• What's the issue that concerns you?

Full social inclusion of people with disabilities

• What's the idea?

People with disabilities form a distinct culture and subcultures. Various forms of Sign language are on cultural product. The seven principles of Universal Design express the community’s desire for full social inclusion and point to a solution.

In developing nations tourism often provides a large percentage of national income. The tourism industry builds or strongly influences infrastructure development in these regions. Until the industry fully embraces people with disabilities as a valued customer base, rather than a legally-mandated set-aside group, by adopting Universal Design infrastructure in destination nations will be exclusionary by design.

When they adopt Universal Design the tourism industry an authentic partner in the aspirations, rights, and culture of the disability community. (See http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/5951 )

• Where and how has it already succeeded?

In various demonstration projects such as the islands of Tasmania and Tenerife or the cities of Socorro in Brazil, and Takayama in Japan.

• Where else might it be useful?

There is a discussion on that at:

http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/5952

As Boomers age the need for this solution will “suddenly” arise in every country.

• What more can we learn?

Antika Sawadsri is a Thai PhD candidate living in the UK. She did a study on people’s emotional response to using Universal Design in their homes in Thailand. It was revealing on the family roots of prejudice and offers predictors about larger-scale initiatives to include people with disabilities in society. It should be replicated in other countries.

Julie Howell of Fortune Cookie web design together with Travolution did a study of the accessibility of travel web sites in the UK. All failed. The study should be replicated on the top travel information web sites for the top five countries that people with disabilities in the UK travel to with results forwarded to the tourism ministries in those countries alerting them to the opportunity costs of inaccessibility.

Jan Intarapasan is studying accessibility at heritage tourism sites in the six Greater Mekong countries (Thailand, Vietnam, China (Yunnan), Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia.) Indian Tourism Minister Ambika Soni just spoke out this week on the necessity of inclusion for people with disabilities at India’s historic tourism sites. International and regional tourism bodies should develop concrete action plans on this point. It will soon become international Human Rights law under Article 30 of the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).

Similar items are regularly reviewed at http://www.Rollingrains.com

Hi Scott;

Thanks for opening our conversation here with such a concise and inclusive response! You have laid out the situation in a comprehensive fashion, and I note your particular concern with "destination nations".

A couple of recent conversations here on the edge have dealt with social entrepreneurial work in conflict situations, countries at war, with civil disturbances, etc, and with the cultural impact of social entrepreneurial work in places where small traditional cultures may be at risk, not just in terms of their artifacts but of their pace of life, their sense of time...

I am coming to feel that how we prioritize our efforts may be dependent on a whole complexity of different drivers, personal interest of course being a highly significant motivator - but how do we weigh, eg, issues to do with landmines in Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia, which cause disabilities, and issues to do with the facilitation of those with disabilities?

I ask this not because I wish to prioritize one over the other, but because I think our innate tendency (at least in the west) to think topically rather than contextually is liable to blindside us, and that somehow we need to begin seeing an interwoven "bigger picture" as well as our own particular points of focus.

And I am bringing it up here in response to your post and asking you about it, not in disagreement but because you have really done a superb job of expressing your point of focus, leaving me with little or nothing to add along the same lines besides my admiration and gratitude.

Thanks again.

Hi Charles,

Sorry to delay in responding. I don't see a comment alert function here and I am competing for some funding on this work that otherwise distracted me from returning to this discussion without the reminder.

I haven't read the book you mentioned but I will look it up.

I very much appreciate the challenge you lay out to habitual thinking. As some who has been part of the disability community since 1972 I "think differently" as a consequence of lifestyle. We joke among ourselves that it is always a translation process to take ideas that are just common sense within the disability community and express them to "temporarily able-bodied people" (TABs).

How to prioritize?

Priorities arise from within our community as a political process.

A core value of the Disability Rights Movement has been participatory decision-making

alternately expressed as "democracy", "interdependence", or "inclusion." It is captured in our old dictum, "Nothing about us without us."

