For the first time in my life I started buying a magazine, Oya, only because all the content was positive and solutions oriented.

The idea may not be new, but is highly important and inspiring! So no matter in which country you are this is not only a good “business”, it is a good support to all people in your country. Make it as accessible as possible to reach as many people as you can, online and offline.

You can read more about the idea here.

This post was inspired after going back to Bulgaria, where there is a lack of positive media and seeing how many people would benefit it!

1. Gather together and identify which are the most important future skills, knowledge and professions. In my opinion these lie in the intersection between nature, agriculture, cuisine, energy, culture, arts, handicrafts, literature, spirituality, health, education, tradition, innovation and of course people.

2. Start with a small group of people and identify who knows what

3. Make a plan when and where to meet in order to exchange the knowledge.

4. Invite guests and new members and create hubs of interested people.

5. Try to have people with different knowledge, skills and backgrounds in the groups.

In order to build a sustainable society, we have to reinvent many old professions and to create new ones. Generalist skills for the everyday life and survival are going to be very important. My friends and I are preparing the foundations for a total sustainable community. Not only new ways of thinking, but also new skills, education methods and professions will be needed. One of our big projects is to create a teaching and learning centre for sustainable professions and skills. We will need a lot of people with such skills who can teach the others and learn from them. People with different backgrounds and ideas! Everyone is welcome to join us and take part of the shaping of the future.

1. City centre cars free

2. Make green grass lanes for walking on the streets and plant some flowers and trees at every street.

3. Use the roofs of the buildings. These can be used for gardens and food growing and for student rooms. And of course for collecting rain water and producing electricity from the sun, the wind and the difference of the temperature between the building and the air.

4. Put a beehive in every garden and seed a lot of colourful flowers.

5. Use the walls of the buildings to create hanging gardens and produce our own food.

If we just let our creativity fly, we can create even better ideas and change our cities completely.

The basic idea is to found or co-found a small business in the area that you would like to support. The business field should also be sustainable and reasonable for the given context.

For the purpose of simplicity, let us assume that there is an “investing partner” who is ready to invest some money, know-how, and time in the project and “local partners” who will be participating locally in the business. In a real case scenario, the roles could be mixed. The names are chosen on purpose – the “investing partner” could/should be more than a source of cash or an investor, but also participate in the project actively . The “local partners” should be more than workers.

By creating a functional business and committing to it, the partners create a structure, which creates additional value for the society, sustain the livelihood of numerous people working for the company directly or indirectly, and have the possibility to realize their ideas.

Consider the differences between micro start-ups and micro credits. In the general case of micro credits, the money lender is co-funding a local initiative with the hope of improving the life of the borrower. The borrower is often not able to borrow money from a traditional financial institution. There is an organization between the lender and the borrower, which is responsible for managing the credits. While the idea behind this approach is very good and is helping a lot of people, there are situations in which a different approach could be more successful.

Micro credits are about lending. Micro start-ups are about directly creating employment.

The borrower of a micro credit still has to return the money plus an interest and/or processing fees. Even the platforms which offer interest free micro credits often charge a very significant processing fee. By definition of micro-credits, the borrower is usually a person who is not able to get the so needed cash from a traditional financial institution. This person, in the general case poor and with little experience with finance, must have the financial discipline and often pay back more than a person lending from a traditional bank. For a lot of individuals this is the best possible solution – micro credits have helped and are helping lots of people. Nevertheless, the risks for the borrower are significant. In case of failure, he finds himself in a situation worse, that before borrowing the money.

In the case of a micro startup, the local partner is not borrowing money. Instead, he is employed in the newly created company. The financial risks in case of a failure of the business are carried by the investing partner. Furthermore, the local partner could be able to save some of his income, this creating a financial cushion for himself and his family. An additional advantage of the model is that there is no need for a third institution intermediating between the borrower and the lender, and thus no interest and processing fees. It is not uncommon that these are between 40 and 60%.

