2006 Equality Award Laureate
Catalytic Communities
| Laureate Country: Brazil |
| Project Countries: Brazil, Canada, India, Israel, Macedonia, Nigeria, Sudan, Togo, United States, and Worldwide |
| Website: www.catcomm.org |
| Video: 2006Videos/catalytic communities.mov |
Project Overview:
Catalytic has been slowly and carefully developing a unique Community Solutions Database online, a clearinghouse of thorough explanations of how communities solve their own problems, around the world. Now available in three languages, with over 120 projects, the database is growing quickly with recent improvements in the technology. Any community, anywhere on the globe, can add their local innovation to the CSD. This is one of the database's unique characteristics: it is open to all who feel they are successfully addressing local challenges. Over 20,000 visitors monthly consult CatComm's website for community-generated solutions.
Problem Addressed:
Communities across the world are using local knowledge to address their most immediate challenges and needs. They are building community sewage systems and daycare centers. They are taking local youth on fieldtrips and teaching them the urgency of preventing HIV. Their elderly are being cared for in "day centers" while adult children are away at work. Their schools are being saved by residents who organize to keep them open and thriving.
What is lacking in community development worldwide is access to these solutions. What is needed is increased visibility and networking amongst these grassroots, small-scale initiatives, some of which reach only a dozen people but which are, nonetheless, contributing in significant ways to the lives of those twelve. Others have grown to reach thousands, through local ingenuity.
Technology Solution:
Catalytic Communities' focus on developing a global network of communities generating and sharing solutions requires a strong local/global infrastructure. As a result, they have developed a combination of two complementary and mutually reinforcing technologies: (1) Their interactive website featuring the world's only grassroots Community Solutions Database (CSD) at www.catcomm.org. The CSD and other online tools make searchable, detailed, community-generated solutions to everyday challenges available across languages and borders; and (2) A unique community networking hub - they call the "Casa"- in Rio de Janeiro. Seen as a model by technology centers in other parts of the world, the Casa offers a space for face-to-face events and Web access for community leaders across the Rio de Janeiro metro region. By developing carefully crafted virtual and physical spaces for community exchange, Catalytic Communities is creating for the first time in history the basic infrastructure that allows communities to share solutions across borders.
