Story behind Kenya SEEDs Academy Proposal

SEEDS Ecosystem Co-op Proposals
#1

Kenya has been bestowed by riches of mother nature, personally I have never been to Africa, but the fascination of travelling, living and working there remains strong, since my medical school days, hoping to contribute towards HIV epidemic so rampant there by getting a job with WHO (atleast thats how I use to think)!

Reason for starting with peronal story above, to avoid future disclaimers and questions, where are you from? For full disclosure, born in Mumbai and resident of Chandler, Arizona for almost a decade!

My journey with Kenya SEEDs endeavor started out of serendipity, when two fellow seeds peer asked me for seeds and shared with more details in Kenya SEEDs Circle proposal.

We were all very deligthed to witness our proposal going through at the beginning of the month (personally, this was my first successfull attempt after four failed attempts) and having received our first installment of 75,000 seeds.

Which brought forward new set of challenges, as the network had grown to almost 100 by then, thus requiring more seeds liquidity to continue onboarding people, which involves sharing about SEEDs and passing enough seeds to help the incoming person become resident on the spot and on their way to citizenship!

So our first distribution went towards Onboarding distributed to three people even without having a formal circle formation, contrary to expectation as suggested in MBC Circle Guidelines. The reason being the needs of an expanding network on the ground with enormous enthusiasm, needs tempering but at the same time needs nurturing carefully, and slowing down can help, but can be a bottleneck in unleashing the bottled up energy of individuals, regions, areas of the world, who have not been engaged in a meaningful way, like we are doing.

Since the distribution early this month, Kenya SEEDs network stands at 220+ and growing, being monitored by manually creating this sheet, devoting several selfless hours, to learn from the patterns to ensure how to nurture this growth with integrity, accountability and transparency.

Currently we only have one person in Ambassador Academy, while other two or three may join the next cycle, as we have solved data bundle issue this month as well as issue of good quality operating device for three members leading this growth.

In order to keep pace with the growth we are witnessing on ground, we must focus on local capacity building with same fervor, for which the current Ambassador Academy format, doesnt serve those needs effectively!?

Thus the need to create a hybrid model with Localized content focused on Action, while Globalized component shall focus on Personal Development, building relationships with Global Peers and Group Learning, with ultimate objective to push seeds liquidity through trained local ambassadors.

Thus hereby I am inviting other explorers, to help us out in this experiment of building capacity on the ground, by providing your valuable feedback on this huge ask of million+ seeds, which would be invested in nurturing and cultivating Human Capital, with a vision to form a Kenya SEEDs DHO, to address the most pressing issues of economic model currently being following by SEEDs, which doesnt allow everyday Kenyan to buy 100s or 1000s of seeds with their hard earned Kenyan Shillings and thus not truly making them feel part of the movement as a contributor!

Kenya SEEDs Academy proposal
Presented in Proposal Nursery Call today starts around 16min

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#2

Arya, thanks for posting that!

I have a couple of questions

  1. Have you coordinated this with the people from MBC who are doing localization of the Academy? Can you confirm that you have their support for the whole initiative?
  2. Did you confirm that the model of delivering the Academy in a workshop of 2-3 days is feasible/possible? Do you know what requirements do leaders of MBC have for someone to be leading the Academy?
  3. How much of the current campaign for Kenya have you spent and can you point to the records for that? (transparency and trust)
  4. ~30k Seeds for Ambassadors was the number when we graduated… right now it’s much lower and you should check how that is calculated and update it.

Otherwise - awesome development. I’d love to also see a local economy being built with Seeds - with so many people activating in the same place - I think it may be possible. :seedling:

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#3

Thank you Apostol, for your thoughtful questions. Please consider reading my replies to Dannie’s questions to the proposal on discord here.

  1. Having attended MBC calls on a regular basis since early this year, carefully observing, learning and even contributing thoughts. I can confidently say, I have been aware of the impetus for many pilots going for localization of their content. During those conversations, it was unclear if MBC was coordinating that effort, for Dannie suggested at times it would be nice if learning lessons from different experiments in different places were gathered. Which seemed more like a wish list or a bucket list, not sure if there was a solid working group, working on it and being compensated for their efforts. At this present moment the dialouge has just begun with me sharing the proposal today on Nursery call and on discord Coop channel, so we have another eight days for the same.

