A draft strategy for developing the Community programme and the participating community is here: draft.strategy 2021 02 12. Here are some of the principles.
- Acknowledge that the original demographic core in meet.coop is Anglophone, global-North, white, men; and move steadily towards a community whose demography is global North-South, global-majority, balanced women-men, multi-language.
- Adopt an approach that starts with solidarity economy formations in economically marginal communities in the Anglophone global-North - notably, in cities, and also in marginal rural regions.
- Assume that, the closer to the ground the practical focus gets, in terms of subsistence and austerity, the more prominent women and BIPOC are likely to be; so, get down to roots.
- Adopt solidarity/mutuality as the characteristic approach to economy. This embraces commoning, and the coop tradition and principles. It also embraces commitments described variously as solidarity economy, and many initiatives in circular and doughnut economy, partner-state local/regional economy, transition towns, fairtrade towns, local alternative currencies/mutual credit, etc.
- Reinforce and deepen the local-regional approach - typical in the above - with an orientation to fairtrade, food sovereignty and coop-to-coop inter-regional trade across global uneven development.
- Build out stepwise and via experiments, into a deepening practical capability for multi-language collaboration
- Hold economic activism at the centre rather than tech: this is the meet.coop core commitment to developing the commons-cooperative economy.