News today April 21st is that I submit an application for a conference organized by the New Economy Coalition. I ran into trouble while writing this submission because I could not enter a file to the submission form. And this file contained all the details neatly lined out of the rather complex structure of Crowd Workshhopping. So now I copy this paper here below. Crowd Workshopping and how the Green for Equity workshop fits in ...

Version April 14th 2013, presented to CommonBound at April 21, 2016

Sustainability Now! We need new tools to change our habits into a sustainable life style. Crowd workshopping is such a tool. A small crew of activists with a mission to teach, can now teach, train, empower many more people than in conventional ways.

It is all about empowerment: that small groups of dedicated activist need to be empowered to be able to give exiting and convincing workshops. Any person that has taken part should be able to use this training tool just as effective in an initiative of their own.

Crowd workshopping offers that empowerment. This paper gives only a general description of the procedures as done in practice. The challenge taken up with crowd workshopping is applicable to many teaching targets. The first one that Demotech did in March 2013 had the title and subject: 'To Green The World Now at No Cost!'

Other workshop theme can be presented in the same way.
(See the motivation for the Green for Equity workshop as written for the website www.green4equity.net at the end of this paper in red)

Content
1. The why and how of crowd workshopping
2. The Green for Equity workshop as an example of crowed workshopping
2.1. Targets
2.2. Results
2.3 Warming up to the workshop
The Green for Equity workshop, short description of how it works with the Workstations
2.4. How the Green for Equity workshop is embedded in the campaign Green for Equity

1. There is a description and a list of how and what to prepare for the workshop
2. There is a list of instructions given during the workshop to the participants, i.e. the content they learn and learn to do.
3. There is a list of tools and materials that have to available

Appendix
A 1. List of materials and templates for G4E-workshops
A 2. List of instructions to be given at each work station for an outdoors G4E-workshop

1. The why and how of crowd workshopping

Crowd Workshopping (CW) is done very much in the same way as walking along lovely dishes of food at a grand buffet, while filling up your plate ....

Why crowd workshopping differs from a usual workshop:
- To make it possible for a small crew to give an intensive training for learning sustainable practices to a great many people in a short time.
- To deliver a one-to-one learning process that guarantees covering all aspect of a given process to be learned.
- To avoid waste of time of trainers and participants normal in any other approach of group teaching

Crowd workshopping (CW) is an innovative educational approach, that differs from the normal teaching of a tutor to a class or group in the following aspects:

- CW aims to ascertain that each participant gets all the information handed out, is being trained to use it and is tested on her/his ability to perform it, practice and theory. Aspects of safety and responsibility are taken proper care of.

- CW wants to exclude all distracting social interaction between attendants during the course. It is a one-to-one method of teaching where the normal social interaction that participants like to have in shifted to a follow-up part of the project.

- CW splits up the expertise needed for the course in small units, each easy to learn, theory as well as practice. Each unit could take between three and ten minutes.
In this way it becomes possible to train some of the workshop participants in the role of trainers.

- CW aims at far lower cost for a hands-on course. It will also make the course far easier to organize. It fits in perfectly in the Road Show Approach as envisioned for many Demotech application programs.

- CW in practice: picture a line of work stations as in factories, i.e. tables with tools, materials, teaching aids, each table prepared for one particular task. One teacher in charge of each workstation. Then picture the participants queuing up for these workstations moving on when one particular task is done and so on and so on until everyone performed and learned all tasks.

2. The Green for Equity workshop as an example of crowd workshopping

2.1. Targets
- Green for Equity (short Green4Equity), initiated by some activists to contribute to 'Sustainability Now'. Green4Equity has what it takes to go viral: rich and poor, everybody likes green, everybody can share the fun of doing it. No constrains, not of cost, not of opportunity, not of ability.
There is a website, there is support, there is a campaign in the making.

- Targets: to show sustainability can be fun, can result in joy, can dissolve constrains; to explore method of community based learning; explore individual and group's reaching out to poverty; explore stimulating similar practices in deep poverty.

2.2 Green for Equity aims at the following results:
What participants will learn:

1. the higher target of the project: solidarity in sustainability, while contributing to a greener world, while enjoying local social cooperation
2. how to enjoy and how to promote green for all, green for our cities, green for poverty
3. how to do it in practice with means everybody has available, either rich or poor
4. how to pass on the experience and become a dedicated user and promotor

What participants will make and take home:
An instructive set of parts that they can at any time reproduce in any number they want. It consists of:
- one water container made of tin with the plastic tube inside and the cotton drip
- one or two trays with end filters
- wires with adjustable stops
- one little plant with the soil around its roots tied in a flat disk by cloth as an example for more plants to prepare at home.
2.3 Warming up to the workshop
- Participants stand in line for registration in front of big posters inviting people to the G4E workshop and describing details. While moving along the line people read and chat about it.
- At the registration stand they sign in in teams of two (T/2), one with the task of actual making, the other with the task of writing up what is taught and any special bit of information that they find of interest. They sign for their promise to comply with the rules of the workshop (described later). Important is that they realize work is done at their own risk, that they can not blame the organizers for bad results or injuries.

- T/2 receive the building manual and promise to take good notice of the offered motivation for this workshop. They also receive a name badge with a number that will be announced when it is their turn.

- When called upon, the T/2 (teams of two) go to the registration desk. First to be addressed for an interview. The interview seeks to find out if the participants are serious in their intention to learn to make and to keep using the G4E in its functional and promotional targets. When home they should have or find a wall in or outside their house of a building to mount the G4E-trays. Non-serious participants should offer their place to others.

- The T/2 then pass along a series of workstations. At each workstation the T/2 find a trainer with special tools that will instruct the T/2 how this action is done, what is the motivation behind it and what are the special considerations to note.

- A detailed description of the Work Stations for the G4E-workshop is available
- Arrived at the last Work Station the participant is interviewed.
The participants fill in a questionnaire. We discuss with them how to keep contact and what place they like to have in the community-to-be.
We invite participants to join up with other participants (TakeMyTag) and start planning action together. We offer the prospect to give additional trainings to become certified by Demotech to give workshops themselves.

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Equity, what is equity? Equity is what is right, could be justice, is what is reasonable, could be understood as righteousness. Above all: it is just JUST, what in the end we all want.

Green is short for a green world, green for food, green for leisure, green for health.

What about Green for Equity? A green world, food, leisure, health for whom? The people that can get it? The better off?
Of course for the better of there should be a greener world, the sooner the better. Green is niceness, beauty, the good side of life. Let's plant trees, create more nature, care better for the nature there is.
This project Green for Equity is first of all for the better off.

And those in need? Living in dusty townships, dry areas, little rainfall, trees cut down for fuelwood, lowest income? Does it make sense to talk to them about greening their life?
Of course it does! Because it is just and it is right that green is for everybody.

Then what about the practical problem that rich has resources poor do not have? That's exactly where this campaign starts: let's create green with means everybody has plenty. Poor people too? Most poor people, yes!
Plants grow from seeds. Seeds are abundant, that is the nature of seeds.
Plants need light. Daylight everybody has.
Plants need water. Waste water, water with nutrients, everybody has.
No land, but yes the walls of one's house. (Almost) everybody has a home with four walls.
And everybody has ingenuity, creativity, care, perseverance.

The website www.green4equity.net describes how we all can green our world, much more then we thought possible. Enjoy it!

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Picture Gallery available at Facebook page Demotech on our timeline date March 13, 2014
https://www.facebook.com/DemotechDesignForSelfReliance/timeline?ref=page_internal