Know-how Transfer and Commitment

In a micro start-up the role of the investing partner is not limited to injecting capital into the new company. He participates with his ideas, organizational skills, experience, business and social connections and knowledge. The moment when the initial investment is made is just the start of the commitment. This is the greatest advantage of the micro start-up model. It significantly increases the chances that the start-up succeeds. Furthermore, this enables a real know-how transfer which enriches all partners. Each side can learn from the other. Regardless of the lifespan of the newly created company, each of the partners gains additional knowledge and experience. Even if the business closes in middle term, the local partner has made no  financial losses and has gained a lot of experience and confidence. These two factors are critical for the people in the regions which may need external support – the people lack the possibility to do some work which they consider reasonable and worthy, and the confidence and means to realize their ideas. The investing partner is only risking as much as he can afford risking. From the beginning, he acknowledges the financial risk. What he always gains is the possibility to realize an idea, to create workplaces, connections and gain invaluable experience.

Realization of a Sustainable and Innovative Idea

Micro start-ups may be a perfect way to realize a new idea a chance. There are some strong arguments, which speak for this:

• If you have and idea about a sustainable solution which can improve the life of people, what would be a better way to demonstrate its viability and then creating an by implementing it. One real example is worth more then thousands of words. The success gives you the right. If you believe in something, then simply do it, instead of saying it.
• The realization of new ideas is frequently connected with a certain amount of risk. The person behind the business should be clear about it and be able to live with it. If you are willing to risk time, effort, and money in a new business, why not do it in a way which is also highly beneficial about the people working on the project by starting the company in a region that you consider worth supporting?
• The realization of the idea in a developing market requires lower costs.

Advantages of a Functional Business

Creating a functional business has multiple additional advantages:

• It secures a source of income for the people working in company and their families in long term.
• It gives a successful example in the region and gives people hope and belief.
• It indirectly helps the whole community around it by paying taxes, social and pension funds, and indirectly creates employment and prosperity for the other local companies working with it.

Conclusion

Starting small companies in a developing regions may be a great way to realize ideas, support people and communities and gain experience at the same time. For the real success of the project, the investing partner should provide not only the financial means, but also the commitment to bring the company forward and be highly responsible towards the people working in the new company. He should try to help the develop professionally and personally. In my opinion, it is also critical that he is not “dependent” on financial success of the project and consider the overall sustainability and meaningfulness more important.

Do you know which was the first World Wide Web?

It was not the Internet. And it were not the cities and airports.

The bacteria did it! And are still doing it! They exchange information in the form of DNA worldwide between each other. They also developed other remarkable technologies like the electric motor drive (attachment of a flagellum to a disk rotating with ball bearings in a magnetic field), they are harvesting solar energy, making biodegradable polyester (material we often use as a textile) and are building elaborate cityscapes.

Bacteria Exchanging DNA

Bacterial Flagellum (Source)

In their history, the bacteria too created environmental and social crisis billion years ago and solved them. The same crises which we as humans are creating today. So what do they did?

From Competition to Cooperation

At the beginning they were very competitive and there were a lot of invasions and population deaths. But because the competition didn’t turned out to be successful to any kind of bacteria, they turned to a cooperative life style and started to contribute their DNA to the central resource library and information hub: the nucleated cell, a huge bacterial community with a peaceful division of labor.

Nucleated Plant Cell

This process from competition between individual parts to cooperation in a bigger entity repeated for the nucleated cells which built the multi-celled creatures (animals, plants, humans, …). And now the same process is happening with us as humans – globalization, competition, crises, leading us to cooperation. The basic principles of life has happened already on the smaller scale and are now happening on the larger scale of human experience. We can definitely learn more about life from the wisdom of Biology and Nature!

Principles of Living Systems

All this information comes from the biologist Elisabet Sahtouris. She has identified several principles of living systems:

• Self-creation (autopoiesis)
• Complexity (diversity of parts)
• Embeddedness in larger holons and dependence on them (holarchy)
• Self-reflexivity (autognosis—self-knowledge)
• Self-regulation/maintenance (autonomics)
• Response ability—to internal and external stress or other change
• Input/output exchange of matter/energy/information with other holons
• Transformation of matter/energy/information
• Empowerment/employment of all component parts
• Communications among all parts
• Coordination of parts and functions
• Balance of Interests negotiated among parts, whole, and embedding holarchy
• Reciprocity of parts in mutual contribution and assistance
• Conservation of what works well
• Creative change of what does not work well

This list was derived from my observations, as a biologist, of living systems from single cells to complex multicelled creatures, and of healthy ecosystems. These features should also be present in any healthy human system from family to community, business, government or other social system up to our global economy. But it became quickly clear that few businesses show these features.

