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Openworld welcomes whatever you can do to help. In early July, we are organizing breakout sessions on free zones and generosity for the FreeMinds09 conference in Nevada. Any support for our preparations will be much appreciated!


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African projects advance

Openworld-assisted projects in Gabon and Somaliland are engaging students and jobseekers to research new ways to fund market-based learning and sustainable development. A presentation on Gabon's "Green Free Zone" opportunity has just been released. In Somaliland, teleworkers helping the new Somaliland-based Academy of Science, recipient of a 37 acre land grant, have also begun producing video clips on Internet-enabled job creation and affordable construction solutions.

Seeds of Change Offer: Microvouchers for student projects

Openworld is offering 500 microvouchers in coming months to fund digital "work-study" projects by students at entrepreneurial schools for the poor to create video clips on opportunities for sustainability. The initiative is funded by recent grants from John C. Whitehead, Jack Pearce, and the Explorers Foundation. Explore the new Seeds of Change challenge offer and apply for the Seeds of Change resources.

"Assisting Entrepreneurial Schools" portal launched

In response to shortcomings in government schools, more than 1.5 million private schools for the poor are now operating in developing countries, according to Templeton Foundation and International Finance Corporation-supported research by James Tooley. Openworld has launched a new portal to provide learning entrepreneurs with practical information on sustainability strategies.

Sponsor/Partner Opportunities

Openworld welcomes your help in spreading grassroots free market initiatives in impoverished communities.
For those interested in supporting new self-help opportunities, Openworld welcomes Global Resource Partnerships with individuals, policy institutes, and organizations that can contribute to global challenge offers. Donors interested in making tax-deductible contributions to support Openworld’s nonprofit activities can do so through the Explorers Foundation (tel: +1 303-744-1855). Sponsor options are also offered to supporters who seek early-stage access to new talent and development opportunities.

Innovations for a freer, more generous world

 

Welcome to Openworld! We invite you to explore and support new Seeds of Change offers for the sustainability of local and global good causes.

The challenge offers -- including microscholarships, telework opportunities, and toolkits -- provide a way for groups in impoverished regions to awaken assets and create areas of economic opportunity.

Access to the Seeds of Change resources grows as grassroots allies succeed in spreading awareness, in securing land grant endowments for entrepreneurial schools and clinics, and in winning support for business climate reforms to raise the value of these lands.

Development of the sites as success-sharing free zones can create assets for partnering local and global education and health care ventures. Scalable (and replicable) free areas also can ensure level-field proving grounds for new skills, jobs, investments, and innovations to flourish.


Openworld is working at present on three tracks to advance new partnerships for growth and sustainability.

I. Innovative ideas...

In a series of presentations and papers, Openworld has mapped ways for transparency-enhancing reforms to awaken human capital and dormant land values for community uplift, as well as for the benefit of global allies contributing to the challenge offers.

(click image to view)Free Market Breakthroughs for the Next Four Billion. At the July, 2008 Freedomfest conference in Las Vegas, Openworld gave a presentation on new challenge offers of virtual resources, including startup tools and microscholarship funds delivered via cell phones. These can help entrepreneurial schools and Internet center operators launch small "quickstart" free economic zones that create telework jobs in impoverished areas. The talk explored how challenge offers can increase as localities expand the size of areas with free zone status. Such sites can grow rapidly in value, yielding land value gains of 5-30 times original levels based on the experience of world-class free zones. Over time, billions of dollars in new assets can flow to education, health care, and social ventures that are vested as stakeholding partners in emergent Singapores, Hong Kongs, and Dubais. Slides of the Freedomfest talk (including a December, 2008 update) are available here. A companion white paper, entitled Awakening Assets for the Next Four Billion, is downloadable here.

  • New Catalysts for Sustainability: A Global Opportunity for Digital Philanthropy. In this white paper, Openworld President Mark Frazier reviews opportunities for microscholarships and other digital challenge grants to spread skills, promote policy reforms, and leverage public land transfers in ways that make social ventures self-funding. A summary of findings from this 11-month Sabre Foundation-sponsored, and Whitehead Foundation-backed, research project is available here. The full 80-page strategy paper -- including an appendix of resources for sustainability -- is also downloadable. *New* To advance key business climate reforms proposed in the white paper, an Openworld Institute is organizing to promote free and open source eGovernment solutions that will enable communities to make land grants more valuable as lasting endowments for local and global good causes.
  • Market-Based Approaches to Reducing Global Greenhouse Emissions: an African Reforestation Initiative. In a paper for the Congressional International Conservation Caucus, Openworld Chairman Soleman Abdi Idd sets out a sustainable way for international companies to partner with communities in privately funded reforestation areas benefiting from incentives to reduce global greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The presentation can be accessed here.

