Hey folks~
As the sun here in North America brings summer into full swing, I hope that you and yours are well-hydrated and finding some solace in the shade.
I am reaching out now on the subject of a new participatory funding pilot for agroecological technologies stewarded by The 11th Hour Project in partnership with Raft Foundation. The initiative builds on a series of convenings last year that were co-facilitated by 11th Hour, OpenTEAM, TIFS, NADAWG, and GOAT. This new project builds on the learnings, ideas, and initiatives that emerged from those gatherings to test a community-led process for collective resourcing.
We are calling it Float, short for the funding lab for open agroecological technologies. Learn more about it, including the team behind it, its vision and goals, influences, and other background on the Float website.
Our invitation to you is not just to learn, but to participate in the decision making process.
Over the next several months, we invite you to participate in various phases of a community-centered, participatory process through which we will co-develop new initiatives and fund existing ones. Our first invitation is to join us in a grounding asynchronous online conversation using the link below.
Join us in conversation here anytime, as many times as you like over the course of this week!
The above link will take you to a “Polis” conversation - a live, participatory survey tool. There you will be prompted to indicate agreement or disagreement with others’ statements and have the opportunity to share your own. The conversation will be open until Friday, June 27, after which we will share all the anonymous data, compile learnings from it, and share the next steps for this pilot process.
It’s an experiment! And we would love to have you join us. I’m sure you have plenty of questions - feel free to follow up here via email with anything you need answered.
Warmly,
Nathan and the rest of Float’s initial stewards (Anna, Rithikha, and Samuel)
