Urbanika and the SolarPunk awakening
🧐 What is Urbánika?Urbánika teaches about the intersection of Web 3.0 and regenerative urban governance. Our immersive approach focuses on turning the learning experience from a passive video course watching to gamifying impact-making in both local and digital communities.🤔Why?Three reasons.The mainstream education and media have convinced people all around the world that capitalism is the only way forward! However, the truth is that There Are Many Alternatives!! (TAMA)Humans are lacking inspiration and knowledge on alternative ways of governance, management, and relating.Traditional education systems are B O R I N G.💡Solution PLUS Connecting them all with funding mechanisms, such as Giveth, Gitcoin, and Urbánika's own fund distribution system* 🛠️What are we working on?Three things.1. Commons 101 with David Bollier. This is the basic course on the Commons.This course covers:What are the commonsThe patterns of the commons (Social life, P2P governance, and Provisioning for the commons)Web3, Wallets, DAOs, and dAppsFunding the commonsWhen? End of November.2. Specialized courses for activists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers (accessible only after graduating from the "Commons 101" course)3. Mini-educational videos posted on Twitter.🧑🏾🤝🧑🏻How is this immersive?Apprentices get a Skill badge when they test their understanding of each module with 101.xyz quizzesApprentices take both in real-life and virtual challenges through QuestChains so to get a PostCapitalist adventurer collectible. These challenges require the apprentice to generate a tangible impact in its community. Some examples of challenges are: Record yourself teaching two friends about the Commons, Research an urban commons in your region and post a half-page of it at your nearest bus stop, and plant a native fruit tree at your closes park. Apprentices and social media followers get Eureka moments through watching our mini videos that show the consequences of choosing capitalism or postcapitalism as ways of living.Context:We believe that urban commons combined with the power of cyber-physical organizations such as DAOs and the proper token engineering will efficiently run cities. A very early empiric experiment about this was run in 2018-2019 in the city of Chetumal. The result was getting 23 people from across the government, universities, NGOs, business chambers, and citizens coming up with projects to regenerate their city. However, coordination failed due to starting from a city perspective when neighborhoods had different interests, tech interfaces were difficult to use, and the team didn't have the proper knowledge, just the will.The lesson was learned and these people have gathered again, now with a greater understanding of urban commons, human coordination technologies, and matured networks of public good and crypto-commoning activists.🧠 Tell me more about the training contentThe training's content is based on the book "Free, Fair, and Alive" by David Bollier and Silke Helfrich, and on personal experience engaging in DAOs and using blockchain4good dApps.The challenges within the episode start in the realm of understanding, reflecting, and becoming aware of the commoner inside each of us, then they advance into claiming, regenerating, and maintaining local public spaces as local urban DAOs that bootstrap local regenerative initiatives with the neighborhood and other local agents' support.As we are covering three niches (Policy makers, Entrepreneurs, and Urban activists) the challenges in each module will be several so apprentices can choose which one to solve based on their skills and interests. They will require to pass only one challenge per module, and one final graduation challenge. We believe in Open Knowledge. Thus, all the content created is being done using Creative Commons 4.0, meaning is free and for public access. The course will be available in the original language of the speaker with subtitles in English and Spanish.A SolarPunk styleInitially, Kin, the main SolarPunk character, will be focusing on Latin America and the Caribbean, however, the storyline will show in shadows other unrevealed characters that are doing the same in other parts of the world. The idea is that Urbánika's story and challenges call people to form a fandom. Social movements based on shared interests and fun have the power to quickly adopt new trends, which in this case is adopting regenerative and post-capitalistic lifestyles. We hope, that others can join us, create new characters, and spread the word of the commons!Kin, the SolarPunk agent sent by the Galactic Federation to accelerate the transition to a regenerative and post-capitalist society.🏆TeamThe team members are passionate activists from Mexico and Europe, with a digital and physical reputation track that has enabled them to have leading roles in innovative communities globally.Anna Kaic: Creative, storyteller, and marketeer. She designed and created Proof of Humanity’s walkthrough videos gathering thousands of subscribers in a few weeks as well as thousands of views per video. She has managed and strategized social media accounts of web 3 projects such as PoH, MetaGame, and the Crypto-Commons Association, as well as from traditional organizations such as Istria Wine, Faculty of Economics at Rijeka University, Airfood OÜ.Rodolfo Ramos: Instructional Designer at two top 10 universities in Mexico. He holds broad experience in working with telecommunications companies and crafting immersive audio-visual productions (including virtual reality) in both Mexico and Japan.Bernardo Fernandez aka BEF: Bef, is a Mexican writer, cartoonist, and graphic designer that has been awarded several prizes, including the Mexican Novelist Prize “Otra vuelta de tuerca”, the Grijalbo Prize, the Silverio Cañada Memorial Prize of “the Semana Negra de Gijón”, the Ignotus Prize of the Spanish Association of Fantasy, Science Fiction and