CatComm.org

An Interview with Theresa Williamson
(interview for article in Brazilian Third Sector Network magazine, published October 13, 2006)

Q: How has CatComm evolved since it was founded in 2000? What results and experiences would you highlight?

A: The idea for Catalytic Communities (CatComm) came about thanks to direct observation of positive things that were going on in our communities here in Rio de Janeiro. Small projects and actions - sometimes one resident working to support a small number of neighbors - but these individuals, together, have a great potential to transform society. In 2000 I started my doctoral research in city and regional planning visiting a few local slums. In them I discovered community projects responding to diverse local demands - community sewerage, arts programs with youth, literacy projects, daycare… But I also noticed a lack of dialogue across them. I visited one community, Asa Branca in the city's West Zone, where they had a community sewerage program, but whose youth sat idle on street corners after school. Soon thereafter I'd be in Jacarezinho, in the city's North Zone, where they had an art program for local youth, but open air sewerage. I asked the local leaders responsible for these programs, Bezerra and Henrique Monteiro, in this case, whether they knew of one another. I discovered that it's very difficult for leaders from these sorts of projects to have the time or resources available to get the word out about their initiatives even within their own neighborhood, much less with the wider world. There was no forum to publicize their initiatives, and none to share experiences. There are relatively few networks of community leaders, and they had difficulty finding each other. For there was no central space or structure developed with this in mind. Community networking, as with everything else in these communities, was done informally.

At the outset CatComm's intention was to create a virtual space - a Website - www.catcomm.org where community leaders could document and share their successful experiences in their local communities. We began in 2000 with a very simple site, that was later developed with our first financial support in 2002, to create the Community Solutions Database, our site's main tool. Here, community leaders from any community - in Rio de Janeiro and around the world - can document, in great detail, their community initiatives. CatComm doesn't evaluate the projects in the CSD. We are taking advantage of a tool that is the Internet exactly to create an open space for exchange. We make this very clear on our site, that any person, feeling that they are developing a community solution, can document it. We would only remove a project if it were not truly community-initiated, or if it were ethically questionable, neither of which has happened yet. Today we have 128 projects from 9 countries in our database. These projects are translated between English, Spanish and Portuguese by a network of volunteer translators. 83% of them are in Rio de Janeiro, but we also have projects from Porto Alegre and Salvador, Brazil. Projects from abroad include initiatives in Sudan, Togo, Nigeria, Israel, India, Macedonia, the US, and Canada. We are now looking to grow the CSD throughout Latin America and expand our efforts in Africa. For this, we have just launched a new user-friendly, more professional site design in English, which will be available in Spanish and Portuguese at the end of October.

CatComm's approach expanded in 2003 when we had the conditions to undertake an experiment in response to a need we had perceived among community leaders with whom we worked at the time. Rio's community leaders frequently shared with us a huge frustration, which was the lack of common space for them to share experiences face to face. Many also complained they had nowhere to access the Internet, to view our site and other necessary tools to grow and strengthen their projects. It was increasingly common that funding proposals would only be considered online, that events needed to be publicized to large audiences by email, etc. These leaders communicated their frustration with digital exclusion. Many were already older and had great difficulty learning to use computers, different from the youth who were the principal users of technology centers that existed in some 70 communities at the time.

With this, we decided to do an experiment and open a space in downtown Rio de Janeiro to facilitate exchange among community leaders. In February 2003 we opened the "Casa" in an old brownstone house we rented near Rio's Praça Mauá. The Casa provides a technology space with 7 computers set up with high speed Internet, a multimedia workshop room, and a small informal meeting room. We take advantage of the space to exhibit community artists and artisans on the Casa's walls, launching these exhibitions together with the carnival block that trains monthly in the square below, bringing a large public to the area.

Q: How has this experiment with the Casa gone?

A: In the beginning, we saw the Casa as an experiment to be tested. Almost immediately, however, the Casa transformed CatComm, by showing itself as a necessary tool within our mission of "inspiring and empowering a global network of communities generating and sharing solutions." In the Casa, over these various years, community leaders and other collaborators have presented workshops in computer technology, English, French, adaptive reuse of trash, community radio, Spoken Word, rug weaving, jewelry-making, and more. Leaders take advantage of the computers to write proposals and acquire funding for their projects, publicize en masse their initiatives, email demands to their public officials, prepare graphic materials for their campaigns, and more. However, what we've seen as most important in the Casa is the space as a vehicle for exchange, for innumerous community partnerships have arisen through the space. We have a hard time keeping track of them all.

In 3.5 years of operation, the Casa has served approximately 1000 community leaders and at least 300 other visitors, from over 150 city neighborhoods, 7 municipalities across the state of Rio, 19 states in Brazil, and 19 nations. All of this through word-of-mouth outreach among the community users of the space and representatives of other social movements and NGOs. Since we launched the Casa, CatComm has had so much demand at the space that it's been difficult to organize campaigns to formally get the word out about the space. Now we find ourselves having reached a limit - we cannot continue to expand there, for this space has reached its limit. Since the end of 2005 we've been searching for a larger space to purchase, with the help of partnering businesses (which we are also searching for), in downtown Rio. We need a larger space in order to realize permanent workshops like community radio and editing of community documentaries, as well as more temporary workshops and debates with a larger public (the current space fits at most 25 people for such events), and an urban agriculture workshop through a partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization. One option we are looking at is to purchase a building with CEDAPS, a well-known capacity-building and health NGO, to stimulate joint activities. For all of this we will be searching for partnerships with businesses and other civil society organizations.

