LEARN ABOUT CREATURES

If you noticed the very long footer on every page, you will see that we are trying out this project as a 'social business.' My good friend, Mosca, was telling me all about the microcredit loans, and so one day I got sucked in to watching a lot of Muhammad Yurus videos on youTube. He's the guy who founded the Grameen Bank.

I just started reading his book on social businesses. According to him, a social business is one that pays no dividends. I still have to finish the book - and I don't know much about business. Most likely, the footer statement on every page will change over time, and the activities that we make will probably all be creative commons as well.

Part of this project includes using transparent business practices. I am making up a lot of this as I go, so this is what I mean: we will try documenting our time spent working on the project, buying things to help get the program started, and whatever else is necessary to support and grow the group.

We have a lot of models of non-profits in this country, as well as governmental funding for education. However, in my experience these systems don't really leave you free. (More on the freedom part later.)

From what I understand about non-profits, you need a board of directors. While it seems like a great idea to have a bunch of advisor/directors, it has the potential to have people 'steering' something that should not be steered. And that is not the model in which the folks who use the service steer the direction of the service. Having a board of directors means that some people 'have better ideas than other people because they are more important', and that just won't work here. Now, most certainly there are a million non-profits that are super cool. But this project is an experiment, so we're not having a board of directors - just core members who are committed, do the work, and benefit from the community.

The process of applying for government grants leaves you committed to the mission of the government. In my experience, whenever people are required to report how well they achieved the government's learning goals, it kills most of the fun and natural curiosity, but worse, it makes it almost impossible to have public dialogue about anything that actually matters. This means the aspects of life that get neglected by our society - which leads to long-term debates that just keep us down and behind our human potential to make a better world. To me, it seems like we get stuck in a "missionary" thought pattern -- 'we must change them' 'they need to learn' 'they don't want to learn.'

So we won't be having that in this project. After all, it is supposed to be 'our Earth,' right? So 'our learning' is the only true measure of whether or not you feel like you experience the world in a more meaningful way as a result of participating in this project. Ultimately, we support having an open mind - you will need an open mind to learn to see nature and appreciate the world around us.