Horror. His works have been translated into English, French, German, Dutch, and Mandarin.HBesso31.eth: Social entrepreneur leading this solarpunk and post-capitalistic training program. He has been experimenting with social participatory approaches since 2014 by founding and orchestrating P2P-based services. In Chetumal, he led the first iteration of regenerative city-making. Magna cum laude in both MSc and MA of eGovernance and public sector innovation from KU Leuven. Alumni of the Programa para el Fortalecimiento de la Función Pública en América Latina, Trusted Seed of The Commons Stack, Hatcher of the Token Engineering Commons, Recruiter Champ in MetaGame, and Summoner of the UBI Blockchain Collective.B0gie: 3D designer and producer with more than 4 years of playing and researching 3D design. He is creating all the scenarios and avatars to display within the film series.Rok Kranjc: Game designer, researcher, and bridgebuilder between the now and a commons-based society.Ruslan Zolotarev: 3D artist and developer specializing in photo-scanning urban elements. Project manager, community teacher, virtual producer, and futuristic solarpunk.Pedro Mendoza: Animation engineer taking care of the 1st episode.David Bollier: Mentor and instructor of the Commons 101 course.💸 Budget Up to now, we have received around $10,000 in Gitcoin and $3,000 in Giveth. Additionally, we have put around $4,000 in cash from our budget, plus the work the team has provided without payment for already two months. The team has proven to be completely committed to propagating an alternative way of living, but we are running very low on our savings. Here is where you can make a huge difference. If you have arrived at this point, we ask you three simple things:Give a heart to our project. It makes our project go higher on the discovery page.Donate whatever you can. We are a verified project, and we are invested in turning your financial support into high impact.Share about Urbánika. Even a tweet saying: "Do you know about the immersive activism school of Urbánika? Check them out in @Givethio!" It makes a huge difference!!Complementarily we are putting in place an economic model to sustain our efforts.Our goal is to make the most impact possible, therefore Urbánika will invite those people that have the biggest potential to successfully apply the knowledge learned in our course to shape their local context.
Our limited attention is given to cohorts of 30 people. This is to ensure that the treatment and accompanying are extraordinary.
The cost of creating the course and providing so close attention is $15,000 in total or $500 per person (30 students).
🌻 So, what about the business model? Experimenting with regenerative and post-capitalistic ones!As we are focusing on creating open, free, and engaging educational content that accelerates societal’s transition to post-capitalism. We have been tinkering with potential ways to fund Urbánika's development. We have come up with the following:1️⃣ Value-aligned sponsorship. Urbánika will look for organizations or collectives that are willing to sponsor the student’s cost. The student can also decide to pay for its own cost.2️⃣ Value-aligned service offerings. From scripting to animating and video editing, we can help other mission-driven orgs narrate stories and educational content that helps in reaching a brighter, fairer, and safer future.3️⃣ Gift economy-based consultation hours. Our team's knowledge and experience are extended to support others.Our income surplus... Students, professors, and the Urbánika team will have governance rights on deciding where to allocate the following funds: *Urban Commons funding (40%). Financially support the emergence and consolidation of urban regenerative initiatives from the graduates of the course series.*Common-good emergence and consolidation (25%). Financially support common-good initiatives such as universal basic income, universal basic services, and others through Gitcoin, Giveth, and Goteo. *Workers' benefits (25%). Experiment with a post-capitalist economic model to sustain its purpose while taking care of its workers and supporting complementary value-aligned efforts. *Research, Development, and Knowledge Propagation (10%). Urbanika's purpose is to disseminate the knowledge and tools that facilitate our transition into a regenerative interplanetary species, for that we need to research, upskill, and experiment.Additionally, the students, professors, and the team will have governance rights on curating which content should be added or modified in the curricula, as well as in the creation of new courses.The funds coming from crypto are publicly available through analyzing the Urbanika.eth wallet. The funds coming in fiat are openly available through the Open Collective's report.Once we have a steady income, we will issue a consolidated report on how the funds are being managed.✅ Monitoring and Metrics:-Monitoring-Weekly Twitter threads on our progress so far.Monthly Twitter Spaces with the Crypto Commons Association where progress is shared in a Ask Me Anything (AMA) style.-Metrics-Main success indicator: Number of urban commons created across Latin America coming from the graduated apprentices.Secondary success indicators: Video content's number of views; Number of people finishing the 101.xyz exams; Number of people finishing the QuestChains' immersive challenges.⚖️ Legal setup & considerations for the projectThe equipment owned and content generated will be governed by its workers aka The Team through a legally recognized cyber physical org (Production Cooperative legally constituted in Chetumal, México with a digital twin as a DAO. The guild will be the main operator of the funds).The content will be created through Creative Commons 4.0.💖 Please support us with three quick things:A heart ♥ on the project,Donating to it,and sharing it wherever you can.These things will already be doing world-impact.
Raised: $3,489.305