International mutual support ideas generation

International
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Given that we postponed a few times this agenda item because of a lack of time, I opened this thread to be able to generate ideas

Therefore, the guiding question is:

How can we (better) support each other’s development and needs as Language Circles so as to spread sociocracy internationally?

My suggestions for agreements:

  • First look and contribute to the other thread where we share our needs, desires, resources and strategies of our Language Circles.
  • Keep answers brief, or to explain proposal ideas first in one synthetic sentence and then elaborate further.
  • Let’s all first contribute with a few ideas, and then ask questions and reactions about each other proposals. This is to keep the thread as comprehensible as possible – and eventually create new threads for specific in-depth conversations.

List of all ideas generated

Anchoring, connection and wellbeing

  • Anchor to SoFA’s Social Justice Statement for building a sense of wholeness

  • Spend time on sharing, connecting and get to know each other. Work on activities asynchronous in pairs; Use break out rooms during meetings for specific activities

  • Paid caregiving and active listening role to take care of the well-being and the flow of communication and connection between different circles and people.

  • To use collaborative and equitable language to talk about all SoFA Circles, rather than considering LC as subsidiaries/beneficiaries.

  • A Health and Wellness Circle under International General Circle

Strategy, purpose and power

  • Ask ourselves: what is our core value that informs our choices and trade offs?

  • Distribute power and responsibility more actively across members

  • Take advantage of roles filled in other circles by circle members (ex. Pia in Social Media Circle). Have these roles written somewhere on top of the agenda so that everyone knows them; have question rounds to these roles.

  • Explore external resources on what it means to be an international organization

  • Understand each other LC’s needs, resources, opportunities, challenges so that we can synchronize and commonise. Brainstorming and then clustering and addressing problems one by one.

  • Dedicate part of each meeting to one LC’s status quo

  • Community/ies of Practice

  • SoPra Delegate to SoFA’s GC

  • Deliver meeting agendas in advance

  • Structure international expansion through two dimensions: (a) language and (b) territory.

  • Focus on sharing practical ideas and tips, like we are doing on the ELC for activists promotion

  • Sanket can help with starting a crowdfunding on specific projects.

  • To separate from SoFA the aim of spreading sociocracy internationally: LCs would become autonomous organisations from SoFA, tied together into a network.

Finance

  • Create an “established LC circle” for more mature LC, but with no Fiscal status yet

  • Create an International Fiscal Wellbeing Circle with links from Language Circles with fiscal status only (SoPra, SoTes, Intl GC)

  • 50% of the remuneration of the leadership role of mature LCs is financed by International Circle as this role works on the Mission and Vision of SoFA in its linguistic community

  • An International Finance Circle with representatives of the different local circles already mature (to mark the number of members and budget to call them developed Int Circles).

  • Professional finance role within the mature Language Circles (LC) (participating in both the Finance C. of their language area, as well as the International Finance C., as well as Finance support C. (Financial Welfare, pay equity…) funded by the SoFA International Circle…)

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I will start with a personal statement based on observation: one language is spoken in many countries (territories) and in one country (territory) many languages may be spoken. Taking into consideration this observation, I guess that spreading sociocracy has at least two layers:

  1. languages (regardless of territory)
  2. territories (regardless of language)

In my understanding, these two layers need two different structures that should cooperate worldwide.

The LANGUAGE related structure’s main aim could be what we now call “localization” (related to translation and adaptation of SoFA sociocracy knowledge and policies into different languages so that sociocracy could be understood by people speaking these languages (regardless of territory).

On the other hand, the COUNTRY / TERRITORY related structure’s main aim would be to spread sociocracy to all interested people living or working in a certain country / territory (regardless of language). This structure also could attract funds and locally generated income, including donations. That would be easier to be accomplished using local legislation and fiscal facilities.

In my opinion, the actual structure of the SoFA International Environment is already prepared to cover the LANGUAGE related activities like translations of SoFA materials for different native languages. What is not so clear is the differentiation between the two complementary layers I mentioned above. I guess these two layers should be in different domains.

