Innovations for a free, resilient, and generous world
Welcome to Openworld! We invite you to explore new "Seeds of Change" offers for the sustainability of local and global good causes.
The offers - consisting of microscholarships, telework opportunities, and toolkits delivered through cell phones and the Internet - aim to help social ventures awaken assets in poor regions.
Access to Seeds of Change resources can grow as grassroots allies:
Development of local land grants as free zones provides a means to awaken assets for partnering education, health care, and other civil society initiatives. As the initially small demonstration areas scale up to larger zones, countries can generate skills, jobs, investments, and innovations on a success-sharing basis.
Openworld is working at present on three tracks to advance new partnerships for growth and sustainability.
I. Innovative ideas...
In a series of presentations and papers, Openworld has mapped ways for transparency-enhancing reforms to awaken human capital and dormant land values for community uplift, as well as for the benefit of global allies contributing to the challenge offers.
"Buildership" opportunities for blogs and social ventures to crowdsource break
throughs. In response to the insights of Umair Haque, Openworld has launched a Buildership site, a Buildership Lab (for development of open source tools), and a new Twitter feed. Their aim is to spread opportunities for social networks to engage the talents of their "tribes" in co-creation of initiatives to advance shared values. "Builder Challenges" will feature online competitions to identify breakthrough ideas, and pooling of virtual and actual rewards contributed by viewers and by members of the networks.
(click image to view)Market Breakthroughs for the Next Four Billion. In talks for Princeton Microfinance Organization, Free Minds, Templeton Foundation, and Freedomfest symposia and conferences, Openworld has introduced opportunities for global challenge offers to awaken assets in poor areas on a success-sharing basis. The challenge strategy rests on offering microscholarships to entrepreneurial schools and Internet center operators to encourage formation of small, telework-oriented "quickstart" free economic zones. The talks have reviewed how local land values in the zones can rise 5-30 times via partnerships to establish world-class business climates. In cases where initial free zones can scale over time to areas comparable to Singapore, Hong Kong, Songdo or Dubai, billions of dollars in new assets can accrue for education, health care, and other social ventures vested as founding stakeholders. Slides of the talks are available here. A companion white paper, entitled Awakening Assets for the Next Four Billion, is downloadable here.
21st Century Incentive Systems for Peer Learning. Students at a bootstrap school in rural Sri Lanka offer results of their web research on updating the widely-used 19th Century Lancaster System of rewarding students who teach students. Their work-study project paper is here. *New* Openworld's "Assisting Entrepreneurial Schools" portal has introduced a pioneering proposal to engage students as designers/co-owners of for-profit schools, in U.S. and overseas communities where public schools are failing to deliver high quality education.
II. Grassroots action...
On-the-ground projects we are assisting include:
In addition, Openworld is extending catalytic offers of microscholarships, work-study projects, and in-kind contributions -- including video cameras, notebook computers, and software -- to local self-help initiatives interested in endowing microvoucher funds and "eAcademies" through land grants in Somaliland, Gabon, and Haiti.
III. Virtual tools and support systems...
Openworld and its partners also have a range of online projects to promote sustainable eLearning opportunities and to support private sector-led projects that can generate resources for local microscholarship funds. These include:
Providing digital toolkits in international and local languages for private development of eAcademies, eCenters and Technology Parks around the world on a success-sharing basis with nonprofit organizations. Click for more on tools for global eAcademies , Bulgarian eCenters and Business/Technology Parks, and Krygyz eCenters.
The new Openworld Institute is also moving to sponsor global free and open source software teams that will develop turn-key eGovernment solutions for web-based land registries and business climate liberalization, as a means of raising the value of land assets held by local self-help organizations and their regional and global nonprofit partners.
Where Openworld is heading
Our projects are grounded in the experience of a global team that has worked over the past two decades in more than 60 countries on national and local economic policy liberalization, telecommunications, skills development, telecenter, and business and technology park development projects.
We see Openworld's initiatives in coming years leading to creation of "Innovation Parks" and "World Cities" that can replicate the asset-building success of ZonAmerica (Uruguay), Freeport (Bahamas), Singapore, and Dubai, in ways that reward early investors and allied good causes.
The seeds we are planting for civil society institutions are intended to bring forth nonpolitical solutions that generate new skills, health, and job opportunities for all who seek them, on a self-funding and replicable basis.
We welcome your interest and support in helping to open the world. Please leave comments in our guestbook, explore the benefits of becoming an Openworld Sponsor (or donor through a tax-deductible contribution via the Explorers Foundation), and email us with any further ideas on how you can help in spreading new zones of freedom, peace and prosperity.
We look forward to hearing from you!