We call our non-profits "DPOs" - Disabled People's Organizations and we are united both within our (disability) cultural groupings and geographically. Strong external partnerships exist with the World Bank, UN, and other development agencies. Yesterday, for example, we launched the Disability Rights Fund to "provide financial support for human rights advocacy in the developing world and Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union...to empower disabled persons organizations around the world to effectively implement and monitor the CPRD [UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities]."

In effect, we have spent the past 30 years refining our priorities into a human rights document with the power of law. The concision of my post comes from the fact that I am the "go to guy" for tourism in Article 30 of the CRPD, "Participation in cultural life, recreation, leisure and sport."

Priorities also arise within our community as intellectual and social processes.

Several years ago I launched academic discussion on the topic of tourism and disability into one of our Disability Studies journals (Review of Disability Studies). Four international and several regional conferences on tourism and disability have followed. Paralympics, inclusive dance companies, disabled performers, and local events like last month's "Spotlight: An Asian Festival of Inclusive Arts in Cambodia" all arise from and contribute to the prioritization process in terms of our culture. All these are run by citizens with disabilities taking charge of agenda-setting in their own countries.

In the countries you mentioned, or the Greater Mekong Region nations more generally, international development funds have been solicited for major tourism infrastructure projects. I facilitate a social enterprise incubation network of disabled entrepreneurs that includes inventors, researchers, and business owners from the region. Underway is DPO consultation on prototype accessible public toilets for the region, redesign of a Thai resort city in partnership with the mayor, trainings for tourism policymakers and hotel professionals. An all-Asia DPO conference on railway accessibility just finished in Dhaka, Bangladesh followed by a national meeting in the Philippines.

In the case of Laos, to address one of your examples, grassroots programs for survivors of landmines Laos includes training as musicians at tourist sites. That is, the "bigger picture" priorities are coordinated within the disability community to allow a seamless transition for someone with a landmine injury to full social participation. Planning includes both individuals and the community as a whole. We focus sharply on our community's needs and priorities because we know that our tool

Universal Design -- spins off social benefit for those who will never self-identify as disabled (seniors) and all those who simply prefer products, places, policies, and interactions on a more human scale.

BTW, Steve, seeing your portrait mountain-climbing at http://www.Rollingrains.com , I'm wondering whether you know Rene Daumal's book, Mount Analog? Daumal was a mountaineer / idealist / mystic / writer in C20 France, and his book is a little known gem... You might enjoy it.

Sorry, in that second post I meant Scott, not Steve!

Maybe I have missed it, but is there a global operation that tracks change opportunities that can be nudged into activity by persuasion at the highest levels of world power? E.g., I heard that in the 80s the Reagan administration cut off funds for secular education in Pakistan, thus making madrassas the dominant option for many children there. How about an under-the-radar think tank notworthy for its ready access to the Gates and Buffett networks, possessed of up-to-the-minute global information on the movements of advanced thought in governments and large corporate powers, and prepared to make grounded suggestions everywhere?

Michael

How about an under-the-radar think tank notworthy for its ready access to the Gates and Buffett networks, possessed of up-to-the-minute global information on the movements of advanced thought in governments and large corporate powers, and prepared to make grounded suggestions everywhere?

That would be quite a trick! I'm working on a form of concept-mapping that would allow decision makers to see something of the complexity of situations that's very different from current data-visualization tools and modeling software, basing it on (a) quote and anecdote as the units of data, since they carry the human voice, meaning, passion, etc and can therefore "speak" holistically for stakeholders, and (b) a normal upper limit of 10 or 12 nodes, since humans can generally hold only about six or seven "clusters" of thought in mind at one time.

I'm slowly unfolding this work on a blog at "hipbone out loud" at http://hipboneoutloud.wordpress.com/ .

One person whose work has impacted mine significantly, and who tracks both problems and solutions globally, is Anthony Judge at UIA - see the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential at http://www.uia.org/encyclopedia/ and his own, often brilliant / quirky papers at http://www.laetusinpresens.org .

I take kind of a simple, empirical, historical approach. I'm thinking that it's not so difficult to track differences in consciousness, since there has been such massive change in knowledge and emotional agendas in the past 200 years. We have so much data! Waziristan can be diagnosed. [I have a little case study vis-a-vis Mahmood Ahmadinejad on my blog --http://michaeldee.livejournal.com/] Even "the narcissism of elites" might not be out-of-bounds. Get Michael Milken on board.

