There are quite a lot of fountains and springs in Durlach. Some of them are really very beautiful. But the most important thing is that the water from all of them is drinkable. Normally that’s not the case in Germany, which makes it sometimes very complicated to find water in and outside the cities. We have so much water, but there are no public springs with drinkable water. We have to start to build again public springs. They can always be useful.
Recently I’ve spent my holidays in Slovakia. It’s a very beautiful country with a lot of cultural states, mountains and great people. It is situated in the heart of Europe, but there is one big difference between Slovakia and all other European countries. And it is a positive one. In Slovakia 43% of the people live in villages. And the villages are full of young people. There is life in the villages and there you can find schools, big shops, cinemas and so on. Thus even more people prefer to go to live in the villages. And the cultural and local traditions stay alive. Something almost forgotten in the rest of Europe!
But can we apply this model for other countries? I think, that we can, if there is a critical amount of young people who would like to go back to the villages. I’m sure that there are many such people, but they are just afraid to go back, because they all think that they’ll be alone in the countryside. So, the first thing we need is a platform where people can check if there are some other people who want to go back to live in the villages of some area. Through this platform they can coordinate and decide together where to go. Or people who are already in some village can give a sign that even more people are welcome. A possible solution is to develop a plug in application for facebook, couch surfing, wwoof or even create a new community. Even greater will be if it can be integrated in some sharing and giving community. This can be a big success! The community can live from donations or from some small charge for established contacts.
Have you ever heard about Sekem? It’s an unique mixture of a organic agriculture, traditional handicrafts and cultural value. In this article I would like to concentrate on the organic aspect of the project. The Sekem farm is situated in the desert of Egypt. In the past three decades they’ve managed to create a green garden from the desert. They not only produce more from a single unit of land than the conventional agriculture does, but also use 40% less water and 20% less work power. And their production is also cheaper than the conventional one. That’s not an exception. That’s the future. Sustainable agriculture is going to be cheaper than conventional and it is possible to satisfy the needs of the whole mankind.
But in order to do this, we have to concentrate on local production for local needs. I will go even further and say that we’ll go back to the nature and every household is going to live vegan and produce their own fruits, vegetables, crops, nuts and seeds. Even in the cities all of the free space will be used. And we’ll even start again collecting plants. These can be used not only for food, but also as a medicine, teas and many more. So, one of the key knowledge in the future will be an agricultural one – how to grow our own food, natural medicine and the knowledge about the different eatable plants. The sad news is that this knowledge is completely missing nowadays. So, what about organising some meetings and workshops where we exchange such knowledge?
As we all know, the money system just does not work as it should be. It’s simply not sustainable, because it is based on an exponential growth of our economy. And an exponential growth means a crash at some time, because we can’t always produce more and more. At some point there are no more resources. And from such crashes there are always few winners and a lot of losers. So, what is actually wrong with the money systems? The problem is the exponential growth. But what creates this growth? The correct answer is the credit system. If a bank has 100 euro, then it can give a credit for at least 1000 euro to another bank. And this can give a credit for 10000 euro and so on. This is what creates big amounts of virtual money which does not exist in the reality.
But how can we change this? How can we make the money system sustainable? I think that we can create a local based giving and sharing society, so we do not need to do everything with money. But we still need some money. There are many possibilities how to change the money system:
1. The first important idea is to make a system where we don’t obtain interest for our money we just put in the bank and haven’t used. Just on the opposite – we’ll have to pay for the money we have, but we don’t use! Thus, we will be urged to use our money and to invest it. So we do not obtain more money when we already have a lot of money, but less. Thus money will be better distributed and used where needed.
2. Basic Income – everyone will obtain from the state some amount of money which will be enough for living. This will make it possible that we do not work anymore for money, but for us, for the people and for the society. This will not only create another impulse in the society, but also make the whole taxes and insurance systems much easier.
3. Regional money will stimulate people to act local and to find better solutions for their communities.
4. Choose a sustainable bank, so you know that your money are helping where needed.
Even more information you can obtain from Positive Money or Monetative.
There are many more things we can do in order to get to change the system. What ideas do you have?
- What about starting to lend your money to friends and other people who need it right now (But with no interest!)?
- What about spending and giving money away?
- What about starting to invest directly in sustainable businesses in the area?
- What about changing your bank?
- What about changing your insurances?
- What about cutting stupid and unnecessary costs?
- What about saving money together with friends and giving it for good purposes or investing it sustainably?
- What about exchanging stuff, work and services in the area?
- What about living for free somewhere, but helping the owner with the garden, trash, shopping or the household?
- What about sharing your belonging and knowledge?
Do you have ideas? Do you like my ideas? Do you need advice? Do you like to start a social, giving, sharing, exchanging or moneyless business? Feel free to contact me!
Have you ever heard about free city tours? Just type in free tours and a city name and you will be amazed in who many cities there are free city tours. On these tours you can learn quite a lot about the city from people who live there. You can obtain a lot of insider tips. And it is not commercial. It’s for free. Of course a small donation is always welcome if you are happy with the tour. I love the idea and I’m very happy that even Sofia has its own free tour.
