"Tilling the Soil" by Mirlande Jean-Gilles
There are many articles that predict "how crowdfunding is going to change the world".
I am trying to change the world through crowdfunding!
To use crowdfunding sites as my vehicle to convey a message, garner adherents, and find my tribe and proponents, members and owners. I am trying to mine "the bottom of the well" I am building from the "bottom of the pyramid" Read CKPrahalad last book by that title.
"Mountain Woman", Mirlande Jean-GillesI am a wombman full of ideas that I have never been able to get financed.
I mention CKPrahalad, before his death, he was slated to be one of the first three guest for an international speaker series I had conjured up for Trinidad and Tobago..a way to elevate the consciousness of the public. I was going to invite Oprah Winfrey, Arundhati Roy and CK Prahalad
because the majority of Trinidad's population are the bottom of the pyramid, living in a regressive society where almost every system, order, organization runs from the plantation system of taking the most from the least to make the lessers and smaller top population, rich, richer and wealthy. We do it when we play lotto, we do it for our housing schemes as social program, we do it for employment where the mass make below living wage in this Caribbean island
I have lots to share.
This idea to pursue crowdfunding is its own philosophy, like a banyan or silk cotton tree (look them up) made of myriad roots, and an endless canopy of branches that almost form a half moon from horizon to horizon.
Philosophy of what I call myself, Wombman; what I am trying to do, harness wealth and riches frivoled at the bottom with the masses as we look at our coins individually but totally lost and missing the impact when we collectivize. '
In this year, 2015, I saw my population of approximately two million people amass a confirmed minimum of $31million to $60 million in a matter of ten weeks or so for the lotto. The range of what was amassed accounts for my ignorance on the lotto system here, and on how much is collected by nlcb, and how much they release, by percentages to stakeholders, leaving what percentage of pot for the winners. Those answers I do not know, hence the range, but can you imagine? in any case? that two million people managed to pot $30 million confirmed? upwards of $50, $60 million?
What might we do with that amount of money? How might we improve the country? We could wipe out poverty, poor living, and all health matters with that money. $10million US.
This is how I want to change the world: To show poor people and those in need and wanting, like myself, how to change our conditions.
I am a Development Economist with a PhD. I have been unemployed for the last five years in a country that is in need of development but for the wave of greed and warped ideas of modernity as well as oil and gas have completely corrupted our sense of self, and sense. So here we have range rovers on potted holed roads, and our hospitals kill mothers and children for sport, like on a medical range, where doctors, instead of malpractice suits, get private enterprises for their bodies maimed and killed.
I have had endless ideas, for around the globe. I grew up in NYC /Brooklyn when the latter was only Jewish bubbelahs (grandmothers) and the houses, mine, had mezzuzahs on all the doors, living in brownstones down town, or uptown close to sea, all white neighborhoods, with my father's business around the corner on Church ave, Huggins Distributing. I grew up privileged. I realize in hindsight was I MTV Sweet Sixteen without the celebrity: cars from sixteen, fancy leather cowboy boots from a year before, sheepskin coats, which were expensive at the time, mere change now, I imagine, so far away am i from that life.
"Free Are Those" by Mirlande Jean-Gilles
My biggest that I felt the most inspired was to create a United States Nationwide Legal Service Support Agency for Black African American victims of Police Brutality and other forms of Racism. I thought of the idea when that high school student was body slammed while she sat in a classroom, in her seat. I wanted to lend support to her and to the young lady, the sole human being in that classroom to have a response and presence of mind to record the event. By that time there may have been over three hundred or more incidences of killings and beatings of men and women in the country for 2015. And in those cases, apart from the race vultures, I really dont see anyone helping, talking or working toward each of these victims and their families finding, seeking and pursuing justice by financial means and law suits. This idea took a back seat when I could not find like minded persons to support such, and when a person in my activist circle dismantled something similar, I at the time, not knowing any such thing existed, but I was planning on asking this person to be on my board, but he had to run off the stage due to reported infamy. One has to be careful what one does, how and with whom, and for the moment, all my life, actually, it has been solo, hence the need for me to create what it is I need...a network for success that can bring along the greatest number of supporters... [Black Social Justice Foundation]
"Comfort Bringers" by Mirlande Jean-Gilles
This is an operation conceived where people win by giving their support and investing. It is an investing in self ; for what is created provides for all in some form or another
The other international idea I had was to create an IT - Information Technology company, owned by workers, and union members, started in Trinidad and Tobago, first purchasing the fortynine percent available from TSTT, the land line phone company, and buying a TATT network license to branch off into IT services that would include subcompanies collecting data and doing research via hand held devices. collecting demographics and mapping roads and waterways from citizens; as well as their stories of deaths, maternal, infant, and cancer incidence, rates and deaths, kinds and other surgeries and medical malpractice. As well as to collect information on locality needs as it relates to services and infrastructure-- housing, roads, drainage, lighting, water, . IT was to be a tool of national development, citizen participation, integration and service provisions/Rehabilitation.
