How We can Avert our Society’s Drift toward Disaster by Charting a Different Course

It’s time to swim perpendicular to the tide, time to become a real citizen, and time to practice democracy like my life depends on it, because it does. And start off in this new direction through a one year life experiment I’m calling The Year of Living Locally, which I’ll blog here on Shareable.net.

16 Tips to Crowdfund a Tool Library In Your Town

“It’s amazing to see how positively people react to the idea of a tool library, and crowdfunding provides the ideal way to get the word out and raise money to get one started. Crowdfunding provides a way for communities to gauge support, and if that support is there—which it often is—it gives them the momentum and resources to hit the ground running.”

Why is it harder to ask than to give?

Just over a year ago I was given a ‘community cake’. A cake tin full of all the ingredients needed to make white chocolate and blackberry cake. All the ingredients that is, except for one cup of sugar. It was a birthday cake and my challenge was to ask a neighbour I didn’t know for a cup of sugar. I have to say my initial reaction was one of fear. I thanked my friend, but I was also angry that she’d put me in the position of having to follow through – you can’t do a PhD on neighbourhood sharing and then chicken out of asking a neighbour for sugar!