Connecting Communities

In addition to sharing and bringing visibility to community solutions you’d normally never hear about that inspire you to make a difference in your own community, a core function of Catalytic Communities is to connect communities that would otherwise remain unconnected – to one another, and to global networks of knowledge and support.  That is, inspire you both to make a difference in your own community, and to support others’ work to make a difference in theirs.

In the past most of our community networking has taken place offline and face-to-face through our Casa Community Technology Hub.  View an illustrative presentation of how this network worked so effectively.

With the maturation of community leaders’ access and use of the Internet, however, we are now retooling so this shifts: in future these networks will grow faster and more efficiently online, with face-to-face exchanges performing a supportive and supplementary role:

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The following activities are planned for 2009-2010:

• CatComm is partnering with WiserEarth, an organization at the forefront of developing online tools for community networking, to share the solutions we have carefully documented over the past 9 years and translate WiserEarth so as to be able to offer their tools to communities across Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, and the Portuguese-speaking world.  WiserEarth is the world’s largest civil society directory and a program of the Natural Capital Institute led by Paul Hawken.  Since 2006 WiserEarth has developed a platform that provides  collaboration space to over 1,500 groups, and has documented 1.5m site users from 243 different countries. It has become a global community knowledge base with over 4m contributions, and to date has received over 117k entries of events, jobs, solutions and community group information. Just the sort of knowledge and connections that can be most beneficial to the communities CatComm historically works with in Brazil and elsewhere across the globe.

• CatComm is partnering with the Global Canopy Programme to connect indigenous communities from across the Amazon in their efforts to share information amongst themselves and with the world.

• CatComm is actively using Orkut, the online community of choice amongst Brazilians, to recruit and maintain connections with hundreds of community leaders we have worked with over the past decade.

• CatComm is actively using Facebook to share news on community solutions and CatComm initiatives with our English-speaking audience and facilitate international collaborations.

• CatComm is using its Twitter accounts in Portuguese, English and Spanish to share news of community events, funding opportunities, and trainings, as well as new solutions and news postings about community initiatives, with community leaders, partners and our broader network in Brazil and around the world.

• CatComm is conducting workshops on-the-ground in Rio de Janeiro training leaders in using these digital tools to connect with one another and the world beyond.

• CatComm is partnering with Gems of the Earth to develop an online course to train community leaders in using digital tools and organizing online.

Please note that we are always looking for ways to bring more visibility and facilitate collaboration of grassroots communities around the globe.  If you know of organizations working in this field, useful tools we should incorporate and share, or are interested in volunteering to support us in these efforts, please be in touch.