  • 21st Century Incentive Systems for Peer Learning. Students at a bootstrap school in rural Sri Lanka offer results of their web research on updating the widely-used 19th Century Lancaster System of rewarding students who teach students. Their work-study project paper is here. *New* Openworld's "Assisting Entrepreneurial Schools" portal has introduced a pioneering proposal to engage students as designers/co-owners of for-profit schools, in U.S. and overseas communities where public schools are failing to deliver high quality education.

  • Paths Toward Peace: A Sri Lankan Example for Post-Conflict Societies. This article by Mark Frazier, published by Vision in Action, surveys replicable ways for information technologies to create jobs and improve transparency of business climates in areas recovering from war. The article is also downloadable.


II. Grassroots action...

On-the-ground projects we are assisting include:

  • the Horizon Lanka Academy in Sri Lanka. Openworld and its partners are helping to fund microscholarships, work-study projects, student creation of eLessons, and a dedicated internet connection for a pioneering private school launched on a volunteer basis in rural in Sri Lanka. The project has attracted diaspora funding for land grant and building endowments to help ensure its future, and gained national media and political support as an example for villages across the country.
  • eCenters and Microscholarship Funds in Kyrgyzstan. With support from the Academy for Educational Development and a $100,000 catalytic microvoucher challenge grant from USAID, Openworld has assisted private telecenter operators in this Central Asian country in extending online learning and certification opportunities at grassroots levels, following local commitment of land grants as endowments for ongoing microscholarship funds. A multimedia presentation on their progress -- with more than 5000 microvouchers recipients over the first 18 months -- can be seen here.
  • Strategy development for Business Parks and eGovernment initiatives in Eastern Europe. In response to the growing interest of municipalities in private sector-led eCenters and Business and Technology Parks, Openworld and its partners have been working with communities to design "quickstart" facilities and development tenders for land grant concessions that offer liberalized business climates.

In addition, Openworld is extending catalytic offers of microscholarships, work-study projects, and in-kind contributions -- including video cameras, notebook computers, and software -- to local self-help initiatives interested in endowing microvoucher funds and "eAcademies" through land grants in Somaliland, Gabon, and Haiti.

III. Virtual tools and support systems...

Openworld and its partners also have a range of online projects to promote sustainable eLearning opportunities and to support private sector-led projects that can generate resources for local microscholarship funds. These include:

  • Preparing a Virtual Business Incubator (with funding from USAID's Regional Competitiveness Initiative) for jobseekers and freelancers in Macedonia, Kosovo, and Montenegro to find projects in rapidly-growing online free markets for telework;
  • Offering "Openworld Presenter" freeware/shareware authoring tools for creation of eLessons that can fill gaps in existing educational systems;
  • Using free Skype internet calling software for diaspora and other volunteer faculty to offer online "English as a Second Language" practice sessions for schools serving poor communities;
  • Working with FLOW -- an emerging movement for liberating the entrepreneurial spirit and focusing it on the goals of sustainable peace, prosperity, and happiness -- to engage students in cross-cultural exchange to understand and develop Openworld approaches to local social and economic development; and

The new Openworld Institute is also moving to sponsor global free and open source software teams that will develop turn-key eGovernment solutions for web-based land registries and business climate liberalization, as a means of raising the value of land assets held by local self-help organizations and their regional and global nonprofit partners.


Where Openworld is heading

Our projects are grounded in the experience of a global team that has worked over the past two decades in more than 60 countries on national and local economic policy liberalization, telecommunications, skills development, telecenter, and business and technology park development projects.

We see Openworld's initiatives in coming years leading to creation of "Innovation Parks" and "World Cities" that can replicate the asset-building success of ZonAmerica (Uruguay), Freeport (Bahamas), Singapore, and Dubai, in ways that reward early investors and allied good causes.


The seeds we are planting for civil society institutions are intended to bring forth nonpolitical solutions that generate new skills, health, and job opportunities for all who seek them, on a self-funding and replicable basis.

Self-FundingCycleDiagram.jpg

We welcome your interest and support in helping to open the world. Please leave comments in our guestbook, explore the benefits of becoming an Openworld Sponsor (or donor through a tax-deductible contribution via the Explorers Foundation), and email us with any further ideas on how you can help in spreading new zones of freedom, peace and prosperity.

We look forward to hearing from you!