Social Action – a 10-tweet summary of NFP tweetup 20
Social Action – NFP tweetup 20, 1 October 2013 – in 10 tweets.
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Catch22 are developing a social action project management app for young people. They didn’t focus on the gamification aspect in their presentation, but on their experience of user participation and the development process.
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Catch22 decided that they needed to create a project management app for young people. (I’d have been interested to learn a bit more about this initial need-finding exercise. The app is being developed with young people, but how did Catch22 know that young people actually need or want it?)Whatever sparked the project, it’s clear that the project exists to serve the organisation’s core objectives:
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This is a great example how digital is just another tool to deliver your existing mission. It’s not extra, it’s integral #nfptweetup
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The presenters talked about different levels of participation, using a scale devised by the UN. It runs from ‘manipulation’ as the least participatory way of working, up to action initiated by users, and shared decision-making.
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Daniel is talking about participation and using a scale of participation taken from @UNICEF #nfptweetup twitter.com/LondonKirsty/st… -
This project has helped Catch22 build capacity, and moved them towards more participatory ways of working.It was harder to find a digital agency that was comfortable with this more user-focused way of working: even though Catch22 are based in tech city, they’re working with an agency in Manchester. But they’ve had a very positive experience of building their app with the people who will be using it.
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“Worth the effort of more time, expense, stakeholders and devt challenge involved in user participation …” #nfptweetup
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Tuttle Club and #wewill gather – Lloyd Davis
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Lloyd David talked about self-organisation, and how this can power social change.
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“Key is individuals making public commitment to do something, and follow through” #nfptweetup
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The sharing of social action that comes after this self-announced commitment, and the networks that are formed through people making shared commitments, reinforces social action.
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Start a Good Thing: @LloydDavis used digital networks to establish #WeWillGather‘s commitment engine wewillgather.co.uk #nfptweetup
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Interesting stuff from @LloydDavis about using digital to build communities by enabling good things to happen & sharing them #nfptweetup
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I really like to see ordinary people deciding what they want to do, and doing it. I much prefer people doing stuff themselves to people having stuff done to them, or on their behalf.This could be a case of organisations empowering them to do this, providing the space to do so, or just backing away and letting them get on with it.
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Does there always have to be an organisation at the centre of action? Is there another way? Really interesting. #nfptweetup
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I do wonder how far you can go without organisation. Campaigning organisations like Avaaz and 38 Degrees are driven by their members, but there’s still a big role for central organisation. I think it would be worth us exploring that role more closely – could it be unpacked and handed to the community? Would that still count as an organisation or as something else?
And I wonder whether it’s really accurate to see self-created groupings as existing without organisation. Is there actually a spectrum, with formal/inflexible/permanent organisations at one end, and informal/flexible/transient organisations at the other?
What frameworks or networks do these types of freer organisation need? #wewillgather and #tuttle rely on some types of organisation – like the internet, social networks, and shared cultural expectations of conviviality.
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Casserole Club
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Casserole helps people share extra portions of home cooked food with others in their area who are not always able to cook for themselves. So it helps with social isolation and also provides people with a cooked meal.It supports cooks too:
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Question for @Casserole_Club: do you empower cooks to deal with difficult situations? Yes! Helpline and guidance all the way. #nfptweetup
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It doesn’t aim to help everyone, but focuses on being an additional service:
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A supplementary service, tackling social isolation, not intending to be a safety net #nfptweetup #
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Casserole focuses its resources on people it can help most, so it doesn’t work with people with more complex needs. And meal deliveries are once a week rather than multiple times a day.So it’s not a replacement for the state welfare system:
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“@martinlugton: could you rely on community organisation for the provision of vital welfare? #nfptweetup” should we have to?
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@martinlugton I worry about welfare cuts forcing communities to back fill for essential services #nfptweetup
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I share A.S. Maini’s concerns. I’m not sure that leaving the provision of services to the community necessarily works. Different communities have different levels of resources. Some people aren’t considered as part of any community. That’s not comprehensive.
When thinking about the needs of everyone in our society, sometimes we need to say “this priority/right/commitment is important enough to us that we need to make it real for everyone. We will realise this commitment for everyone, however hard it is, wherever and whoever they are.”
Of course, I don’t think we currently manage this as a society, but I think that this type of commitment requires a type of organisation that is bigger, stronger and maybe more inflexible than leaving things to communities. It probably needs a statutory backstop too.It’s telling that whilst there was a positive atmosphere at this tweetup, not one person mentioned Big Society.
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