  2. Based on my personal experience, being part of the Academy and having organized multiple iterations of VeganWorld2026 convergence, which takes place over a weekend with a tightly packed schedule coordinated over several zoom rooms, I am confident we can deliver, but I would temper that confidence, by saying its an experiment for “learning by doing”, for “failing fast, learning faster”. Personally considering requirements of MBC is counter to the localization of content and efforts, but definitely I am personally very inspired from their work, with artifacts such as Academy Checklist to find possible content that can be delivered differently, efficiently and effectively, while certain content which should be delivered by Academy, to ensure the local peers get opportunity for interacting with global peers and vice versa. Though I dont have the details and from experience I can tell, to arrive to those details, we will need a commited team of 2 - 3 meeting atleast 2 - 3 times a week in addition to supporting local community gatherings, to ensure we can truly deliver localized content for locals, instead of sending all the traffic to global academy, which is counterproductive based on resources available with individuals locally.

  3. Our first installment of 75,000 has been spent for following 15,000 towards onboarding; 10,000 towards data bundle; and 22,500 towards devices, details have been documented on Kenya SEEDs discord server, while updates have been provided on SEEDs discord server in Kenya Regeneration channel. At this present moment, we are not tracking financial information on spreadsheets, with breakdown on seeds to shillings swap level details, but we definitely are tracking the growth of network and audit trailing the members to ensure we offer support for continuous growth in terms of liquidity, knowledge, as well as encouragement.

  4. Personally, there is an inherent issue with the economic model and discriminatory ways of seeds distribution for each cohort, which can be viewed as an incentive for early comers, but defeats the purpose of seeds movement building, if there aint enough seeds flowing. Thus it would be nice to hear MBC articulate those thoughts on calculation here for us to explore and evolve. But from our perspective, we aint going to be distributing 30,000 seeds in lump sum, nor are we there yet for those distribution which will be after September workshop, for which we are planning way in advance!

#4

I am very interested in following your progress, Aryabhatta, since what you have raised echos many of the concerns I have for other projects on the African continent. For example:

This is the main reason I haven’t formed a community yet in South Africa. The community I’d like to work with in Greyton all have this same problem, and if I am to be the bottleneck which solves this problem, I can’t see a way of successfully scaling any kind of project.

So, my question is: “How have expectations on the ground been managed?”
In other words, what expectations were set that encouraged the the 220+ people to come on-board and how has interest been maintained, particularly in the early days while there are not too many Seeds to go around?

I’d be very interested in anything you’ve written/recorded which addresses this topic.

Reading and supporting your proposal next! :seedling: :rocket:

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#5

Thanks for opening this topic and sharing your progress in Kenya. :purple_heart:

I like your proposal to weave in community building elements into the academy programme. My suggestion would be to be guided by the Design Principles for Effective Groups based on the prosocial framework:

  1. Shared identity and purpose
  2. Equitable distribution of contributions and benefits
  3. Fair and inclusive decision-making
  4. Monitoring of agreed behaviours
  5. Graduated responding to helpful and unhelpful behaviours
  6. Fast and fair conflict resolution
  7. Authority to self-govern (according to principles 1-6)
  8. Collaborative relations with other groups (using principles 1-7)

It all starts with a shared identity and purpose. :seedling::green_heart:

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#6

Brother Michael,
It would be interesting if you could elaborate a little bit more about your plans for Greyton. Some points that sticks out for me, from brief Wikipedia reading were as follows:

Village Layout

The various sized properties were made available to buyers of any race, nationality or religion at affordable prices. This was the only town in the Cape in which such land with full title deeds, water rights and grazing rights was for sale to anyone.

Shifting Economy

Long narrow plots that characterized the layout of the town continued to provide a food source for families, as well as a place to keep livestock for domestic use.

Modern Times

It is an extremely popular weekend and holiday destination for visitors who enjoy its combination of old-world charm and modern conveniences.

Regarding your inquiry below:

  • Good personal relationships with the network facilitator, by empowering them with insights, tactics and knowledge, entrusting them with graded responsibility, and nurturing them as future leaders.

  • Making liquidity available to their network, with careful monitoring, account keeping and understanding its a loan, returned when their network is funded.

  • Helping leaders understand fragile nature of SEEDs ecosystem, to allow them to take decisions and provide advice wisely, especially around distribution of seeds amongst peers and best practices around use of peer swap service.

  • Respect and Love, to nurture feeling of belonging in the SEEDs community, as well as learning about their context to develop long term friendships.

Though @erickflavour Erick would be the best source of truth to help us truly explore this topic.

#7

Sister @Kath.PlanetHive Kath,
Firstly, did you help Samarans with their identity and purpose discovery process?

Secondly, the list of points, guiding your thought process and subsequent framework for training is praise worthy.

Thirdly, could you please elaborate about yourself, since your knowledge around this subject and sharing thoroughly intrigues my interest, and I am sure others will benefit as well by learning about your background.