Interest from Omidyar Network members in various places around the world, and various others groups, including in Porto Alegre, Recife, and Salvador, Brazil, in taking advantage of our experience with the Casa to open similar spaces in other cities, has stimulated us to detail our methodology on our website, encouraging others to "Create a Sister Casa." CatComm's philosophy is not one of expanding by creating spaces around the world. We believe that if our methodology is truly working, people elsewhere will naturally seek us out to help them multiply these efforts. We prefer to work with partners, each one developing a similar local space, but each one adapted to meet local needs.

Q: How is the work with other countries? Through volunteers?

A: Until now our work with other countries (beyond Brazil) has been like our work at the Casa: through word-of-mouth. We have a small staff of 7 and a limited budget of under $100,000. With this we maintain the Casa open 5 days a week from 10 am to 6 pm, and a website receiving approximately 20,000 visitors per month in 3 languages. During our 6 years, we have developed, slowly, our programs (website and Casa) with the orientation of their users, so that both arrive at the right point in their development to publicize them broadly. We feel that we are now arriving at that point.

The community projects from 8 countries beyond Brazil, documented in our Community Solutions Database, all arrived thanks to our network which naturally expands with invitations to international conferences, mentions in the press, networks in which we participate (like Omidyar.net), and similar opportunities for outreach. At these events we meet representatives of groups that operate in other regions and which get the word out about our tools to their local leaders. With this, leaders contact us to include their initiatives in our website and later, when they observe the usefulness of this, tell others. Today I received an email from a project in Sudan that learned about us through another, that wants to include his initiative with traditional dance and cultural preservation in the Community Solutions Database. With each year that passes, new regions gain access to the Internet, and with this, the potential of reaching our global mission also becomes more viable.

We depend on volunteers mostly to translate projects in the Community Solutions Database. At the moment our site exists in English, Spanish and Portuguese. To maintain this, we count on a group of 5-10 translators at a time, who translate these projects. We are always searching for new volunteers. We've received many through Idealist.org, a site that supports organizations searching for staff and volunteers around the world, as well as through simple searches on Google and an Argentine job site. More recently, we've entered into a partnership with an international translation firm, Bureau Translations, based in São Paulo, that translates 5000 words for month among any of the 20 languages with which they work. We will be performing outreach for them through CatComm's site and with every new visit they receive, and new job, more words will be offered to us for translation. We feel good entering into partnerships with companies whose philosophy is one of sustainability and social concern like this one, and they are offering one more avenue to strengthen CatComm's support of communities.

Q: What's the importance of a space like this, both the virtual and physical, to strengthen community solutions to local challenges?

A: Social initiatives, whether government or civil society, tend to organize themselves by topics or regions. There are few organizations developed with the specific intention of creating and expanding networks of exchange among these initiatives. Networking organizations are often difficult to explain to people accustomed with more traditional institutions. They are difficult to evaluate with traditional evaluation tools, for often it's difficult to truly determine their reach. Finally, networking organizations offer a preventative, rather than treatment-oriented approach to social challenges, which is less "sexy" particularly when there are emergencies in need of attention. For all these reasons, and others, it is difficult to fundraise for networking efforts, which limits the creation of initiatives like CatComm.

In addition to all this, the few organizations that exist with the aim of networking tend to develop networks among larger scale projects, projects that have received public recognition, etc. This is very different from our approach, focused on community-based projects, many without Internet access and unknown to the wider world, which adds another level of difficulty to what we do.

At CatComm, we believe that solutions and the capacity to transform society exist among community-based groups and their larger partners. What is missing is articulation, exchange, and publicity for these projects. CatComm's site has been used, for example, by diverse members of the press, from Web-based magazines to national TV, to identify community-based initiatives to form the basis for stories. What good things are going on in Rio's slums? Many things! Simply visit our site and Community Solutions Database to take a peak.

Our two spaces - virtual and physical - are a window into the rich community experiences that exist, but which are under supported, under recognized, both in Rio de Janeiro and around the world. Bringing visibility to these initiatives, that are truly the basis of social transformation, is the role of our site. The Casa facilitates exchange among them.

We are now at the most exciting moment in our history. In September all this work was recognized by the Tech Museum for Innovation in San Jose, California. CatComm was selected as one of 25 initiatives "applying technology to benefit humanity," winners of this year's Tech Awards. This year, 951 initiatives were nominated. CatComm was one of 5 winners in the "Equality" category sponsored by the Swanson Foundation. In November we will go to San Jose to receive the award. This recognition has added a new spark to our mission of creating a truly global network of community solutions.