team. They can decide on their own criteria and considerations, but articulate the membership base and policies.

Communication channels and meeting platforms

• Emails as main form of communication
• Optional WhatsApp group
• Meet-ups to be hosted by members on a rotational basis
• Frequency: Central or Core Circle aspire to meet once every 2 months

Organisational and Governance Structure: Semi-Autonomous Circles

• We propose using some principles derived from sociocracy for the structure of circles and how decisions are made.
• Central circle to be formed by parties interested to design and kick-start the network; Sub-circles can be formed by parent circles
• Semi-autonomous circles (or teams) with jurisdiction over clearly defined domains within which they can make their own decisions and take action without needing the permission of other circles or the main circle. Seeking inputs and advice is encouraged across circles, but ultimately the decision rests on the circle itself, based on consent of the members of the circle itself.
  • Circles can decide to form sub-circles on their own and without the need for core team approval. However, sub-circles cannot form other circles outside of their domain or jurisdiction and only the parent circles who own that domain can do so. [Provide illustration]
  • In other words, each Circle sets your own targets based on your own ambitions.

• For decisions that affect other circles or the functioning of the network large, governance meetings will be held in the core team/central circle, which will be made up of all the Lead and Reps from all circles.

• Each circle has a Lead and a Rep. [Can start with just lead and no rep, and added only after the circle grows]
  • Lead is appointed by central/governance circle by consent (to help information flow outwards, and also generates continuity as the Reps tenure may vary)
  • Rep is voted in by members of that circle (to help information flow inwards to centre)

• Leads of circles will update one another on all major decisions and actions of their circles so that a small group can flag out issues for deliberation and perform coordination where necessary.

Democratic Decision-Making Process (through Consent)

Structure of Decision-Making Rounds

1. Proposal (and clarifying questions only)
2. Reaction Round: feedback and concerns
3. Proposer provides revision and integrates feedback or addresses concerns (if they want to)
4. Consent Round: to determine if there are any objections [Note: objections should be stated in terms of why it will not help to achieve the aims of the circle, not in terms of personal preferences. If a proposal is within your range of tolerance, even though it is not your preference, it can be classified as having no objection]
5. If there are no objections by all members of the circle, the proposal is accepted; no proposal is accepted as long as there is a objection

[Possibly, for deadlocked issues, the circle can resort to voting to settle urgent issues that cannot afford time and deliberation required to achieve consensus?]