Fourthly, Kath you bring extraordinary knowledge and talent, thus I would like to hold onto your interest in best possible ways, thus sharing some information with you and other explorers here.

Current Reality

The academic proposal draft was born, out of an observed need to build capacity for rapidly growing Kenya Network. Some of the suggestions I have received from members of the Kenya Circle as well as peers from Hypha MBC can be summarized as follows:

  • Be paitent, get Hypha MBC onboard, as relationship with them is important and critical for our success.

  • Be aware, coordinate and learn from other Local Academy initiatives.

  • Be mindful of possible consequences that could emerge from pushing out liquidity in a region where seeds are known to be swaped by peers, defeating the purpose of creating local liquidity pool.

Comments

Requesting feedback from explorers, to guide the way forward. Here are some of my thoughts:

  • Coop proposal cycle, is very valuable community engaging mechanism. But its riddled with time delays, but its rhythmic pattern allows for meticulous and iterative planning with its ebb and flow activity cycle.

  • Time is of essence for our communities growth, both locally in Kenya as well as Globally. Because the current economic model may have serious gaps and Hypha reserves are limited, creating pressure as they burn through them at the rate they are currently, without accountability towards the seedizen, who are investing their time and effort to support the growth of our community to usher Regennaissance.

  • Tensions around compensations are real, especially since folks who are part of Hypha and MBC are being compensated for their time and efforts on regular basis, from seeds token sales, while highly engaged seedizens committing their time and efforts, may not be recognized, acknowledged or even considered (i.m.o.).

  • Hypha MBC folks have good intentions, and are trying their best to coordinate sensible growth of community, to propel our movement, but they may lack the diversity to represent world, or may have all the answers themselves, despite their claims of having them! Thereby becoming a bottleneck from alternative expressions which have not been sanctioned by them.

  • By securing the funding, by winning the trust of seedizen, shall allow liquidity for circle to modestly compensate (in seeds) devoted folks committing and engaged in building this alternate model, in itself shall become a new precedent others can follow. In the process we can hold ourselves accountable to community at large to continue enjoying their trust, instead of a small group of decision makers belonging to Hypha or MBC.

Please provide your honest criticism to what I have
shared above as my goal here is to learn diverse perspectives and as a Yankee would say “Criticism is a Sign of Caring”, thus I want to be reassured you all care!

#8

I LOVE THIS :slight_smile: I also really love how you’re showing up for the Kenya community :slight_smile: It’s very inspiring brother!

How would this occur? I’m most interested in what the intention of the campaign would be for? As in, what’s the goal/aim/mission? How do we know if the campaign was a success (what does success look like?)?

Just curious what the intent for this campaign is.

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#9

Thanks brother Arya for your very kind words. :two_hearts::raised_hands:

No, I wasn’t involved in any Samara processes but I am happy to learn how they discovered their shared identity and purpose.

Thirdly, could you please elaborate about yourself, since your knowledge around this subject and sharing thoroughly intrigues my interest, and I am sure others will benefit as well by learning about your background.

Sharing my ikigai with you in the hope it gives you an idea about myself.

Kath 💚 Ikigai
Kath 💚 Ikigai960×540 26.8 KB

Fellow climate activists and I are co-building PlanetHive, the safe climate action workspace.

As a general feedback, I like the suggestions you’ve received from members of the Kenya Circle and Hypha MBC:

Be paitent, get Hypha MBC onboard, as relationship with them is important and critical for our success.

Be aware, coordinate and learn from other Local Academy initiatives.

Be mindful of possible consequences that could emerge from pushing out liquidity in a region where seeds are known to be swaped by peers, defeating the purpose of creating local liquidity pool.

I don’t feel I am in a position to speak to your comments/tensions for several reasons:

  1. I don’t have any first hand experience with any of the involved circles you mentioned.
  2. I feel some of your comments go deeper than building a framework/workshop following the design principles for effective groups. I sense tensions on several topics/levels (e.g. ‘current economic model may have serious gaps…’), in particular re Hypha. I would have wished for your proposals to these tensions to kick start a discussion around it.
  3. Having said that I am wondering if there is maybe a better space to discuss your tensions. It’s not that I don’t value your insights, I do. At the same time I struggle to align this clearly with our shared purpose here at Renaissance Explorers, which is to ratify and evolve the Game Guide.

Maybe this newly created channel on discord around Conflict Resolution and Restorative Justice is the right place. I’ve also seen suggestions in various channels to take tensions re Hypha to their next Milestone meeting. :woman_shrugging:

I hope this helps a bit and you can see where I am coming from.

Go well!
:two_hearts::sparkles::rainbow:

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