From the formation of this IT umbrella initial company, the formula would have been packaged and applied, implemented around the globe in other emerging countries, creating a model for citizen-ownership in IT, as a vehicle to large scale income growth, generation, company creation, and reformulating the world of work for common citizens.
"Taming the Cosmos" by Mirlande Jean-Gilles
Related to this model, was the creation of a stock exchange where all these companies, wherever located, would amass on one virtual trading floor, where all of us would buy, trade, invest and support our collective companies, thus creating a major bloc to hedge against any kind of failure, cause in essence, operation is not in a vacuum. This effort too would have been the building of a black business roll and stock exchange and [TTIT and Stock Exchange]
From the international to the local: In Trinidad, and the main mission for this crowdfunding initiative is to create the facility, the operation, generate the membership, and structures for success for a Conscious Creative Collective 99 -- an artistic collective idea I came up with about a year ago.
It is structured around what I call an ArtShram...a place where creatives can visit and operate from for free or subsidized costs/ a place for artists to present and house their goods, as well as pay for studio time and platforms to present, encompassing all forms of creativity, from music, to jewelry, to clothing to artisan food, to paintings and carvings.
[ArtShram is described here https://www.facebook.com/notes/maven-huggins/artshram-conscious-creative-collective-99/10152685739027230]
I have begun to build the movement of Artshram through this facebook page of [Conscious Creative Collective 99 here https://www.facebook.com/groups/CCCollective99/] .
The other local to Trinidad Tobago Idea I had was to create an Alternative Housing Scheme : building, providing, structuring recycled homes, built of pallets, old boards and wood from dismantled homes, and homes built from modified containers, and bamboo.
In Trinidad, sixty to eighty percent of the population are working poor. Sixty percent for sure, the remaining twenty percent are those who fashion themselves middle class, but like me, with the loss of work, you are lost and bereft. There may be another seventeen percent who are business owners, of a kind, either based on government contracts, or long standing trading companies who because of their exploitation of the economy, survive low or high tide. The remainder three percent are the fulcure* filthy rich elite, owner of conglomerates, monopolies and oligopolies, as well as politicians and contractors who have made it from corruption, thievery and the raid of the treasury. Yes, Trinidad and Tobago is a banana plantation republic
This idea for housing solves a preeminent problem. For the last ten to twenty years, young people are no longer able to make a living, have sustained employment, to allow them to live on their own, move out of their family homes, purchase their own homes or even rent with longevity because of the great and high level of unemployment risks related to politics and its patrimony that shifts every election time. Life is very unstable.
As a result, we have a great number of squatter communities and camps occupied by citizens. As well as a great number of citizens, employed, nicely appearing in dress, driving fancy cars even, but living in some form or mode of squalor.
For those sites, people need prefab housing that is affordable, that is less destructive within the environment as presssed board, and old galvanize (zinc plates). For citizens who have access to land but no formal banking, they can construct homes from any option of recyclables.: palettes, old board, containers, or at the high end, heart hard wood. Using locally sourced homes directed toward family structure, locations and timelines for sustainability, this is far more affordable than what exists in the market.
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Part Two
At this point, it may appear there are many pots and fires, all independent.
But these initiatives are all integrated.
IN the best of worlds, one compound of massive land acreage houses all these companies, initiatives and operations.
Another solution these initiatives seek to provide is employment and gainful entrepreneurship.
A critical point of intention to share is that the call for funds, contributions and investments are not meant to be consumed, but to make a long term sustainable endowment fund, that is utilized to gain matched funds on other markets such as from venture capitalists, millionaire funders, like Carlos of Mexico who is the IT billionaire boss.. To have an endowment used as a foundation and not for operation costs, I would hope bode well to garner greater contributions, show a level of financial responsibility during a time of greatest risk for failure, a hedge against such failure, and respect for the contributions garnered. It is a way to maintain solvency for what is an attempt to innovate business models for current times, conditions and considerations. IT is mindful of my own financial lessons and for the economic downturn that we are all seeking to survive and in the best scenario, come out on top: to preserve rare resources, while trying to seize opportunities to grow and expand.
What is impossible at the individual level, I seek to prove is possible at the collective.
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