Note that numbers 9, 10, 12 and 13 on the list, in a business that functioned like a healthy living system, implies the active empowerment and participation of every employee of that business in what it does and how it is run, with open communications among all. This, in short, means full inclusion and transparency, features totally abused in recent cases brought to public light, such as Enron and WorldCom, which glaringly highlighted what happens to businesses that see themselves in fierce competition rather than as healthy, collaborative aspects of their greater (stakeholder) communities. In sharp contrast, Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic and author of a book called Authentic Leadership, once made headlines by boldly declaring that shareholders came third, after customers and employees.

Source: The Biology of Business

The Eightfold Path to Excellence

Tachi Kiuchi, former CEO of Mitsubishi Electric, and Bill Shireman, an ecologist, put it this way in their important book, What We Learned from the Rainforest: “There is no problem ever faced by a business that has not been faced and solved by a rainforest”. 21 A rainforest is a Type III ecosystem in which mutual support among all species has proven more efficient and effective than spending energy to make war among species. (Note that predator/prey relationships are actually cooperative when seen from the ecosystem level of holarchy because prey feeds predators while predators keep prey species healthy.) The rainforest (like a prairie or coral reef) creates enormous new value continually by very complex production and trading systems as well as by recycling its resources very rapidly.

Kiuchi has proposed a clear program for corporate accountability that he calls The Eightfold Path to Excellence, posted on the website of this journal, in which it was published. The eight steps of this path, related to the rainforest lessons, are (Source: The Biology of Business):

1. Adopt a bold and visionary CORPORATE MISSION, one that envisions how your company will
2. Conduct a regular ASSESSMENT of your success in maximizing return to stakeholders, and
3. Develop INCENTIVE STRUCTURES that reward the creation of real stakeholder value on behalf of the corporate mission.
4. Adopt MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS to help you manage the company toward maximum stakeholder return, and measure your step-by-step progress.
5. Establish a STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT SYSTEM, to monitor and solicit feedback from
6. Create value for the POOREST in the world. The stakeholders through whom the greatest mutual benefit can be delivered.
7. Issue an ANNUAL REPORT TO STAKEHOLDERS that is as systematic as your annual report to shareholders.
8. LIVE the mission of your business. Make THAT – not your 90-day earnings report – the map to guide your course.

You can also check her video:

Another good idea is Groupon – consumers unite in order to buy bigger quantities and thus push the price down. But again, it can urge totally bad consumer behaviour.

But these ideas have a big potential and can be used by the consumers in order to establish a sustainable shopping. How about promoting only sustainable shops and products this way? We can create more sustainable companies and much better and cheaper products. At the same time, some percentage of the shopping value can be donated or investing and help again another sustainable businesses.

We can go even further and create personalized web pages for promoters, who would like to make the sustainable shopping and products even more famous. They can again obtain some percentage of the shopping value and even earn some money by doing a good job for the society.

Do we really want to celebrate the birthday in order to just gather together, drink and eat? Or does this birthday means something much more than that?

I believe the birthday should represent the person who is having the birthday. It is a small representation of who this person is, what his life is, what this person values. And this is the foundation of The Giving Birthday.

The Giving Birthday

The essential idea behind the Giving Birthday is to celebrate your birthday in a meaningful for you way. What do you value? What do you find meaningful to do? Celebrate it on your birthday!

The Name

It was really hard to choose a word for this idea. Giving, Meaningful, Personal, Sharing, and many more words were options. Only one word cannot describe the fullness of the idea behind it. If we stick to only one word, then we can miss all other possibilities. That’s why the logo contains the most common words people may associate with the idea.

The word ‘Giving’ was chosen because of the desire of giving and sharing with people. It represent the giving of the birthday person. The birthday person is not seen as someone who receives gifts from the world around him, but is seen as a person who gives gifts, gives meaning to the world around. He is giving and sharing to the world what he finds for meaningful and valuable.