Everyone can create free tours in their cities, so feel free to do this. You are not only going to make a lot of tourists happy, but you’ll also meet some great people and have a lot of fun.
On the other hand, sooner or later the free city tours can become quite standard and lose their charm. The only difference with the normal commercial tours will be that they are free. Here some ideas what to do in order to make them always different and always interesting not only for tourist, but also for locals:
1. Change the route.
2. Show not only the typical tourist attractions, but also the everyday life, for example a working area, a living quarter, a market.
3. Make some special tours which have some particular topics. It can be traditional cooking, history, outgoing night, literature, animals in the city, architecture, in the city, restaurants, parks, hotels, language, religions, sports and so on. There is an enormous variety. These tours can be made from time to time and be announced ahead. But they can be done very spontaneous as well.
4. Orientate yourself on the different events that are going on in that particular time and visit them together with the tourists.
5. Go outside the city and show the near region – mountains, rivers, sea, nature and so on.
6. Just visit some local people together.
Just be creative.
We’ve just start with some friends to work together on our ideas and create new businesses and we’ve found the Common web page. It has basically the same idea – to create common brands. This is definitely the trend and it is not only a trend, but the way towards a better future. I’m sure that there will be more groups of people like this in the future. 
Hikes outside in the nature are great. I love them and do a hike every weekend. But I often have to do such hikes alone, become it seems that there are not so many people or at least among my friends who love to go hiking. And when I meet some other people, who like hiking, it seems that they have absolutely the same problem. And the problem is not so much that there are not so many people who love hiking. Actually there are a lot. The problem is that there is no such thing as a hiking community or a place where you can organise such hikes.
So, my idea is to start to organize regular hikes in the region I live and write about them, so many people in the city can see them. For now I’ll spread the information on Xing, facebook, couchsurfing and the wiki page of Karlsruhe.
What about organizing such hiking events also in your city?
Money lending and especially micro credits became very popular in the last years. Those are great and the best possible example is Kiva. But they do not solve every problem. Even if the poor people become a micro credit and manage to make some money, they still remain poor, because they have no possibilities to securely save money. Normally even if they make some money they have no access to a bank account. The banks are not willing to give such small customers accounts because they can make money from this. (An example for a project in micro saving which had to stop is MatchSavings.)
So, we actually need to help the banks who are willing not only to give credits, but also to enable accounts for poor people. This will make more sense. Another possibility is to start such banks. Sooner or later, if we want to help the poor, we have to start to offer them bank accounts. Without this component the microfinance is not going to function. Only credits are not sufficient. And from the credits the banks make a big win. Even Kiva functions through a cooperation with many banks.
So, what about getting rid of the banks? To lend money direct without banks? There are already such possibilities in the rich countries, for example Zopa. Through this platform you can lend money directly to people. Can you imagine what will happen if the big communities include this option? Look at this video.
The problem with this model is that this functions, because we all have bank accounts. We can hardly lend money to people who have no bank accounts. So again, it will be a problem for poor people. Do you have some ideas how to lend money directly to people who need it? What about a shared bank account with people like us. So, open a bank account in a country with many poor people with no access to the banking system and give them the possibility to save money on your account. They can always have their money and the bank is happy because you have enough money on your account. You can even make some money from your account. And you can even lend money directly to the poor. There are already such shared account services and even shared credit cards. Such model can change the finance system. So, let’s share bank accounts with some poor people.
Create kitchens in the cities where different people can go and cook together. They would buy the needed products, go in the kitchen, cook together, share the bills, meals, thoughts and experiences and connect with each another.
Advantages:
Challenges:
Proof of concept: Community Kitchens . The difference is to make all the information transparent on the Internet, so that everybody can use it and participate in the cooking.
Would you like to cook in an Open Community Kitchen of your favorite diet?
One of the things I especially like in Germany are the small gardens which are almost everywhere in the cities. These are some places where you can buy or rent a little land and make your own garden. It’s a great concept, which is very seldom in other countries. It can be a really good business to apply this concept outside Germany. People will be happy to have such gardens in the city and to have much greener cities.
On the other hand, Germany is a rich country and many people live in houses in the city and have small gardens around their house, as it is more typical for villages than for cities.
In both cases people in Germany normally use this small gardens for some green grass, some flowers and maybe some trees and bushes. I think that we can make much more from these gardens. They can be used to produce food. Local, organic food from your own small garden. And the most important point is that when we produce our own food, we produce it with love, which makes its quality much better. And we eat it immediately after we gathered it.
These gardens are too small to provide their owners the full amount of food they need, but they can still provide a great percentage of it. Thus we will not need so much mass food production, we’ll have even greener cities, we’ll save the bees and we can show our kids what it means to grow your own food. This is a core value for the humanity which we do not give our kids anymore, as our parents gave it to us. This is a core value that will definitely make the world much better.
So, have you already started to plant for food in your garden? Or if you don’t want to do this, why not give your garden to someone else, so he can do it? Or can you imagine making a platform where you connect people who have gardens, but don’t want to use them in such manner with people who don’t have, but want to have? You can not only earn some money, but also help the whole society a lot.