I'm not sure quite what you envision when you say "Waziristan can be diagnosed" - my own take on Ahmadinejad is that we need to understand his form of Mahdism, which can best be approached (it seems to me) via the rhetorical insights of Stephen O'Leary's Arguing the Apocalypse (Oxford) and the Shi'ite specifics of Abdulaziz Sachedina's Islamic Messianism (SUNY). But that's a field of particular interest to me, and takes us far from the Social Entrepreneurial zone...

He's Terry Hallman, founder of P-CED who used the opportunity presented by an appointment to the Clinton re-election committee to put forward a model for poverty elimination based on a business paradigm deploying profit to community/social purpose. 3 years later, he leveraged a microfinance bank project in Russia based on this principle and by 2004, the UK had introduced CIC form of company incorporation which reflected this approach.

Rather than delay and publish as a book, his paper was distributed open source, free for anyone to deploy as a business model.

Scaling up the Russian project, it is now the basis of another groundbreaking strategy paper for a microeconomic Marshall Plan and targets Ukraine's manifest social problems with a nil overall cost projected outcome.

It has potential to be used anywhere a combination of full and partial cost recovery components can be identified and deployed in concert toward targeted economic development.

Hello again, Jeff:

Is either the original or the second (microeconomic strategy) paper available online? If not, can you tell us more?

Charles, Yes it is. But first, there's a couple of very recent news items to refer to. First is reported by Bloomberg with the title - Sachs presses Marshall Plan for the Poor.

Earlier this month, the Washington Post published an article by Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz from which I extracted this statement:

"We could have had a Marshall Plan to help desperately poor countries, winning the hearts and maybe the minds of Muslim nations now gripped by anti-Americanism. In a world with millions of illiterate children, we could have achieved literacy for all

for less than the price of a month's combat in Iraq."

Both ideas the author has advocated for repeatedly over the last decade. In fact you will find the argumemts for deploying Smart Power, the focus of a recently formed US think tank, in a third paper advocating a social enterprise development package for an Islamic community in crisis.

So, let me now refer to the first paper which 3 years ago I tracked down to the Clinton Presidential Library. Although Open Source, they consider it part of campaign records and won't distribute. However there is a synopsis online:

http://www.p-ced.com/History/tabid/57/Default.aspx

This goes on to leverage the Tomsk initiative in Russia, in the wake of the Defense Enterprise Fund where large sums have gone missing. So an alternative to top-down is given a try.

The third paper comes next and almost immediately someone tries to circumvent the plan. This time around there copyright to contend with and in an unprecedented move, blocks his own project for the sake of ethical integrity, then launches a broadside on the corrupt authorities, being unaware that there's a revolution brewing, following the murder of Giorgey Gongadze who also spoke about corruption.

http://www.p-ced.com/Projects/Ukraine/CrimeanTatars/tabid/63/Default.aspx http://eng.maidanua.org/node/331

Here's where I come in, finding him destitute, living in a tent fasting for economic rights in the US. I resolve to start the social business model in the UK to provide the revenue for overseas operations in childcare reform.

A draft strategy is delivered to the Eurasia foundation, who over the next 3 years align their efforts to the same objectives finally launching the East Europe foundation only this year after Davos, where Bill Gates prescribes Creative Capitalism, which seems to reflect ideas from paper 1.

Now, in March 2006 I stumble on the Death Camps story which identifies the severity of conditions in some institutions. The story get written up, with a proposition for intervention and a year later, their goverment announce proposals for a network of 400 rehab centres.

http://eng.maidanua.org/node/581

Later in 2006, the Marshall Plan is complete and in the hands of their government, just before being dissolved. It it not until August last year that we go public.

So, there's only one Marshall Plan that can be found online which is more than rhetoric. This is a condensed version and describes a nil overall cost strategy, combining elements of more than and less than full cost recovery as a holistic strategy to combat poverty and its social consequences.

http://www.p-ced.com/Projects/Ukraine/AMarshallPlanforUkraine/tabid/69/Default.aspx

Thanks.

