Eco-mUNITY is working to provide as many laptops to third world children as possible. Each laptop for which we successfully fundraise means one will be sent to Eco-mUNITY, which Eco-mUNITY will then donate to the Portland community. These laptops will be implemented into the free informational kiosks that Eco-mUNITY will install around Portland. For more information about how Eco-mUNITY is working to educate the Portland community while providing third world children with learning tools, continue to read about our project below. The best way to get involved is to contribute today! Hurry, the opportunity to get involved ends with the holiday season, and this is a gift that truly provides benefits for many people. Making a donation in someone’s name can be a great gift, too.

Eco-mUNITY is actively working in the Richmond and Montavilla communities in Portland, Oregon, though this template can be used anywhere. Through a four-phase plan, Eco-mUNITY will work with the communities of Portland to provide learning tools here and in less fortunate communities across the world. Eco-mUNITY will work to provide free wi-fi internet access, linking community members to one another, and free access nodes through kiosks that will be placed throughout the interactive communities. This infrastructure then will be used to link those in the community who wish to provide services to those who may seek them locally, without the need for a storefront, keeping local business local, and thus enhancing the sustainability of the communities we affect. The project will be done face to face, door to door, in a grass-roots format, and paper-free to boot. Eco-mUNITY is working to increase the sustainability of Portland while increasing the sustainability of our business model at the same time. Environmental concerns and awareness permeate our implementation strategies. Keeping the fundamental services available for free ensures that poverty does not overwhelmingly prohibit access to bicycles, computers, or the internet. Get involved today!

Phase 1
Eco-mUNITY is actively working this holiday season to raise enough funds to provide at least one child of a third world country with a laptop through the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program. If successful, a second laptop will be sent to Eco-mUNITY, which will then be donated to the Portland community to be used for Phase 2.

Phase 2
Eco-mUNITY will use each laptop earned from phase one as a component in a kiosk placed within the Portland community. Each kiosk will be an information node to teach and learn about community news and events, to meet and interact with local community members, and to provide and seek local services peer-to-peer. Environmental and sustainability awareness permeate our building designs.

Phase 3
Eco-mUNITY will build a wi-fi mesh network from the grass-roots up, providing free and accessible internet access using existing internet connections. Top down solutions seem to be ridden with issues. Grass-roots solutions have worked quite well in third world implementations, and they provide the model for this project.

Phase 4
Eco-mUNITY will build a community collaboration and listing service which will enable interaction, collaboration, and communication. This service can be used for chatting, coordinating community campaigns, voting on community issues, informing the community about news and events, and telling you when and where Eco-mUNITY will be going next!
Richmond Eco-mUNITY: Learn more…
Montvilla Eco-mUNITY coming soon!

“What, exactly, does Eco-mUNITY DO?” you may ask. Well, we shall endeavor over the next few weeks to outline exactly that. Overall, we put the “e” in Eco-mUNITY when we plug the dot into the com by providing free wi-fi access, the “eco” in Eco-mUNITYwhen we plug the community into sustainability, and the “community” is put into Eco-mUNITY citizen by citizen. Thank you for reading this, learning about Eco-mUNITY, and in doing so, thank you for participating.

REAListic optimIST has become concerned that the amazing connection capability of the internet and cellular technology has been causing the opposite phenomenon. More and more, people are staring at their cel phones or listening to their ipods instead of talking to people encountered on their daily commute; or people stay home and watch TV or surf the net to find their entertainment instead of going to local community meeting spots. As a result, one driving purpose of Eco-mUNITY is to build an infrastructure to enable more community collaboration because that collective experience will transform our experience of life by increasing the ease of intentional and co-created community.

Yet, if having a conversation with someone in China is indicitive of people coming together, and texting our next door neighbor is a sign that we need to get out more, where is the tipping point? At what point do we value our ability to enrich each other’s lives enough to brave the threat of misplacing trust? Just where is the boundary where community is sufficiently diverse yet tightknit?

Eco-mUNITY will seek to highlight the artistic expression contained within the community to amplify the color and characteristics which make up each community identity and the mythos of each community story. Eco-mUNITY will invite artisitc collaboration with a community focus to incorporate in each community effort. You are the face of Eco-mUNITY.

Eco-mUNITY will also help to flesh out the flavor and identity of each community by providing a community map with several layers, each of which show the location of particular individuals, services, notable sites, and the like both from Eco-mUNITY’s website, and from publicly accessible kiosks. Eco-mUNITY envisions these kiosks to be able to not only provide information, but to also be tied to Eco-mUNITY’s Community Bike Project, which is designed to function like FleXcar, only with bicycles in order to empower the expedient and eCo-locomotion of community citizens.

Eco-mUNITY will work with already existing organizations to help them to better work with one another to serve the community more effectively. Eco-mUNITYwill also put together community events designed to bring people together to meet each other, and to engage in the the aforementioned community dialogue in order to empower micro-democracy. Eco-mUNITY intends to work with neighborhood organizations and community members to facilitate direct democracy (or as Democracy Catalyst likes to say, “foment micro-democracy”) at the community level.

There is more to come!

Click the button above to sign up for Dreamhost hosting at a discounted rate. Eco-mUNITY will pay some of the hosting cost for you, and in return, Eco-mUNITY earns some dough, too. (Hey, we have to pay for this site somehow!)