After reviewing if you are interested in attending please let me know.
Pollinators for Change | Richmond, VA
Overview and FAQ for the co-founding pollinators
Updated August 26, 2024
Overview:
We are designing an event in Richmond, Virginia, and its surrounding bioregion, aiming to foster systemic changes that regenerate our community and bioregion across its holistic spheres.
At the core of this effort are “pollinators,” key stakeholders who are cross-pollinating ideas and change-making endeavors throughout the community.
This initiative emphasizes generative change-making, nurturing grassroots leaders, and efforts that can bloom into transformative community-wide impacts. By weaving together diverse community elements, the event seeks to cultivate a more vibrant, interconnected, recognized, and supported local ecosystem.
The venue has a soft cap of 100 attendees. This is one of the reasons why our initial planning of this event needs to focus on intentionally curating the diversity of this community rather than promoting the event more broadly.
Though subject to change at this early stage, here is the current schedule:
6:00 pm: arrival and getting comfortable/connected in the space
6:20 pm: a mindful toast featuring the Kava beverage
6:45 pm: four breakout groups begin (voluntary)
7:15 pm: four new breakout groups begin (voluntary)
7:45 pm: closing thoughts and celebration
8:00 pm: we will ask you to scan a QR code to begin harvesting the connections, conversations, and possibilities that emerged over the course of the evening.
Governance, values, and harmony restoration approaches:
Our organizational structures and community governance shall emerge through an intentionally curated and generative process, representing a constantly adaptive ecosystem for effective change-making.
On our backend, we have launched a platform for the engaged pollinators to introduce themselves, the change work that is bringing them to this initiative, and to contribute a value that they feel compelled to embody in the self-governance of this work.
See the FAQ below for some additional considerations.
Identified sectors (subject to constant adaptation as the group forms)
Spiritual wellness and wisdom development
Ecological conservation and regeneration
Permaculture and urban agriculture
Storytelling and human connection
Diversity and inclusion
Restorative justice and relational healing
Systems thinking and integrated development
Cooperative economies and empowered work
Care economies for seniors, adults, children, disability and chronic illness
Fundraising and philanthropy
Local and state policy
Creative and cultural development
Stable and affordable housing
Food system resilience and diversity
Poverty alleviation and universal basic income
Public safety and emergency response
Civil activism (civil rights, development, and equity)
Public and civil education
Public and independent media
Kindness and play
Compassionate community building
Renewable and resilient energy systems
Regenerative entrepreneurship and social enterprising
Localism and community wealth building
Conflict resolution and nonviolent communication
[there seem to be 30+ sectors that we could name and represent around this initiative]
Lead organizers of the event and venue arrangements
Mike Rabin
Ajax Greene
FAQs:
What are the envisioned impacts of this event?
We intend that every core pollinator makes at least three new and highly impactful connections, engages in at least three new and highly impactful conversations, and comes out of the event substantially stimulated and enabled to develop their change work in our community and beyond.
Is there a longer-term vision around this event?
Yes, but we need to answer this question in three parts.
The first part of our answer is that we would like to keep the focus on curating the most impactful event for you and those who are gathered around you. If this ends up being a one-time gathering that facilitates transformative impacts for your work and our community at large, then consider ourselves fulfilled in our founding purpose!
The second part is that accepting the role of being a pollinator gives you the right to say no. If we do not co-create or conduct this event in an aligned way, then we need to address those concerns before moving forward.
The third part of our answer is that we have laid some foundations for Pollinators for Change to be replicable and possibly continue as a nonprofit association.
We have registered pollinatorsforchange.org, and our backend database on Airtable can be sustained and developed upon
To develop under nonprofit status, we have a potential fiscal sponsor in the Sustainable Futures Institute. We are currently financing modest expenditures out of the Corporate Purpose Project, which is Mike’s nonprofit that is fiscally hosted by SFI.
We have a potential long-term structure in establishing a Decentralized Unincorporated Nonprofit Association (DUNA). This is our incubation page for the concept, which we can revamp if there is interest in this concept.
We also have a potential funding ecosystem for hosting change-making projects and initiatives. It is called Vivero, and we are in development to present that as a possibility to this community.
In modeling ourselves after pollinator plants, we are pursuing an adaptive life cycle for this project around the stages of seeding, germinating, pollinating, and dispersing.
If you are interested in exploring the theoretical depth and first principles of this concept, contact Mike to discuss it: Pollinators for Change – Living Systems Theory
Have you read to the end? Check out our bookshelf and offer your most impactful reads towards making regenerative change: Pollinators for Change – Bookshelf