From my desk in Brussels, Belgium on yet another September 11

8 years ago today, a global event occurred which rocked the world as we knew it.  I was in East Africa on that day, and had coincidentally just discovered – via my interviews with Ashoka the previous week – that there was a rapidly growing industry out there of people like me who were stepping up to the plate to say, “We CAN affect major change in the world, and I have a plan for a part of it.”

Understanding that a social change industry was out there was the single most transformative piece of information I had ever received in my life to that point. For a social entrepreneur like me, who had been working alone under a rock to develop a change-creating internet presence from Uganda, it changed everything.

When the World Trade Towers were hit just a few days later, almost instantly, I understood 4 things at a very profound, soul-shaking level:

1. Our Global Systems were crumbling and would continue to do so;
2. The Social Change Industry was already laying the groundwork for new grassroots-driven systems to create a  change-driven economy;
3. The Internet would become the dominant force for creating and ushering in new micro and macro operational systems for the planet.
4. I wanted to help architect new ways for ordinary people everywhere to work collaboratively for change – each armed with our own pieces of the puzzle.

8 years after that first very viceral dramatization of how very fragile and weak our old global systems are, I see tremendous evidence that the Social Change industry has begun to penetrate and influence the daily decision making of consumers and governments.  We are no longer an industry, but a vibrant cross-dimensional sector of social enterprise, social investors, non-profits, for-profits, consumers, volunteers, beneficiaries and  supporters of our sector’s wide array of social change oriented products and delivery mechanisms.

We represent hope, and the world needs us.

I also see that we are just starting to understand a common need to be able to collaborate in more effective and meaningful ways.  At the SocialEdge website this month, Charles (HipBone) Cameron is hosting a discussion entitled:  Who will build a more efficient marketplace? For the record, I have been announcing online for months that as of 1 September 2009 I would be moving back into work-mode… My short answer to the SocialEdge question as I begin piecing the starting blocks together at internet4change.com is, “I’m ready to try, and I’ve got a plan.”

The ridiculous ambition behind that statement has caused me many sleepless nights of wondering, “Am I really the right person for this job?” At the end of the day, I see that I can, so I must.  I am currently reading “Founders at Work” by Jessica Livingston, and wrote an abridged version of the following statement on the title page earlier today:

It is our obligation as careholders of the new kind of world we hope to create, to recognize the need to invest and participate in developing new forms of governance – and that starts with governing ourselves.  As we collaborate more and more, the structures and systems within which we are accustomed to working will, by necessity, become stretched.  To collaborate with maximum effectiveness, we must find ways to make our old legal structures, our old moral boundaries, and our old economic models irrelevant to the task of mobilizing solutions.

I do not mean to suggest that we learn to work in a state of lawlessness.  On the contrary, we must each find the courage to understand and accept the current-system risks and constraints to innovation that we face, and start developing new norms for operating in the cross-dimensional space we share.

I foresee that if we work together to establish economically and administratively viable norms and systems for pooling our grassroots-level human talents, knowledge and financial capital, will we be able to kick social change into overdrive in my lifetime. The plan, of course, requires that we develop the plan collaboratively.

Because we can, we must. Cyberspace is not going away, and there are many tools here in this new reality to help us build what we need.   The piece of the puzzle that the Internet4Change concept offers is a framework for how we can start using our online tools to start viably collaborating more.

With the utmost respect for your unique small or large piece of the Better World Building puzzle, whoever you are, I invite you to participate in what’s happening at Internet4Change.com, as it continues to evolve.

I leave this now to go and watch the movie United 93 with my children, and spend some time discussing with them the importance of what the people on that plane did, the many lessons that September 11 taught us, how it affected me, and how it affected us all.   I engage with them tonight knowing that 8 years later, #i4c exciting global times ahead.

Looking forward to your comments and reactions.

#piece

Christina Jordan
Founding Collaborator
www.Internet4Change.com