Provision - A Commoning Space

The Problem

The COVID-19 crisis and its unexpected challenges cause many already established systems to struggle with delivering their services and adapting to the various new needs that emerge in face of the rapid, radical changes. So has the Coronavirus pandemic led to lockdown measures all over Europe, which resulted in many previously unthought-of needs, such as alternatives to traditional schooling, new models for public health or psychological support during isolation. While this problem is decentralized, communication barriers and the competitiveness of marketplaces hinder the ability of local groups and individuals to generate context-specific solutions from the bottom up and find the adequate human and physical resources to implement them. How can we become more efficient in tackling unexpected challenges and at the same time structurally enhance our ability to realize our human potential?

We propose Provision, a convivial tool[1], with which project ideas are being matched with enabling human and physical resources. Provision enhances our individual freedom, while enriching our relationships and interdependence. To allow users to express their meaning in action, projects and events can be proposed, favors can be requested and resources offered. Provision empowers civil initiatives that are tailored to fit the specific local reality, in order to enhance our ability to collectively satisfy our emergent needs. The interaction and collaboration that is manifested on our platform, will have a commoning character, connecting available means in a systematic regenerative and circular way.

Features

Our Web-App has three features: The Commoning Space, the Project Space and the Profile Page.

The Commoning Space

Proposals are visible to everyone on a commoning streamline, while for people that are signed up, proposals are adjustable as well as commentable. There are three kinds of proposals:

Favors Favors are placed, with a concrete time-span and, if needed, location attached (they can be online favors too). For example, people who need plasma from a COVID-19 survivor, can ask for someone with the same blood type in their region or a person that needs someone to go shopping for them can call for it. Optionally, one can also attach a specific required skill/expertise, like a nurse or an electrical engineer.

Resources Next, resources such as materials, tools or facilities, can be offered or requested. Due to lockdown measures worldwide, a lot of materials became redundant or facilities unused, which could be, however, valuable for other projects. For example, the cotton bags intended to give away at a cancelled conference, could be sewn into masks in the conference hall by a local project. The offers or requests that are placed, contain a description of the materials or tools of interest. Moreover, one need to indicate if the resource is available for temporary or indefinite use.

Project Ideas People can propose project ideas, which they can directly take the lead on or leave it for others to implement. Under each idea there is a discussion ground for collectively finding solutions to problems.

The Project Space - A subspace of each project idea.

If you click on the project idea, you enter a space for only that project idea in which the human skills and physical resources (materials, tools and facilities) are specified that are needed, and nearby equivalents are recommended. If a human or physical resource would be useful, the project members could request it through a key pattern. The reverse way is also possible, users can directly offer their help or resources to the project idea. That way the project can be matched to valuable human and physical resources and through a forum-styled environment this can be advanced and implemented.

Profile Page

On the User’s Profile Page you can see the interests, skills and location which the user can choose to show publicly. Moreover, the set of recent activities and posts of the user(s) themselves is listed and linked. To foster trust, recommendations can be given to users by others based on their experience.

Current Technical Structure

Provision is a web application written with react for which the communication with a mongo database is done through an API written with python's flask. The app uses react's convenient components for overall maintainable structure and hooks to provide efficient asynchronous loading. Currently, the main components are a user feed updating the user about projects in the area and a project managing page for the user's own suggested projects. Future plans are to expand the filter possibilities to search for matching posts, add social features such as a chat, and more extensive project managing tools. The application is served from a VPS using nginx and there is no security in place yet to safeguard the server or its communication with clients. In addition to adding security in the communication, the application should be properly password protected.

Impact on the crisis

With Provision, more needs will be met, more solutions generated and implemented from the bottom up and more resources used where they are at value. In other words, there will be a more effective local adaptation to the changing circumstances, improving the quality of life of everyone involved. With neighbors helping each other and those affected by the crisis putting forward local solutions, crisis mitigation efforts will thrive. Thereby even those problems faced only by individuals or minorities can be finally voiced and addressed. Next, the systematic overview of emerging needs, local initiatives, and available resources can help governments and organizations to plan on a more granular level.

How can we grow from bottom-up and reach our potential ourselves as individuals and small-scale communities, while still being connected to larger institutions and share a sense of global solidarity? The Web-App aims to foster a culture of pro-active problem solving and social responsibility. Thereby, Provision gives solidarity a platform to scale for many purposes.

[1] "Tools for Conviviality" -Ivan Illich. A book which described a vision of a world in which a community of users develop and maintain their own tools. Using convivial tools — a term that we extend to technologies, infrastructures, and processes for provisioning — is about enhancing our individual freedom while enriching our relationships and interdependence.