G.A.L.A. Share Connector
The G.A.L.A. Share Connector is an effort to help communities share resources more efficiently and within a context of achieving sustainability. What resources? Resources may include skills, books, tools, food, rides, advice, and any other goods or service that you could use or have to offer. What does this have to do with achieving sustainability? Our goal is simply to help people view their collaboration as a step toward "improving quality of life within the means of nature." We want your participation in the Share Connector to be more than just a novelty where you arrange a carpool and save on some gas. We want to show how your carpool also prevented carbon dioxide emissions from rising to the atmosphere contributing to climate change. We want to show that the more we collaborate, the more we build trust amongst each other, thereby raising social capital or, improving quality of life while reducing ecological impact. That is our mission.
Our Share Connector logic is pretty simple - We believe that everyone has something special to offer the community. All communities are rich and abundant beyond measure with skill, talent, resources, and ability. The Share Connector will provide the networking tool / infrastructure that allows this "richness" to be enjoyed at its fullest potential. We also hope the Share Connector will achieve the following-
* Help community members learn from each other.
* Enhance self-appreciation by providing a safe venue to share unique gifts and services to achieve a shared vision of sustainability.
* Increase ease, efficiency, and frequency in the exchange of resources, services, and ideas/information, thereby strengthening local economy and social capital.
*Strengthen neighborhood networks, thereby deepening individual and collective resiliency in circumstances beyond a neighborhood's direct control (i.e. climate change, currency fluctuations, peak oil, etc.).
*Develop relationships between community members that might not otherwise converse on a regular basis because of different political leanings, religion, age, physical appearance, or race.
Please note- The G.A.L.A. Share Connector is a work in progress. We have big plans to make this the most user-friendly, safe, helpful, and efficient web-based networking/resource exchange tool you have ever come across. We currently have software specialists developing this program and hope to launch a pilot project as early as September 2008. Eventually, G.A.L.A. would also like to establish a series of lending libraries such as a tool-library, board-game library, holiday-decoration library, worm-library, etc. Did you just say "worm" library?!?!
In the meantime, there are plenty of ways to begin sharing today! The newly establishing Wolfeboro Freecycle Chapter is the simplest example. Join the Freecycle group to begin clearing out your clutter and you might discover that someone else’s clutter is just what you have been looking for, or vise versa. We also invite the community to use the other forums to begin collaborating and sharing other resources as well. When using these forums, please be respectful and keep comments appropriate for all ages. Also, please be a watchdog. If you see any offensive posts please email right away.
And do not forget to provide feedback!! What ideas would you like incorporated into the Share Connector? Are you able to help with the market analysis of the software program? Please contact us if you are interested in helping develop this program. Thanks and enjoy!!
