From: Warren Te Brugge <warren.tebrugge@manzimvula.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 7:39 AM
Subject: South African M.A.N. Pilot Site in Bergnek, Limpopo
BERGNEK, SOUTH AFRICA HAS BEEN SELECTED TO BE AMONG THE FIRST EIGHT PILOT SITES OF A NEW WORLDWIDE GROUP OF MUTUAL AID NETWORKS (MANS)
Warren Te Brugge, founder of MAWO, says, “We are extremely grateful to MAN for recognizing and supporting this important project. The project will support wealth creation within the village of Bergnek and bring multiple initiatives, including water access, education, employment, food security, health services and sanitation, in Bergnek under an umbrella that all residents and contributors can participate in. More importantly with the implementation of WOMAN, every resident can contribute and participate doing the work they are drawn to."
Keith Mosumane, General Manager of Bergnek Community Projects Cooperative, says, “This is a big step for the community as we introduce the tools and knowledge to enable our community to create value from within. This is an important step in ultimately making the community self-sustainable.”
Organized in 2010, the Bergnek MAN Pilot Site - a collaboration with My Arms Wide Open and Bergnek Community Projects - is a community development initiative to empower and support women and youth through sustainable business ventures. This initiative provides access to food, clean water, and reproductive health care for girls and women. It currently involves more than 300 people, mainly women, in the rural village of Bergnek in South Africa’s Northeast. Its newest effort is the creation of a health care center for community wellness and brick manufacturing to combat the unemployment in the community at a larger scale.
According to Warren Te Brugge, the affiliation with the worldwide Mutual Aid Network offers a unique opportunity to attract resources and share ideas with urban and rural innovators around the world. In addition to Bergnek, the first cohort of MAN pilot sites includes Allentown, Pennsylvania; ; Hull, U.K.]; Lansing, Michigan; Madison, Wisconsin; Providence, Rhode Island; St. Louis, Missouri; and Waterville, Kansas.
“The beauty of the Mutual Aid Network is that it focuses on social, spiritual, cultural, educational and economic assets, instead of just “needs” and problems that divide us,“ says Warren Te Brugge. “We recognize that poverty, social isolation, ill health and injustice exist,” he says. ”And, the approach of a Mutual Aid Network is to harness the energy of participants so that individuals, families, organizations and the community can benefit.”
MAN pilot programs range from community-owned groceries, restorative justice youth courts and wellness cooperatives to TimeBanks, where members share skills, talents and service with others who request them. Some programs focus on local foods and gardens. Others build networks around the arts, personal care or non-monetary exchanges. “What brings us together is the desire to test new ways to enhance the quality of life for everyone in a community. We want to learn and share what we learn”, adds Te Brugge.
In Bergnek, South Africa, the MAN pilot site is already working with the community to provide a 2500-plant vertical garden that helps provide food to the underprivileged in the community. They also manufacture and supply reusable cloth sanitary pads, which are washable, last up to a year, are cost-effective and environmentally-friendly. This replaced the primitive alternatives, such as newspapers, cloth rags and banana leaves, which are both ineffective and unhygienic, leading to long-term health risk, such as reproductive tract Infections, Toxic Shock Syndrome or cervical cancer. Research shows that girls miss up to 50 school days annually due to menstruation. In most rural communities, a shocking 300 million girls and women are under house arrest monthly during menstruation. In regards to clean water, we have supplied and installed a diesel water pump that meets some of the water needs of the Bergnek community. We have collaborated with Engineers without Borders from the USA to install two bigger solar-powered electrical pumps that will help in making sure we have sufficient water for the community.
Our newest effort is the creation of a health care center for community wellness initiatives to combat the unemployment in the community at a larger scale. We encourage anyone who shares our interests and wants to participate to contact on the web through our contact page or on our Facebook page. No matter what your age or background, we welcome participation.” As part of the announcement we are raising the seed funding for the Bergnek W.O.M.A.N. project using Generosity by INDIEGOGO. You can find out more and participate here, or copy this link into your browser https://www.generosity.com/community-fundraising/bergnek-mutual-aid-network-pilot-project
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About Mutual Aid Networks: The mission of MANs is “To create means for everyone to discover and succeed in work they want to do, with the support of their community.”
We are The MAN: Mutual Aid Networks - A crowdfunding campaign to support the first eight pilot sites of Mutual Aid Networks, and the umbrella that supports and disseminates our model for cooperative work redesign and supports an economy that values, rewards, and catalyzes abundance.
This crowdfunding campaign will provide us with the money we need to develop our infrastructure via software, communications tools, training and travel, outreach and more. And because we manage our wealth in innovative ways and connect it with cooperative tools and practices, it goes much much farther than it would in a traditional charity model.
Mutual Aid Networks are a new type of cooperative, designed to connect us in a network of mutual support that creates means for us to do exactly what we want to do with our lives, from solving hard problems to taking care of loved ones and neighbors to making art.
The aim of Mutual Aid Networks is to redesign how we work, and to apply what we know about economic and community building tools to create a new vision for work. Instead of getting jobs so we can afford to live, we decide how we want to live and create community supports for each other to do what we want to do. We want everyone to become the inventors, freelancers, entrepreneurs, homemakers, artists, and caregivers they want to be, with some material security because we choose to provide that to each other. The Main MAN meta-cooperative now links the pilots together to create comprehensive budgeting tools that track all forms of capital – TimeBank hours, mutual credit, and shared resources, and community savings and lending pools. These online tools connect individuals, organizations, and projects. Please support us in creating the new economy, one that works for the 100%!
ABOUT My Arms Wide Open®:
The My Arms Wide Open® Foundation provides support for mothers, children, and youth in South Africa, as well as in indigenous and aboriginal communities in other parts of the world, to create and manifest sustainable, autonomous and responsible businesses and economic activity within their communities.
My Arms Wide Open works directly with community members, who identify priorities for community development. We help them improve their skills and knowledge in areas such as entrepreneurship, leadership, policy and governance, mentoring, education, food security, infrastructure and personal development.
Our work is focused in five key areas that respond to indigenous needs and benefit the community as a whole. Supported by a network of partners, My Arms Wide Open is committed to helping communities be vibrant, sustainable and environmentally attractive.
VIDEO: The My World In a Garden, Bergnek Vertical Food Wall in Bergnek, Limpopo, South Africa taking shape: Watch the video here
VIDEO: The My World, My Garden Vertical Food Wall ground breaking at the Ray-Cam, courtesy of Global TV BC: Watch the broadcast here
MEDIA CONTACT:
MAWO:
Warren Te Brugge
(604) 601-8500
M.A.N.
Stephanie Rearick
(608) 663-0400
M.A.N.
Chris Petit
(773) 318-4329