It's good to have all the appropriate links in one place, where they can easily be referenced.

It may be a bit of a stretch, but are you aware of Tom Barnett and Stephen DeAngelis' Enterra Solutions approach, and is it in the same ballpark? It's my understanding that they are trying for a modular approach which can be varied according to place and circumstance..

As I read it, probably at the opposite end of the spectrum Charles.

Opposite end in terms of implicit values, or of style of approach? I won't ask for your critique unless you can manage it in a nutshell, because I'm sure you have other things to do - but I do appreciate the continuity of your presence here, and your continuing participation across a whole range of events.

What I read fron Enterra's web site is the offering of a private security business providing protection in ongoing and post-conflict situations. Interestingly both organisations regard the events of 9/11 to have significant influence. Ours is a shoestring operation in comparison which aims to identify potential conflicts before they happen, and the significance of 9/11 to us, is 5 years before, having predicted that failing to tackle the economically disenfranchised was to engender acts of terrorism against ourselves.

Our approach has been to leverage development aid funding to be deployed as investment capital to create sustainable business, with a revenue engine provided by business to fund research and advocacy. It would be closest to Yunus's social business enterprise and Gates Creative Capitalism - as I read it.

Rather than focus on microcredit alone, our aim is to deliver holistic plans where components achieving more than full cost recovery offset others which are less than full cost recovery. For example the microeconomic Marshall Plan as a nil overall cost strategy.

I see london as a financial ,center of our world . London is so close to outher countries , My dream has always been to help all people and all countries . I see the word FUTURE can unite all . Iv already spent all that i have and am and my health , years , only to be . see the facts on my webpage is www.futurevisionaries.com I do wish that i can find partners to help cary the global FUTURE tourch . Its very hard on me an my health what has happened to me back in sept 2004 . here in th USA . Im fighting 24/7 I feel alone being one and poor . I hope my ideas will help all . PS i do email people alot I reach out its not spam . I have been Covered up by the media for years . I use open formes To post . I lamost lost my membership with ecademy do to complaints . If you want me to me email you tell me . also you can use my email milmntec@btinet.net Main email . There is a wolrd pend For the word FUTURE in USA for 7 years search www.uspto.gov search Trademarks serial NO 76634950 FUTURE , Search 76133905 Word FUTURE pend filed year 2000 ; Also Search www.patent.gov.uk Search Trademarks NO. 2290533 Just alowed after 8 years Word FUTURE pend in Great Britain and northern Ireleand The Mark shown Below has been Registered Under NO .2290533 as of the date 30 november 2001 . FUTURE The mark Has been registerd in respect of ; Class 01 ;02;03;04;05;06;o7;08;010;11;12; 13;14;15;16;17;18;19;20;21;22;23;24;25;26;27;28;29;30;31;32;33;34;39;40; Wolrd pend for FUTURE with people and their own ideas and their country ideas For FUTURE think of all the people working together all the countries FUTURE Ideas .. ; we show usage threw the people and their ideas . Kindly Im not the best typer Im under great preshure with the attacks from see on my web page . I need help my self so I can help the people .. ; My father has always said it only takes 1 To belive in you , and to listen To you I dont understand kent all they want to do is to take your ideas .. not work with you . I just recived a leter From lincoln financial They want me not to use the world FUTURE or any one asocaityed with me for anything financial . all they have is hello FUTURE , Future lincloln financial . They aply after me regardles of my R trademarks in USA in 1999 , and time alowances . They use my own ideas vs me . I have also reached out to so meny . I would not wish on any one what i have been threw and going threw . I think of all the people who im fighting for The poor who dont have a FUTURE voice . best KGA www.futurevisionaries.com Kent G anderson FUTURE sm/tm 925 N Griffin Bismarck ND 58501 USA 1701-223-0639

Hi Kent:

You write:

-- Kindly Im not the best typer Im under great preshure with the attacks from see on my web page . I need help my self so I can help the people ..

Could you say in a single phrase or sentence what the word FUTURE can provide us with?