It seems to me that a good point was mentioned at the recent SoFA Strategy Meetings when the idea of “Sociocracy Earth” was brought up on the discussion table. I guess that through “Sociocracy Earth” we could gradually integrate geography in sociocracy. Integrating geography into sociocracy also opens the door to cultural equivalence in addition to language equivalence.

I understand this is a quite new approach to spreading sociocracy and that this process needs some time to think about and to be implemented in a way that works for all. However, I see language circles that have already developed so much that could start forming the “Sociocracy Earth” structure, without renouncing to feed the language diversity layer. However, money is more sensitive to the country / territory layer than to the language layer. Is it?

Best wishes!

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Focus on sharing practical ides and tips , like we are doing on the ELC for activists promotion

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we did a crowdfunding to translate and publish the MVOS in Portuguese, I could help the other groups with that

and of course, share ideas and strategies on how to get participants for our courses/clients :heart_eyes: :money_mouth_face:

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Take advantage of roles filled in other circles by circle members: in the agenda besides the names of all participants and the LC to which they belong , add all the other circles in which they particpate (if any).

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I love this idea! :star_struck:

Maybe we can present the roles that we fill in other circles and open for questions

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The idea was collected during a picture forming at one of our meetings. To me it seems a simple and effective way to grow our knowledge of how SoFA works . It goes also in the direction @roberto.bonino says about sharing practical ideas and tips. Maybe we can use a CoP meeting to share our extra rôles/domains (in addition to Leaders and Delegates) in our own LC or other SoFa circles. Perhaps those more experienced in a specific role can become mentors of those who are just undertaking a similar role.

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I love the ideas generated until now! Are there areas we aren’t covering yet?

I will drop here also an idea that may sound a bit radical and disruptive, and I don’t feel 100% sure about it, but it may be useful to test the feeling about it:

To separate from SoFA the aim of spreading sociocracy internationally: LCs would become autonomous organisations.

Being part of an international organization is challenging: when we look at English speaking SoFA, SoPra, and all other LCs, we see very different evolutionary stages/trajectory, needs/resources, etc. We require resources and effort to build and maintain alignment and cohesion, both within and outside LCs/International Department; e.g. spreading policies in different languages, providing internal services (help desks) to many internal clients that have different needs; making decisions on matters to which we do not relate much (like budget). It would be easier if LCs would pursue a similar pathway of (English-speaking) SoFA. But this won’t be the case - let’s just look at how SoPra, SoTes, SoFra and SoItalia are growing up.

So what if separation means unleashing a power of self-determination of each group? Well, separation only may not work, unless we do have a (better) system of sharing resources, facilitating mutual support and cooperation across autonomous orgs.

So the idea may turn into:

To separate from SoFA the aim of spreading sociocracy internationally: LCs would become autonomous organisations from SoFA, tied together into a network.

This network could be be something like a community of practice for mutual support, or become something like a small org that collects and distributes resources and facilitates opportunities of collaboration. Before diving into this, however, I would wait to see questions/ reactions.

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Actually this option has a some clear advantages

  • Budgetary: each LC becomes responsible for its own finances and the flows are clear
  • Legal: national boundaries make it easier to operate as a national legal entity
  • Organisational : aims , objectives and accountabilities would be clearly in the local domain

The challenges i see

  • overhead : a lot of administrative work duplicated
  • maintain coherence. The national chapters could join an Association of associations with some specific requirements ( Examples are Volteuropa party, International Coach Federation, etc…) to wich they pay a membership d fee
  • Fragmentation : Language chapters would be split into national chapters. As an intermediate step a national chapter could run a “representative office” in another country with same language. In Europ works within countries that have signed the European Convention on the Recognition of the Legal Personality of International Non-Governmental Organisations
  • Transversal services : they could be offered by the “association of associations.”

Some of the above point s have been addressed within the International Entities Helping Circle.