Asking ourselves questions

If we want to make meaningful and valuable birthdays, then not only the birthday person, but also all the people there should ask themselves basic questions like:

• What do I find meaningful to do on this birthday?
• What do I find valuable on this birthday?
• What do I want to give on the birthday? To the birthday person or to the other people.

Questions for givers of presents:

• Does the birthday person values what I want to give?
• Does the birthday person needs what I want to give?
• Is what I am giving coming from my heart?

Questions for the birthday person:

• Is what I am doing really representing what I love to do?
• Is what I am doing meaningful and helpful to other people?
• Why am I born? Why do I celebrate this birthday? What do I want to create in this world?

Questions for the group of people who gather:

• What do we, as a group of people, want to create/do on the birthday?

Evolving the culture of birthdays

Evolving the culture of birthdays is as important as evolving our ways of live – our values, our actions, our relationships, our food quality, our economic system and so on. The birthday always represents our lives and by evolving our birthdays we also evolve our lives.

Do we want to just buy gifts to people because they have birthdays? Do we want to give to people something they may not need at all? What is the effect of such action on the people who are receiving the gift? And what is the effect of such an action to us? Is the giving of gifts helping us evolve as human beings? Is it connected to what we really value? Is it in harmony with Nature?

Do we want to continue the old way only because it is a “tradition” or “normal” to do so? Or even if keep the tradition, can we fill this tradition with a new and creative meaning? Do the same, but from the heart, from what we really value?

It is possible! And you and I can do it right now! We don’t need somebody else to tell us how to do it, we are the creators! All what is needed is a decision, a choice.

Levels of consciousness on birthdays

If we look at how conscious are the people and what opportunities they have, we may also see how their level of consciousness is mirrored on their birthdays:

• Just an event – some people just gather because it is a tradition to gather with friends on birthdays. Resources (gifts, food, time) are exchanged just because it is a tradition to give and receive. Whether the exchanged resources are meaningful or have a positive effect is not considered. There is no special meaning beside the hollow tradition.
• A meaningful event – people know why they gather, there is something meaningful which is happening for the group who gathers on the birthday.
• A giving event – people know why they gather, there is something meaningful which is happening for other people. People gathers in order to give to other people what is needed and what they value.

A meaningful event is much more beautiful and from the heart than just an event. The difference between the meaningful and giving event is that on the giving event the positive effects go also to other people, not only to the group who gathers.

History

Here I share with you shortly how the idea come into being for me. Three years ago when I started to understand more about spirituality my values changed a lot and celebrating my birthday became very hard for me. Material things meant much less to me and I didn’t need them at that time. Everybody wanted to give me something on my birthday, but I found it hard to accept, because I didn’t really needed it and these people have spent money for that. I saw all this as waste of resources, time and thinking. People had also good intentions, they gave me spiritual books, because I value spirituality, but actually I didn’t need these books.

Two years I was stuck! And what I was stuck with was the old tradition of thinking – that on your birthday you receive gifts and people buy you stuff. Awful! Traditional thinking imposed on me since I was a kid.

Last year my mother, a mathematics school teacher, asked me again what I want for my birthday. I said again that I don’t need anything. But after few days the new thought came, that things do not have to be as they were. We can do what we want to do. I could do on my birthday not that which was traditional and normal, but I could do what really mattered to me. Then I told my mother to find a student from her school, in which she sees that it is worth to help him/her in some way and this help should be my birthday present. And she found one boy. His family wasn’t well financially so I decided to give them a computer they needed and also to connect them with good people. We exchanged a lot of email which were useful for me and them, and I send them the computer from Germany to Bulgaria. Unfortunately until now I didn’t have enough time to spend personally with the boy, but I believe that this opportunity will come. We are still in contact with this family. I learned a lot from this and may write about it in the future.

After that I was much more happier for my birthday because what I did mattered to me and was really helpful to other people. I saw that it is possible to turn unwanted situations into what we desire.

Join the community and share

Let’s start creating meaningful birthdays! This is a call to everybody who cares about it!

Think about your birthday and think about the birthdays you are going to.

Share online with people your thoughts on how can we make better birthdays and what you are doing as a participant or as a birthday person:

• www.TheGivingBirthday.net
• Facebook Page