I am setting up North America's first social stock exchange, called the Green Stock Exchange (http://greensx.com), which will finance and trade shares publicly in social businesses, just like NASDAQ and AIM London Stock Exchange. It is a eBAY.com like system for trading shares in social businesses, connected to a green social network ("like MYSPACE and FACEBOOK") with a triple bottom line (economic + social + environmental). It will be ready about summer 2008. I have not made any press releases yet, so you are the first ones to know about it.

A "social business" as a profit making business that also benefits society. Example like Granneem Bank (Micro-financing), Green Energy...etc. My idea is to become a catalyst to finance, support and grow more social businesses.

Do you think there is a place for a social stock exchange vs. traditional stock exchanges?

Do you think Direct Public Offerings are the way to go or IPOs for your exchange?

Would brokerage firms and brokers be interested in participating?

How would investors react?

Any ideas appreciated.

I have also set-up a forum before the launch at: http://greensx.com/forum/

Hi David:

It seems to me that for your idea to succeed, you need to be very clear in what you tell people. At the moment, you seem to be in the "discussion and development of ideas" stage, asking us (for instance) whether brokerages would be interested. If I'm right about that, I'd suggest making that clear at the outset, saying (eg) "I am thinking about setting up North America's first social stock exchange" rather than "I am setting up North America's first social stock exchange".

It seems to me that at a certain point you would have received and assimilated all the answers we here, and others elsewhere, can offer you in response to the very important questions you raise, and that you will then be able to assess your hopes in terms of what the best format for achieving them would be, and proceed to business planning. But that needs to happen after you've achieved clarity on the questions you're raising here.

I hope you'll take my comments kindly - I think the idea is an interesting one.

*

I'm also tempted by the thought that if there are three bottom lines, then there are three evaluations and possibly all three should be represented directly in all transactions. Is that what you envision? I may not be being very clear here myself, but if the "value" of a share is (x) dollars plus (y) social improvement plus (z) environmental benefit, do I pay x dollars for it, or do I have to contribute social improvement and environmental benefit (eg in carbon credits) myself?

A gift economy, if i understand it rightly, reciprocates the human value of transactions, not merely their "cash" value

but how one institutionalizes that currently escapes me.

I hope I'm not being too impossibly idealistic / theoretical here, I have the sense that there's a question worth asking here, but I don't yet have quite the right angle to approach it from.

Dear Charles,

The social stock exchange (Green Stock Exchange) connected to a green social network at http://greensx.com is already in the beta stage and will begin trading the Summer 2008. This is not just a paper idea...

This forum is to provide a discussion for new ideas. Since social exchanges are a new type of beast, the model will be evolving.

Our evaluation system guidelines is part of our Green Business Certified program. You can see the guidelines at http://greensx.com/info/listing_social_guidelines.php

Hey,

Just my 2 cents: Does it really pay off to differentiate between social and "normal" stock exchange? So many traditional companies are "going green" (Toyota, Ferrari, GE, Marks & Spencer just to name a few). How could you integrate these two approaches and become a lobbyist of triple bottom-line to be included in the traditional stock exchange?

Or maybe these two could co-exist with "real" social enterprises and traditional firms both applying for your "socially meaningful company" status. I.e. any company could get competitive advantage by being recognized with that SE label.

Anywho, whatever you decide to do you will face a lot of challenges from legal and financial world. Be prepared for that. However, I really like your idea and hope it will succeed.

-Tomi

Hi Tomi, and thanks for contributing.

I hope David will clarify his project and the considerations behind it further.

Dear Tomi,

Our green stock exchange is focused on social businsses. A social business is a company that makes mony and benefits society.

The examples you cited are not social businesses.

Financial funding for small green businesses are scarce with public money; SustainAbility, a consultancy and think tank, says " money remains the main headache for social businesses; 72% of the social businesses surveyed cited raising money as their main challenge". The Green Stock Exchange (GREENSX) intend to bridge this funding gap. It allows investors of green businesses to have more options for quicker exit strategies. Many businesses with triple bottom lines (values, social and economic) make plenty of money - look at Aveda, Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, The Body Shop, Smith and Hawkins. It is possible to be both ecologically sustainable and economically profitable.

Furthermore, 99% of small businesses do not have access to public funds, yet small business has added 20 million new jobs over the last 15 years to the US economy, using less than 1% of publicly traded equity capital. Therefore, it is obvious that if small businesses had more access to public money via the Green Stock Exchange (GREENSX), they could propel the economy forward in a spectacular fashion.

Domini Fund http://www.domini.com/domini-funds/Domini-Social-Equity-Fund/index.htm

Calvert Foundation http://www.calvertfoundation.org/

SeaChange http://www.seachangecap.org/ SeaChange is a nonprofit finance firm that raises growth capital for high-quality nonprofit organizations from wealthy individuals, foundations, and other funders.

Global Commercial Microfinance Consortium http://www.deutsche-bank.de/csr/en/pool/Soziales_3247.htm The Global Commercial Microfinance Consortium is an investment fund that aims to build stronger ties between local banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs), facilitating access to local currency loans and helping to remove foreign exchange burdens for MFIs, thus lowering end-borrower costs.

Social Funds Socially responsible fund investing info http://www.socialfunds.com/

David, I registered on your forum as I run a social business that develops software. Now waiting on a confirmation to join. You might also join a few of us on the Google group, yunus_discussion where similar thoughts are being bounced around.

Personally, I feel there's a greater need for simple seed funding but we can talk about that at length elsewhere.

Jeff

The GIA

I think we need a Global Intelligence Agency, the "GIA". It will be different from the CIA, because the CIA--which was originally called the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)--is a paramilitary organization. Besides gathering information, they shoot rockets at terrorist leaders from drones, kill "bad guys", interrogate prisoners, etc. This is all appropriate to the level of consciousness at which they presume they are operating.

But the GIA would operate and a different level of consciousness. It will only handle information. It would gather it and dispense it. I think of it as headquartered in Switzerland, and have state-of-the-art global knowledge handling technology.

Don't be afraid of the idea of "level of consciousness". It is a decidedly hard-edged foundation in fact. You don't have to go back far in history to see it exemplified. Geology as a science only got going good at the start of the nineteenth century. By 1850 the notion of "deep time" (the earth is millions of years old) had its scientific foundation, although very, very few people comprehended it. So, when Darwin came along in 1957 and fractured the biblical paradigm of human history, his information was not totally new. But it was still "scandalous" to the vast majority. But by the end of the nineteenth century the new, very small, place of man in the universe had begun to catch on. And when in 1905 Einstein rendered the whole universe accessible, he was just continuing the groundwork for the modern mind. All of us are part of one humanity. The picture of the big blue marble in the sky in 1968 finally created a full-color ikon to express that.

But still, in 2008, there are a lot of people who don't get that. The GIA would tackle that problem.

So, knowledge information is important.

Then there is emotional information. While knowledge was progressing by leaps and bounds in the nineteenth century, emotions were still dark and brutal. The ivory trade in the Belgian Congo at the turn of the twentieth century is just one small case of the sickening course of colonialism that was conducted by Europe. (That case was the basis for Joseph Conrad's novelette The Heart of Darkness in 1905, and The Heart of Darkness in turn was the inspiration for Coppola's 1979 movie, Apocalypse Now.)

The tribalism of the first World War that used machine guns and artillery instead of swords and arrows brought so much death and destruction that Europe went into deep shock. Out of that shock came what Keynes called "the Cathaginian Peace" in 1919, an arrangement that led directly to Hitler, the Holocaust and the death of 50 million europeans in the ten years between 1936 and 1945. Out of that cataclysm came The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations, fragile stabs at a state of consciousness higher than the past.

So, we know all this. We know that the world still needs knowledge and cures for the atavistic fears of bygone ages. And we know what alleviates those fears. The GIA would take this knowledge, and parcel it out into local, regional and global programs.

Michael:

Have you looked at Robert Steele (ex-CIA) and his work at OSS.net? He's working in roughly the same ballpark as your Global Intelligence Agency. His book, The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political - Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption is available on Amazon, as is Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time.

I've posted my own ideas along similar lines at http://publicintelligenceagency.com/ .